World War 2 toy soldiering with Xenos Rampant

With a comparison to Hammer of Democracy

As discussed in my first impressions post about Xenos Rampant, I could easily see the rule set being used for historicals, and once I checked in on a couple of Facebook groups operating for the game it became clear that people were very much using it for that purpose. I'd already had a go with the rules as such using my First World War collection, but thought I would have another go with my Second World War stuff to see how it played, bearing in mind what I'd learned from my previous test games. As such I put together a not entirely historically accurate North Africa engagement between a reasonably typical on-paper British platoon of the era against a slightly under-strength German platoon. These are the lists I came up with:

British

-3 Light infantry with increased squad size (rifle elements of the British sections)

-3 Heavy infantry (Bren gun elements of the sections)

-1 Unarmed light infantry with Delta-class psychic with concealment (2" mortar with smoke rounds)

-1 Recon infantry with sniper

-1 Green unarmed recon infantry with fire support, commander (Officer and his staff)

I'm not sure if it's actually rules legal for unarmed units to use fire support, but the rules do say that "it's not the unit itself that is doing the firing" and it doesn't use the unit's actual shooting value, so I figured it was okay. Here's the other platoon.

German

-3 Light infantry with increased squad size (rifle teams of the German squads)

-3 Slow support infantry (MG-34 teams of the squads)

-1 Slow green unarmed recon infantry with fire support, commander (Officer and his staff)

I had to take "Slow" with the German units to get points back. In the comparison, I figured that the minimum-size heavy infantry choice reflected the reliable but lighter Bren gun, while the support infantry choice reflected the notoriously high rate of fire of the MG-34 and MG-42. That being said, the intention was purely to reflect fire-and-manoeuvre squad/section elements as accurately as possible. If you were taking these on the basis of the whole squad/section operating together, it might become a bit simpler: British are light infantry, perhaps with heavy weapon, a regular German squad might be the same, and a unit like motorized infantry or Panzergrenadiers are probably heavy infantry with similar upgrades. If you really want to distinguish Allied MGs and automatic weapons from their German counterparts, however, it might get a bit abstract. I might have even been better off representing the Bren guns as Recon infantry with Sniper, although given their poor shoot value they would need a Commander nearby to be effective.

Regardless, in the test, as I expected from the First World War game I'd played previously, "smoke" (psychic powers in disguise, in this case) and artillery were a major contribution without any armour in the field. The support infantry choice, with its long range and high accuracy, is statistically highly likely to cause damage on any unit of heavy infantry class or below at any distance, even if in cover, and denying them their most obvious target with Concealment as they wait for the "smoke" to clear, or softening them up with Fire Support, was relatively effective at counteracting this. Giving the Commander the Fire Support ability was very useful for increasing the activation roll from an 8+ to a 7+. Further, it's worth remembering that light, heavy and primitive infantry units can Go to Ground as another way of gaining an additional point of armour against shooting. Purely focusing a lot of fire on dug-in enemy units is another way of counteracting them, as any hit regardless of damage necessitates a courage check. If a player can force a specific target to take multiple courage checks in a turn there is always the chance that they will fail and spend a turn suppressed, buying valuable time to advance.

In the end it was a relatively tame experience of Scenario Alpha, however, with the Germans losing one support infantry and one light infantry, to the loss (if I recall correctly) of a single heavy infantry unit by the British. It did work, but how effectively did it represent what I perceive as the combat of the era? I think the game gets a bit fuzzy around how to represent heavier weapons, especially since the game requires "increased squad size" upgrades to improve light and heavy infantry's shoot value to 5+. The support infantry choice is very good, albeit low-armoured and not too resilient. Perhaps the oddest thing was running the mortar team as a Psychic, which worked even if the wording sounds a bit strange. Regardless, this confirmed what I speculated upon in my initial post on the subject, namely that I can easily see this rule set being used for 20th and 21st century historical games, particularly with a bit of house ruling to tweak some unit stats a bit. But out of the box, as it were, it still works reasonably well, and there are optional "National Characteristics" in the "Weird War" section of the book to add further flavour if desired; I note that on one of the Facebook groups Richard Cowen suggested to simply remove the "weird" part. Someone, or multiple people, I'm sure, will come up with house rules for smoke, different kinds of machine guns, and different classes of armour. Others will crave the official sanction of a specific publication to do this. Whatever happens, it'll be interesting to see.

