Rapid Fire half works. It sacrifices reality for playability. Rapid Fire is fast play if you want a nice reality based game play Challenger or Challenger 2000 we would get only about a turn an hour.

We could even go wargames research group. We would be looking up every vehicles armour class for sides and rear etc. We can do it but the game slows. Likewise Battlefront rules are nice but the game plays slower except when you play with less units.

Rolf's post WW2 - modern amendments ( Peace In War ) to RF work fairly well keeping a game moving.

We do need to tinker with the house rules as we played on Sunday rules that do not seem to appear to be agreed on.

Tanks firing guns under 75mm not be spottable. Or rather as support weapons which means 36 inch rather than 60 inch. Personally, I think this was relating to low weapons as in low to the ground  rather than tank guns but agree if a tank fired maybe it should not be seen at 60". There is nothing in between . Battlefront gets round this as moving  firing etc all add to chances to being spotted.

Re: reality it is possible to assault a moving tank, likewise mortars may get  lucky and cause tanks to retire. Not allowed in the rules.

Infantry can assault tanks they just must be crazy to do it. Part of that  the grenade and hero roll but this is only against stationary tanks which is  where we get tanks moving an inch in front of infantry which is taking the piss. Seem to remember RF site has a suggestion that to count as moving has to move over 3 inches otherwise stationary with regards infantry assault.

Likewise some German vehicles originally had no MGs. If unsupported by infantry they would be highly vulnerable later models had an mg added.

We need to clarify the grenade rules. Is it one per 4 men or two per company. Does the company still have a grenade if left with under 4 men would it have two if over half the company alive. In the Arnhem supplement  para’s get unlimited so rules can be changed.

Basically the rules work , but it depends on how you define "works". It works in that it can be played. It doesn't work in that it fails to provide anything resembling the true challenges of military command. Rapid Fire is a set of rules knocked up by wargamers to represent their fantasy of large scale armoured warfare.

Command and Control?

It's a battalion/regiment/brigade level game, and I'd expect at least some C&C rules to reflect real life. In the last game we had rudimentary command restrictions and they seemed to work but when the fighting starts, every unit behaves just as the player wants until it hits the dreaded morale wall.

Morale

A good rule of thumb for military simulations is that this should be at the level of the lowest independent unit of manouver, in this case the company. I get so bored with throwing those guys forward and having them wiped out, or watching two companies holding to the last man whilst waiting for the magic figure that finally allows a battalion morale check. I doubt the countries involved would have that much armour, as most of the metal they dug out and smelted would be used for posthumous medals for their troops!

Logistics

Mostly never used, and RF optional rules are rudimentary. I agreed totally with the article on Normandy logistics in one of the magazines a month or so ago.

Tactics

My bugbear. There are real life military tactics, and there are Rapid Fire tactics, and the two rarely meet. Do the rule writers know what the point of "motorised" (lorry-borne) troops was? It was to provide "Operational" mobility to an infantry unit by providing it with its own inherent transport, rather than having to rely on corps/division/army pool transport that may not be available when needed. It was never meant as "Tactical" battlefield transport, for the simple reason that lorried infantry is probably the most vulnerable unit on a battlefield. (a fact recognised even back in 1939).

Now, I didn't think for a second that it was possible to advance my Mechanised (lorried) infantry battalion across a large expanse of totally clear terrain to engagement range of a enemy force, especially with an enemy battalion sitting on my flank. And in real life no commander with half a brain would try it. But in RF it seems to be a totally valid exercise and quite the expected thing, because those lorries ended up being as hard to kill as Bradley’s!

I also have problems with the ground scale (what is it?), movement rates, ranges, infantry manning artillery, grenades (in battalion level game??).

I'd have less trouble with it if the game scale was reduced to a straight-forward tactical level, rather than this odd mix that just pretends to simulate large scale battles. In fact, if this was done almost all my criticism would melt away!!

Light blue touch paper and retire!!!