Skirmish Rules for the Campaign

With the upcoming campaign, I wanted to make sure we had skirmish rules available that would be quick, appropriately resolved, and meshed with the period. I was going to bastardize Necromunda and Mordheim, as they are both good games, but doing so would require a lot of work on my part to make them mesh.

Then I came acrosd Smooth And Rifled from http://smooth-and-rifled.blogspot.com/ which has saved me many hours of work. I had looked at the offerings from Too Fat Lardies, but their rules just didn't hit all the things I was looking for with the campaign. Don't get me wrong, the Lardies do great work, but what I was looking for in a ruleset just was not what they covered.

A good thing about S&R is that once purchased, all future versions and supplements are free of charge. Designed by the same chap who did Impetus, these are nice rules, well organized, with color photos. My only gripe, and it is small, is that the examples were written out, but do not include pictures or photos. However, with the simplicity of the rules, these streamlined examples may be enough for most experienced wargamers.

Since the rules were written in Italian and then translated, the English is a little stilted, at least to my English Writing Tutor eyes. Also, whether it be translation error author error, there are some grammatical errors in the text. In other areas, the phrasing muddles the clarity of the rules, for example, Rule 6.2 Fire. The text of the rule seems to indicate that a model can be facing in one direction, but then fire at a target behind it, without turning around, but there are movement rules for turning (turning costs action points). I think the intent is to not give free movement, but rather focus a models attention to what is in front of it, even during the move phase, if threatened from that direction.

Since this is not a review, per se, I will refrain from giving a full critique, but suffice to say, I will be using these when appropriate in the campaign. I will need to make some slight adjustments, for example with wound severity (50/50 chance of either shaken or dead), plug bayonets, and grenades. The rules are meant to cover actions from 1700 to 1900, but as there are several supplements for various periods, i would guess that the WSS still require an official supplement release to provide these rules....and since they do not yet exist, I have to make them up.

Overall, I do recommend them to wargamers who like skirmish games. I may well put on some games of this for my local club.