rules

Two Page Skirmish are a set of free wargames rules for skirmishes in a variety of periods. They look interesting to me because of two features that the author outlines:

The rules have two unusual features.

The first is the use of the action card. You’ll need an action card for each figure in the game. This is a simple, square piece of card; mine are 2 by 2 inches. The possible actions that a character can perform are on the card. At the start of each turn, players rotate the cards to show which action the figure is performing. You could just as effectively have a roster sheet and write the actions on it, or place chits on the table, but I really like the cards because they don’t clutter the table and they’re easy and fun to use. If you put an ID notation in the center of each card, players won’t get confused about which card goes with which figure. I have also experimented with using only one card per squad, on the idea that the card represents the leader’s order and everyone acts in unison on that order. It works OK for the British, less well for the natives. But these rules are flexible enough to accommodate a lot of that sort of modification.

The second unusual feature is the way close, hand-to-hand fighting works. In most games, figures are paired off one-on-one as much as possible and then they only fight each other, no matter how many other figures are battling around them. I wanted to create the feeling of a real, chaotic, swirling melee, where the unlucky get ganged up on and the unwary get speared in the back. So each figure rolls its die and compares it to every enemy figure within striking distance. Get a bad roll and you could be stabbed from two, three, or more directions at once. Get a good roll and you could cut down two or three enemies at once.