Skirmish Action at NJCon

Back in June was the annual NJCon convention here in New Jersey. It's a fair sized event with good support from a few local venders such as On Military Matters and Maplewood Hobbies, among others my deteriorating mind cannot recall. The organizers are a great group of gamers, who genuinely love the hobby and are a blast to game with. They were my introduction to historical gaming and it has been a joy to game with them and call them friends for years now.

Anyway, my good friend Lee Sower and I had a little throw down in the Pacific with his "Skirmish Action" rules. These rules are loads of fun and give a game that feels "right" for WWII. It uses playing cards to determine which unit gets to activate, so you never know which unit will get to act or when. There are over watch rules that allow you to interrupt your opponent which keeps both players involved throughout the turn. The lists are a bit crunchy and have stats for just about every weapon available during the war and these are broken down by nation and years available to keep things historical, but there are special characters for those who want more cinematic game. As a matter of fact Lee runs a great game of the final battle from the movie "Saving Private Ryan" at  Fall-In, Cold-Wars and NJCon. Join those games if you can, it is a good introduction to the rules.

The game plays best with a platoon per side, with maybe a vehicle and support weapon (I.E. AT guns, HMGs and light mortars) per side. There are rules for off table artillery which keeps the game away from the silliness of artillery on table doing bombardments. Personally I think on table artillery and even heavy mortars is ridiculous, but that's my worthless opinion. You can play larger games but things can get cluttered very quickly and play can bog down because of shear volume of units.

Here are some photos of the game we played. I do not remember any specifics about the game except breaking a Marine platoon down to the fire team level and using fire and maneuver works very nicely. Also flamethrowers are a nightmare when employed against bunkers... it was a fun game and it is one of the few times I actually won a game.

 

 

I do not like all the cards on the table, it definitely takes away from the look of the game. I plan to make up markers to use instead to remove clutter. The minis are Bolt Action and were painted by me. The mat (3'x3') is from the Ganesha Games Kickstarter and all the other terrain was made by me.

 

Here a couple of the "Saving Private Ryan" game Lee ran later that day.

 







That's it for now. Until next time...

regards, Bill