Squad Hammer

I was idly surfing the 'net last night, and I got seduced by another set of Nordic Weasel rules - Squad Hammer. These have been around for a while, but I haven't heard of them before (partially because there don't seem to be too many game reports around).

Anyway I downloaded them and skimmed them last night, and this evening I gave them a try.

They have no specific setting, but are really designed for 'shooting' settings and more specifically post 19th century ones. Including sci-fi. Indeed I think the rules were very much designed with sci-fi settings in mind. Units are essentially squads of 6-8 figures or individual vehicles or larger creatures, with each player having 4-6 units (maybe more if they are the attacker in an attack/defence game).

The rules are very much a toolkit, with no clearly defined troop stats, but lots of information on how to prepare such things. This may not be to everyone's tastes; even the combat factors are pretty much Do What Seems Appropriate, but it seems to work. It's not designed as a tournament-tight game, but as a means of getting a handful of figures onto the table quickly and in an entertaining manner.

On their turn a player activates a number of units in their force, and an activated unit can move (and attack), redeploy (which is a faster move away from the enemy), withdraw (which is a move that allows the rallying off of a hit) or redeploy (which simply allows the removal of up to three hits). Combat is a roll to hit on 2D6, followed by a damage roll, which will either be 1D3, 1D6 or best of 2D6. Units are lost if they take more than six hits.

I got out my Epic 40K elements and ran each one as a squad. I put together a force of Orks and one of Space Marines, diving gleefully into unit design as I did so. I then ran through the mission generation system, and got this terrain and setup:

The brown counters are objective points. Two units on each side were also counted as objectives.

The dice show hits. The Orks took lots of hits.

Get close and your shooting becomes an assault, which is more effective. The Orks also had assault bonuses.

These Orks were cut down in a firefight with two squads of Marines

These Marines were destroyed by a fearsome Ork charge.

Mostly, though, Orks died to gunfire.

More close assault.

Basically the well-armoured Marines used shooting to take out the Orks before the Orks could close and use their close-combat bonuses, which weren't that great anyway. Or, put another way, my unit designs were overly complicated and basically a bit bollocks.

So I was a bit disappointed with my first game. Not the fault of the game, but the way I went about using it.

Later on, though, I had another go. This time I just simply played the game as basic as possible. I used the mission setup, but used no special rules on the squads; I just ran Orks and Marines as the same, just to get a feel for the flow of the game. So I gave each side four normal squads, and a leader with bodyguard. The latter got a combat bonus and, when activated, could rally a hit of a nearby unit.

With simpler forces the game rattled along at a cracking pace, and was a lot of fun, thus reminding me that, sometimes, less is more. I can start adding extras as I go along, but maybe use them more like seasoning rather than chucking a whole load of things in one go.