Traditional tabletop rules on a grid

[steve_holmes_11]

Does anybody here have experience with changing traditional "Free movement" rules to play on a gridded surface?

I'm grid agnostic, happy to play with fiddly measurements on a free table, or on a grid.
I think each approach has its strengths, and some rules really suit a particular surface (Gridded or non-gridded).

I'm thinking about a certain class of rules written for tabletop use, which would transfer relatively painlessly to a gridded board.
The ones I regard as candidates have a few features in common:
* One stand  represents one unit.
* Fairly short movement (Multiples of base width up to 4 or 5.
* Similarly short shooting ranges.
* Units fighting mostly to front (or all around without concern for facing). The two could be mixed where line and skirmish units are present.

Why, you may ask:
* Potentially quicker play and easier measurement.
* Ease of judging range, support distances, front facings.
* Removes situations that break the game (or invoke paragraphs of unintelligible text) like mooning, half-basing, quarter-flanking.
* Eliminate the need to re-base armies.

A few rules that might work:
* DBA (and its cousins).
* Impetus (and its basic version).
* Irregular Wars looks as through it might work. Mobility would be slightly constrained, with potential payoffs in speed of play and ease of deploying terrain.

I'm sure there are plenty of others.

[Chris Pringle]

Not experience exactly, as I haven't actually done it yet, but I do think "Bloody Big BATTLES!" would translate comfortably to a hex grid. (I have gone so far as to translate one of my scenario maps into hex format with that in mind but gone no further as yet.)

All movement and firing is calculated in 3" increments which matches up tidily with one hex = 3", naking a standard 6'x4' table 24x16 hexes.

BBB doesn't fit all your criteria, as:
- units can consist of anywhere from one to seven 1" stands
- movement is 12" for inf and 18" for cavalry
- shooting varies from 32 for muskets up to 24" for rifled artillery
but I don't see why any of that should be a problem.

There would need to be some rules about stacking, and larger units would take up two hexes, but that could be worked out, I'm sure.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info
http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/

[Steve J]

No to be honest. For certain periods I think grids translate better, such as say Linear warfare as opposed to WWII. I wasn't a big fan of grids having played PBI some 10 odd years ago, but have been a convert after playing 'To the Strongest' and 'For King & Parliament'. Of late I have really enjoyed 'The Portable Wargame' by Bob Cordery as these rules give a nice game with minimal effort, both in terms of set up and complexity, all within about an hour per game. Perfect for evenings when you don't have the time nor energy for anything more complex.

[fred.]

I've enjoyed gridded games over the last couple of years, Rommel, For King and Parliament and To the Strongest. FKaP has been a big favourite with my gaming group.

We enjoyed FKaP that much we converted Epic to a grid (well a cut down version of epic, we had been playing for a couple of years, but still a full blown sci fi game). It worked, which was quite surprising. It was very little effort to convert movement and ranges, as most were in multiples of 15cm to start with, so this easily went to 15cm boxes.


From Steve's points

* One stand  represents one unit.
Not sure this really matters - with epic we went with 3 stands represent a unit, with up to 4 units in a box. We used some movement trays (the cloud shaped ones or circles, rather than rectangles) but generally just moved blocks of models around

* Fairly short movement (Multiples of base width up to 4 or 5.
Yes.

* Similarly short shooting ranges.
Yes. Once ranges get long, grids actually don't help. You spend quite a lot of time counting, and end up using a tape measure to check LoS. This is probably more important than short moves.

* Units fighting mostly to front (or all around without concern for facing). The two could be mixed where line and skirmish units are present.
Or where facing is ignored, units are always in a skirmish / all round posture.

I agree with all the positives. A grid really speeds up movement.

One of our group who is a big epic fan, but less of a grid fan, has led to a conversion of the gridded epic, back to a free form game - but what we have done is keep a kind of virtual grid. So each formation has a centre point, and all measurement and movement and terrain, is dependant only on that centre point. This has many advantages of a grid, without tying you to a grid. the Centre Point gives lots of measuring benefits, as you only care about 1 point to another. The unit is in or out of terrain, it is in or out of LoS. Which to me suggests the big advantage of grids is that it removes a lot of the grey areas of rules, therefore providing clarity and speed.

Irregular Wars ( a great rule set) - interesting as a gridded conversion option. It would certainly fit a fair number of your criteria, with moves (and shooting) from 1 to 6 BW. Though the bases are quite small, so I'm not sure I'd want to have a grid that small? Flanks are very important in the rules, but I think that you can claim flanks by just having enough move to get there, but its only the second attacker that gets a flank bonus.  You've made me think about these as a ruleset for grids.

I actually wonder if Black Powder would work well on a grid? I'd still rather play FKaP for horse and musket!

[Fenton]

I do like  gridded games. Someone has converted Fistful of Tows to hexes which seems to work well and I remember  a few years back did a conversion  of DBM  to hexes  which they said improved it

[Norm]

I actually wonder if Black Powder would work well on a grid? I'd still rather play FKaP for horse and musket!