An addendum to this is that after my "Xenos Rampant" test of this battle, I replayed the exact same scenario with the exact same deployment using Ivan Sorensen/Nordic Weasel Games' Hammer of Democracy rules, my preferred World War Two rule set. It'd been a while since I'd tested those rules out and I was reminded once again of how fast and straightforward they are, with very easy-to-follow rules for things like smoke, return fire, artillery support and different types of weapons. Interestingly the result was quite similar, although the Germans were able to be a bit more mobile; you can move and shoot as a single action in Squad Hammer games. Units can be destroyed very easily by focused fire, but if they survive they can also regroup and recover. As a dedicated Second World War rule set I still, as I expected, preferred it, but it feels more like a streamlined version of Plastic Soldier Company's Battlegroup; if you plug in Officers, as I do, from Squad Hammer Man-to-Man, you get a bit of TooFatLardies Chain of Command in there too. All three I recommend above Warlord Games' Bolt Action, but if you want a fast, fun game without a lot of rulebook consultation I can't recommend Hammer of Democracy enough. Xenos Rampant isn't a dedicated historical rule set and isn't meant to be, but it'll do the job. If you want something equally simple, if not moreso, with dedicated period flavour, I definitely suggest giving Hammer of Democracy a try.

"Rebels and Patriots" for Napoleonics

While Napoleonics have always been the ur-toy soldier setting, they're traditionally associated with huge stands of lead figures being pushed around massive tables according to the dictates of encyclopedic rulebooks, and elaborate, hard-to-paint uniforms. But the increasing trend, as I understand it, in the toy soldier world is towards smaller games with more accessible mechanics, and Napoleonics haven't escaped this treatment. The imagery of the colourful uniforms, the rippling report of musketry, moustachioed cavalrymen waving sabers about, and thunderous cannonfire, regardless of how horrific the reality of it was for the poor unfortunates of the early nineteenth century, have a broad appeal, to myself included. As such, a long-term project of mine has been assembling and painting up 28mm Napoleonics, and to find a game that suited.

For a lot of people, that's Warlord Games' Black Powder. But having gone off Bolt Action when I realised that it wasn't terribly realistic, and seeing that it needs, as I understand it, quite large units, I've never played Black Power and don't know how it works. Online, certainly, the dominant rule set for Napoleonic warfare, and horse-and-musket tabletop gaming more generally, is TooFatLardies Sharp Practice, a set of "large skirmish" rules driven by leader activation. I like TooFatLardies rules in principle; I appreciate their devotion to giving a sense of period accuracy in games such as Sharp Practice and Chain of Command, and their adherence to the Clausewitzian principle of military friction. But as is often said online, their games have a so-called "steep learning curve", where a lot of their games' mechanics involve things like when to activate command abilities that enhance your troops, when to save them up, and small details that are often, I hate to say it, scattered across their rulebooks rather than being concentrated in the most logical places, at least to me. Combine that with an occasional tendency towards loose verbiage and I find Sharp Practice a bit more detailed than I really need, at least without the opportunity to learn it better and, regardless, a lack of any opponent at my club to play it against.

Another is Muskets and Tomahawks, probably the most significant rival to Sharp Practice, which has its own plethora of advocates and critics. I still find with this game, having only read the rulebook and with my first actual game forthcoming, that there's a lot to remember. And what I want most of all is to get the figures on the table, to start moving them around, and to roll some dice.

Enter Rebels and Patriots. I know this system, one of the many derivations of Dan Mersey's original Lion Rampant rules, has its detractors. It's seen as too simplistic, not detailed enough in its replication of the actual warfare of the period, and not good enough at differentiating troops with different technologies in different eras: a common complaint I see online is that it's not good enough at distinguishing breech-loaders from muzzle-loaders in the American Civil War and so on. Fortunately I don't play American Civil War, have no interest in the period and so couldn't care less if the rules don't represent the technology the way people think they should, but I understand the annoyance. Then again, there are arguably upgrades (or downgrades) to represent that.

Regardless, Rebels and Patriots presents itself as being a set of rules for (North) American conflicts in the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning with the French and Indian War, arguably just a theater of the Seven Years' War, and ending with the American Civil War and Napoleon III's disastrous adventure in Mexico. Supposedly this was to avoid overlap with another Osprey wargame for small-scale Napoleonics, Chosen Men, which I don't know if anyone is still playing. Regardless, despite its insistence that it's a set of rules for American wargaming, Rebels and Patriots is very clearly just as usable for Napoleonic wargaming, and that's how I've been using it.

