Selecting which rules to use for my Normandy game was a challenge. Previously I have used the Savage World rules with some of these same players with good results. The SW skirmish rules are simple, intuitive, and play very fast, and best of all are applicable to any time period. Still, considering the number of figures I expected to have active on the board at any one time (up to 300!) I thought one-on-one skirmish rules would take too long.
I dug out my copy of Combat Command by LDT Gameworks, which I had enjoyed playing solo some years earlier. These rules allow for squad vs. squad combat, which I though would keep the game moving quickly. However, as I re-familiarized myself with the CC rules I decided that they shared a lot of game mechanisms in common with the Flames of War rules (FOW) from Battlefront which I have been playing for a couple of years. So, I wondered if FOW could be used with 25mm figures?
The 25mm figures that I had already painted were based singly, not in stands of multiple figures (multiple figures based together are called “teams” in FOW). I had no intention of re-basing my 25mm figures, and the idea of movement trays seemed cumbersome. However, if I figured if I treated individual figures as teams, a squad in my game would be handled the way a platoon in FOW is handled. The characteristics of a figure in my game would be the same as the characteristics of a team in the FOW rules. An American figure holding a Thompson SMG, for example, would have the rate of fire (ROF), range, anti-tank (AT), and firepower (FP) ratings of an American SMG team. A German carrying a Kar98 would have the attributes of a German rifle team, etc. Only for a few figures (for example, the assistant to a light machine gunner, who had no weapon of his own) required some invention. With a little creativity and a few house rules, it seemed this could be made to work.
At first I decided that I would not scale the ranges up in proportion to the larger figure scale, since I wanted to keep the battlefield big and keeping ranges small helped with that effect (I didn’t want one HMG to be able to sweep the Normandy beaches from the Orne to the Cherbourg penninsula!). However, later solo playtesting convinced me that I needed to scale them up, which I did by 50% to keep the numbers “clean.”
The stickiest problem was that not ALL of my 25mm figures were mounted singly. I had decided previously to start mounting mortar, MG, and light artillery crews on the base with their weapon (I know, I know, sacrilege!). So, I had to figure out how to indicate casualties, and allocate damage effects, to crews. I opted to allow the crewed piece to keep firing until all figures are killed, but at reduced ROF. During the game, I would keep track of the losses of each crew with a single die kept with the based unit.
Vehicles in 25mm scale would be treated exactly the same as they are in 15mm scale, with the exception that the ranges on their weapons were increased by 50% as well.
In the end, I think the FOW rules worked pretty well using single figures as teams. Some of the abstractions that are more easily swallowed in 15mm seemed less palatable in 25mm scale, particularly the way assaults are handled. Several players asked why they couldn’t throw grenades, or why they couldn’t place satchel charges on tanks “like in Saving Private Ryan.” Other than that, the game played quickly and rarely got bogged down.