freewargamesrules blog

The first variant I found for the Fast Play Modern rules were these. I attended a Wargames show several years ago and a couple of gents were putting on a France 1940 game in 1/200. It was a cracking little game and i managed to blag the rules off the lads.

This was pre-computer so the rules were typed via a typewriter. I still have the rules though they are a little worn now. The main changes to the rules were they left out aircraft and AA fire and the infantry rules were completely changed. I believe they are taken from another game, but I can’t recall where from.

The last change was different move classes and armour classes for vehicles. These changes gave a good flavour to the period and moved the rules on from the original.

Battle for France Rules

Many years ago a set of fast play rules by Bernard Garaty appeared in one of the glossy Wargames magazines. These rules were very inspirational to me as they were simple for the period but gave a decent fast play game, which did not happen with many of the Commercial modern rules.

Since reading these rules I have erred on the side of simple rules and shied away from over complicated ones for al my periods.

Since finding them these rules have been used for a number of different periods and scenarios. I have seen versions at shows in participation games and variants in other magazines. I have also used them as a basis for WW2 and other specific conflicts.

The original rules are available below
Download Rules

Andy Watkins has a NATO variant here N.A.T.O.

I will present some of the other versions I have over the next few entries. I hope you enjoy these rules as much as I have over the years.

I have now upgraded the contact form on the freewargamesrules website. Now besides sending messages to me via the web visitors can now send me files.

I’ve limited the types of files to MS Word (old version), MS Exel, Adobe PDF, Open Office Writer, Zip files, text files, rich text format and images. These are the files I can read easily without too much hassle.

By doing this I keep my email address hidden from the spammers and it lets visitors send me files easily. Of course I had to add security to stop the spammers!

I had an email recently asking where they could the old Alienstar rules. The website is now long defunct. I had a look through some old discs and found I had a copy of all the rules.

The rules cover Ancient, Fantasy, World War 1, World War 2, Modern, Horse and Musket, RPG and naval.

Over the next few days I will be uploading all the rules to the main site.

15th January
Update: All the rules have now been added.

There have been a number of web gaming magazines over the past few years. Wargames Journal was an excellent web magazine and then went commercial into print form. Unfortunately this was the death of the excellent mag.

Fictional Reality was another excellent magazine that lasted for over 38 issues. It was recently announced that it was stopping.

A new magazine was launched in the summer of 2009 called Irregular Magazine. Issue 3 has just been released, take a look. I wish them every success with the future of this magazine.

The Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers (SOTCW) have started a new blog for the games they put on around the Country. It is the SOTCW Events.

This follows on from their previous event blogs that I was also involved with: Andrevian Tales our 2008 game and Achse Avalanche our 2009 game.

The game we have organised for Gauntlet 2010 is the Rif Wars.

I have quite a substantial collection of old wargames books from the 60’s and 70’s. I can’t resist popping in a secondhand bookshop to see what treasures they hold. Wargames books in general secondhand bookshops tend to be a lot cheaper than ebay or specialist military bookshops.

Even so there are titles that are still very hard to find. Well John Curry Events Wargames Rules are now reprinting some of the old classics. There are books from Don Featherstone, Charlie Wesencraft and Paddy Griffith to name a few little gems in here.

Some of these reprints are cheaper than the specialist bookshops are charging for the original copy. So go on and treat yourself and see the type of books that inspired old gamers like me.