I like grids and you  can get a lot of things to convert to them, but they work best on system that are designed from the ground up. Black Powder is a good example, Hail Caesar is a stable mate of BP, yet HC makes an easier conversion than BP.

Problems with BP for conversion. The lowest common denominator in the game is 6" This is the shortest range weapon, with the main weapons of smoothbore and rifled muskets being multiples of that and it is also. The shortest movement, with other moves also being multiples of 6. Obstacles cost 6" of movement and brigade movement orders relies on the 6" measurement. So a basic conversion of 1 hex = 6 inches seems perfect ........ but,

A unit is typical 240mm wide (6 x 40mm bases), if we call this an ACW regiment, then that is equalling around 200 yards of frontage and so really a smoothbore musket should be firing at less than that (in fact in BP it doesn't, but that doesn't matter. It fires 18", which is three hexes, but as one unit is fitting per hex, we need to define the hex as being 200 yards wide, so now we are thinking of a hex as being 200 yds wide for a real worlkd conversion and also 6" for a game conversion, which in effect means that 6" = 200 yards, which it clearly doesn't, since that would mean that a smoothbore musket is firing 600 yards. Etc

and so it is, than when considering conversion, one has to be a bit looser and avoid strict interpretation.

I have some home grown ACW hex rules. 1 hex hold the regiment, smoothbore fires 1 hex and rifled musket fires 2 hexes, but this is just to get a proportionate feel and is not representing scales as such.

You could try and make a hex = 12" so that a small table becomes much bigger than the mythical 12' x 6' table quoted in the rules, but 12 inches don't work because cavalry move at 18" and smoothbore fires at 18" :-)

[steve_holmes_11]

I appreciate the feedback - thank you all.

One potential issue came to mind during the day.
It's been a long one and hard on the little grey cells, so bear with me.
Let me know if this makes no sense.

Something about shooting distance requires a tweak...

Imagine you've gone for one shape (square or hex) represents 6" of table.
You've some short ranged weapon: Pistol / Javelin / Grenade whose range is 6" according to the rules.
There's now a question of how do we count range and what counts as enemy troops in contact.

Blundering into this I assumed that I could only use my short range weapon against an adjacent foe.
But I also thought that 2 elements facing each other across a shape boundary would count as in melee combat (So can't shoot under most rules).

How do we fix this?
1. You're lucky enough to have rules that consider pistols, grenades, pila as part of close combat.
       No problem.

2. Add 1 to the range so the short range weapon can hit when forces are one space apart.
       OK if each shape represents a few yards, not OK if a shape represents 800 yards (If so, why are you wasting time with pistols and grenades!!).

3. Require attackers to invade an occupied shape to initiate melee.
       Might work in some systems, but requires your shapes to be considerably larger than  your units.

[fred.]

The grid games I have played use option 3 - get in the same box to melee

If space is short you can move the attackers so they overlap the boundary, rather than right into the box.

[Norm]

An adjacent hex is both adjacent and within 6" range. the next hex out is not adjacent and is within 12" range etc.

You can fire 1 hex i.e. 6" into the adjacent or you can melee 1 hex, i.e. into the adjacent hex.

You just make your choice of how and when to attack and then follow the process for either fire or melee accordingly.

Firing will not hurt the attacker, but it will also not take ground or be so decisive.  Melee might also hurt the attacker, can take ground and can be more decisive.

If the attacker in a melee causes the defending hex to become empty (either by destruction or retreat), the attacker can advance into the empty hex (some systems) or the attacker must advance into the empty hex (other systems).

If an attacker melees with an adjacent hex and loses the melee, it might just simply be able to stay in place (some systems) or it might be forced to retreat 1 or two hexes (like a recoil) (other systems).

[steve_holmes_11]

Thanks both Fred and Norm: I feared I'd explained that so badly that nobody would follow the logic.

It's clear that there are several ways to skin this cat.
Your 2 different responses immediately had me thinking "This would work great for Rules-A, and that would work better for Rules-B".

I've concluded that the interpretation of the grid requires some sensitivity to the features of the rules.
That certainly doesn't break the entire concept, we make similar compromises with troops interacting with terrain under different tabletop rules systems.

[SV52]

Have a look at Kallistra 'Hordes and Heroes' rules, free download from their site at: https://www.kallistra.co.uk/

[Raider4]

Have a look at Kallistra 'Hordes and Heroes' rules, free download from their site at: https://www.kallistra.co.uk/

Ooh, not heard of these (wanders off to have a quick look)

Looks interesting (clicks on download link)

"Please take a moment to login or register to continue."

Ahh, never mind (loses interest)

[steve_holmes_11]

Ooh, not heard of these (wanders off to have a quick look)

Looks interesting (clicks on download link)

"Please take a moment to login or register to continue."

Ahh, never mind (loses interest)

I'm sure there was a time when those rules were public facing with no registration required.

[Fenton]

Ooh, not heard of these (wanders off to have a quick look)

Looks interesting (clicks on download link)

"Please take a moment to login or register to continue."

Ahh, never mind (loses interest)

I still have copies of them on my hard drive. If you PM me your email I'll send them to you

[Raider4]

Ta, PM sent.