FUBAR for WWII

I umpired a WWII platoon-level game this evening with two friends using the FUBAR one page ruleset from Craig Cartmell. What a superb little game it is- very simple, very intuitive and very clever, and more than adaptable enough to accommodate any house-ruling you might want to do. I did see that there is a specific WWII supplement for FUBAR, but I was content to bash my own slightly simpler version together for tonight. I can already see how I might add smoke rules and the like. The master stroke is the suppression system which simultaneously eliminates book-keeping or 'counter-clutter' and efficiently models the effects of pinning and morale. I heartily recommend checking them out.

We played with shiny-toy-soldier style Airfix figures and some other bits from Armourfast, Zvezda and the like- with improvised, toylike scenery to match,. These included a hastily rigged up couple of woods made from a chopped up old Christmas wreath, a doormat 'ploughed field' and roads made from cut-up mousemats from the poundshop. The classic old Airfix cottage, Inn and Church are now being sold by Dapol at a very reasonable price.  You may recognise them from all sorts of classic wargaming titles from the '60s onwards.

we played an imaginary German invasion of the sleepy 

Sussex village of Ample Parking.

Fritz has holed up in St. Mandy's, the bounder! Hope he

keeps his jackboots off the hassocks.

Plucky Brits rush to the rescue. 

A Cromwell ruins the vicarage lawn, but it's for a good cause. 

They don't like it up 'em, as a wise man once

observed.

All in defence of next year's carrot crop.

Just this PAK 40 to sort out and we can send the Nazi Sealion

back into the channel.

FUBAR for WWII

In a couple of days I'll be giving my old-fashioned shiny Airfix WW2 lads a run out for a game of FUBAR, the one page ruleset produced by Craig Cartmell, of IHMN and Blood Eagle fame. There is a one-page supplement available specifically for WW2, as the core rules can be adapted to any platoon-level skirmish from WW2 into the far-future (even 40,000 years into the future I suspect), but I'm having a little tinker to try and make it as simple and quick as possible, and adapting it to my own figure collection.

The rules look simple, straightforward and fun, with a bare minimum of book keeping (none, really), and a very simple and intuitive morale/effectiveness/suppression system. I'm also rather interested in the 'generic sci-fi' variant- almost too many ideas for how best to use those!

It occurs to me that this may well be the first time I've played a points-free, 'unbalanced' game as a matter of choice. The two forces won't be hugely assymetrical- I'll be balancing a slight meteriel advantage on the German side with a higher experience rating on the British side- but nor will they be obsessively costed to a rigid points system. The spirit of the game will mean that this isn't a problem, and I'm wondering whether I will come to embrace the old-school aesthetic in this regard, and be more ready to dispense with points in other games too?