Miniatures Rules

In The Shadow of Byzantium

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The Perfect Captain offers “In The Shadow of Byzantium,” a set of free wargames rules for playing a campaing of the conquest of Greece, 1205-1261 AD. Here’s what the Captain has to say:

“In the Shadow of Byzantium” puts you at the head of a principality struggling to survive and overpower your neighbours. Judicious use of slender finances to create armies, alliances and acts treachery is essential to victory. Bind other princes to you with marriage alliances to gain a breathing space to perhaps build fortifications to protect your land. Who dares truly wins in this game of big chances and big payoffs, but the winner of today could easily be the loser tomorrow…..

The game can go up to twenty turns, but thanks to our variable game termination rules, the last turn could be anytime between turns 12 and 20, thus making it virtually impossble for the “gang up on the leader” syndrome to ruin everyones fun. One player is rarely so far ahead that they become the target of other players anyway.

The players to choose from:
The Empire of Constantinople
The Nicean Empire
The Duchy of Athens
The Principality of Achaea
The Despotate of Epiros
The Kingdom of Thessalonika
The Venetians of Crete (Lords of the Archipelago)

In the Shadow of Byzantium can be played with up to seven players. A four player game takes about 2 hours to play. There is very little set up and almost no record keeping (just treasury- big deal!). We had so much fun playing this game first time out we believe it is destined to be one of our most popular products ever. It is a fast paced nail-biter where the victor is in doubt until the last turn. Although there is no miniatures conversion available yet (keep an eye out for an Ironbow supplement, though), it shouldn’t be to hard to convert to whatever miniatures rules you use.

A Terrible Resolve Midway Rules

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Matt Fritz has these free wargames rules for gaming the Battle of Midway. The rules are designed for 1/700 ship and airplanes models but Matt also provides paper counters and airplanes.

Urban Myth Cyberpunk Rules

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Jon Clarke has writtenUrban Myth , a set of free wargames rules set in a kind of a near future cyberpunk setting. What makes these rules stand out is in the basic die mechanism. It uses a d100 system (rolling two ten-sided dice), but you read the dice differently depending upon the difficulty level of the task:

All rolls are on d100 needing to get equal to or less than the Attribute being tested against.
How the dice are read depends on the difficulty of the test. If the action is easier it may be reduced one step or more, if harder increased one step or more.
There are three levels of difficulty for any task:
Easy: roll d100, read the dice the worst way in relation to the task (generally speaking you read the dice to fail, but if they succeed either way place the lowest dice as tens)
Normal: roll d100, identify one dice as tens & one as units before rolling.
Hard: roll d100, read the dice however you like.

Crossfire Hit Chances

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The Small Cuts website has an article on the percentage to hit chances in Arty Conliffe’s Crossfire. Crossfire, as you may know, is one of the more innovative rules sets to come along. It uses no rulers, and has no real turn sequence.

Canvas Eagles WWI Dogfight Rules

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Canvas Eagles is a set of free wargames rules for WWI Dogfights