Rebels and Patriots has all the troop types you'd expect from any horse and musket era game: line infantry, light infantry, "shock infantry" (grenadiers, highlanders and the like), skirmishers, artillery, light cavalry (light dragoons, Civil War guys in big hats dual wielding revolvers from horseback, etc.), and "shock cavalry" (dragoons, cuirassiers, aggressively-deployed hussars, and so on). It also, of course, has "natives" to represent the indigenous inhabitants of North America during the period in question. However, with these troop types available it's perfectly useable for small Napoleonic battles. Here are a couple of lists I put together for a Peninsular War type game:

British

3 Line infantry (including leader)

1 Light infantry

1 Skirmishers who are sharpshooters (95th Riflemen)

French

3 Line infantry (including leader)

2 Veteran Skirmishers (Voltigeurs)

1 Shock infantry (Grenadiers)

The actions available to most units in Rebels and Patriots are what you'd expect: Move, Attack, Fire. Some units can Form Close Order to improve their attacking and firing, others can Skirmish to fire on the move. All activations are achieved on a 6+, unlike other Rampant games, but veterans, shock infantry and units within 12" of the leader all get +1 bonuses to activation, meaning that units that run off on their own are less likely to pass their activation tests than those that stay close to home, and also more likely to become disordered after taking fire or fighting up close, which seems fitting from my understanding of the period. Further, the "Form Close Order" action is an effective way of representing both a firing line and an assault column with a single rule; perhaps one thing that's missed is the ability for infantry to form a square. Another common criticism is that shooting is too powerful, which is a recurring critique of all the Rampant games, but this emphasises the importance, as was true at the time, of skirmish screens to shield infantry units from fire as they advanced. For earlier periods with cruder firearms you can always give everyone the "Poor Shooters" downgrade if your interpretation of the era is that shooting was less effective. One thing to note in this game is that charge distance is equal to the activation roll, so even a success won't guarantee an effective charge; charging at distances greater than 6" is fraught with risk. But, then, this still seems to fit the era, as Grenadiers advancing on formed Line Infantry may well find themselves in the position that the Imperial Guard did at Waterloo.

No rule set will please all comers for any historical period; the Napoleonic era is no exception. These rules are also critiqued in some quarters for, say, not making loading an action, or not having a test to see if units stand to when they're charged, but arguably all of that is incorporated into the abstraction of the game. If you want a fast, fun way of getting guys in shakos with muskets onto the table in reasonably small numbers I think you could do a lot worse than Rebels and Patriots. No, it's not going to give you the simulation-level experience of Sharp Practice. But that's not the point. The point is you can read the rules fairly quickly and have a game reasonably quickly, even if it is a bit of a "Hollywood history". If you need to house rule to suit your view of the era, that's okay. But it gave me a way to use my Napoleonic collection when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the other options, and I think that's a good thing. I think if people are interested in starting Napoleonics, or historical wargaming more generally, the Rampant games are a better entry point than the commonly-cited alternatives.

"Xenos Rampant" First Impressions Review

As I mentioned in my opening post, I generally like the various iterations of Dan Mersey's Rampant rules. When Richard Cowen's modified science-fiction version was revealed to be being elevated to the status of an official publication, with involvement from Mersey himself, I was certainly interested, and when my local stockist got hard copies in I promptly ran online and bought a much cheaper PDF version instead.

The Rampant rules have become a bit of an oddity because they now use the same fundamental rule set to cover every period and setting imaginable, something very few rule sets do; One Hour Wargames and FUBAR are the only other ones I can think that do something similar off the top of my head. Eyebrows might have been raised when the medieval system of Lion Rampant was extended to the Pike and Shot era, colonial warfare and horse and musket combat, but now it's gone sci-fi. This is very far removed from the "knights beat archers who beat spearmen who beat knights" meta (if you'll pardon the overused tabletop gaming expression) of the system's original leonine days. For one thing, the usual units of 6 or 12 figures rolling 6 or 12 dice has been reduced slightly to 5 and 10, with the occasional 15. This is presumably a sop to Games Workshop collectors and that company's tendency to release most sets with model numbers in factors of five. Another thing to note is that Xenos Rampant, unsurprisingly, goes a bit beyond what's in the other Rampant and Rampant-adjacent rule sets, covering as they do mostly pre-modern warfare. This manifests in Xenos Rampant in a couple of noteworthy ways:

-Rules for armoured, unarmoured and transport vehicles.

-Firefights: once per turn, when a player's unit is chosen as a shooting target, the player can try to shoot back on a 7+ activation test.

-Extreme range: units with shooting ranges over 12" can fire at targets past their maximum range, but the target benefits from +1 Armour.

-Fire Support: units can be upgraded to call in off-map fire support (e.g. artillery strikes) which roll 10/5 dice hitting on a 4+ and ignoring range. This is useful for targeting emplaced weapons.

-Units test for courage every time they're hit by a shooting attack, regardless of whether they take any casualties, so it can be worth trying to shoot an enemy, even if the odds of causing damage are very low, just to try to suppress them.

These elements make the game perfectly usable for twentieth century historical games without any sci-fi or fantasy elements, especially for settings like the First World War or asymmetrical modern encounters. In fact, playing the game within a First World War framework felt an awful lot like playing the "Foch" World War One fan modification for Mersey's The Men Who Would Be Kings. Second World War gamers, especially those devoted to World War II tank stats, may find the armoured vehicle rules a bit limited for that purpose, but the game isn't intended as that accurate a simulation. That being said, the "Light Armoured Vehicle" and "Anti-Personnel Specialism" downgrades allow a bit of relativism in vehicle strength if you need to be absolutely sure that Tigers outmatch Shermans etc.

I played three test games of Xenos Rampant, using the following settings:

-Star Wars, using Star Wars Legion miniatures, with various infantry and a couple of attack-oriented psychics

-pure historical First World War (Great War Miniatures' Germans vs Scarab Miniatures' French)

-anachronistic dieselpunk Victoriana using the defunct Spartan Games Dystopian Legions models: heavy infantry, some berserker infantry, and jetpacks

Overall, the Star Wars game gave the most fun experience, with Luke and Vader as psychic elite infantry with lots of upgrades to their close combat capability. Stormtroopers were short-ranged light infantry (they're bad shots and their armour is useless, so running them as heavy infantry makes no sense to me) and it all seemed to work reasonably well. The "historical" game and the Victorian sci-fi game felt a bit dry. In the former, appropriately enough, long-range firepower dominated the battlefield and the outgunned German side was sorely in need of an artillery strike I hadn't bought for them. In the latter, units dug in behind cover and the game abruptly ended right when the Prussian jetpack lancers had finally gotten stuck in to their British opponents. I think the game is probably more fun, and offers more tactical opportunities, when both sides have a mix of different unit types rather than just lots of light and heavy infantry. The units have plenty of options for customisation, both in their own profiles and in additional "Xenos Rules", so this certainly seems like the intention. For a simple historical fire-and-manoeuvre game I think I still opt for Nordic Weasel's Squad Hammer systems, and this isn't going to displace anything like TooFatLardies' Chain of Command for those who want a more granular simulation.

One other thing to mention in this first impressions review is Commander Traits. Lion Rampant Second Edition made commander traits something you could take as an upgrade or downgrade, with the option still existing for random traits. For some reason Xenos Rampant goes back to random traits only, a rule I'm sure many if not most players will simply ignore since there's a 50/50 chance you'll get one that's either negative or useless, while your opponent may get one of great benefit. This should have been a points costed system like in Lion Rampant 2.

To summarise, Xenos Rampant seems like a system with a lot of potential, and one that will sit nicely among other highly customisable rule sets like, as I've mentioned, Squad Hammer and One Page Rules' Grimdark Future. I can absolutely see it as providing a regular alternative way for people to use licensed products like the Star Wars Legion miniatures without using their official rules, and I have no doubt people will be using it (and modding it) for historical games as well. It only makes me wonder, with all this flexibility and customisation for the sci-fi setting, whether, despite official protestations to the contrary, a similar revision to Dragon Rampant is on the agenda for fantasy.

Oh and one other other thing: the title. "Xenos Rampant" sounds, appropriately enough, like someone's mod they made up so that they could play with their Warhammer 40,000 figures in the Rampant system. The official release should have been called something else. I dunno what, but it should have been. Yes, "Xenos" could arguably mean any extraterrestrial life, but its overuse in Games Workshop fluff just makes the whole game sound like a 40K knockoff.

Followup: I played another test game trying out a bunch of different units using Mantic Games' Warpath/Firefight/Deadzone/Star Saga figures. One side was Plague: Greater Xenomorph, Lesser Xenomorph, Berserker Infantry, Light Infantry, using the "Hive Mind" ability to represent their collective conscious. The other side was Forge Fathers, i.e. Space Dwarves: Elite Infantry, Heavy Infantry and a Fighting Vehicle. This again was fast and fun, with the Plague units racing across the field to tear into the Dwarves, while the tank (when it managed to activate) chewed through the lightly-armed Plague Troopers. In the end it was the Dwarf Lord Elite Infantry that carried the day, killing off all of the Xenomorphs while the tank and a surviving heavy infantry squad mowed down the rest. This seemed to support my hypothesis that the game worked better with a larger variety of units.