Herbert Wong written “March to the Sound of the Guns,” a Napoleonic wargame that is a variant of Games Workshop’s Warmaster miniatures rules. Warmaster is a generally good set of rules that borrows heavily from Fire and Fury and some other historical sets. Of course, Games Workshop would never admit that. Heck, they don’t even admit that there is a miniature wargaming hobby outside of the “Games Workshop Hobby.”
Here’s an idea for a miniature wargaming scenario: During WWII, a group of US paratroopers, or British commandos are sent to destroy a V-2 rocket base. Of course, to do this, you’re going to need to add a model of a V-2 rocket to your terrain. This website has a free paper model of a V-2 rocket in 1/32 scale. You could easily rescale it on your computer.
Airland War Rules
Airland War is the successor to Steve Lorenz’ successful, commercially published Panzer War miniatures wargames rules. The rules simulate modern warfare using microarmor miniatures. You can now get Airland War as a free download.
Computerized AWI Rules
Will McNally has this set of free wargames rules for the American War of Independence. What makes these rules different is that they come with free software! Once the orders of battle are set up, the rules are run by a computer through clicking on options with a mouse. The rules run on MS-DOS, but can, of course, be run in a DOS box in Windows 98 or XP. If you’re like me, and have an old MS-DOS laptop sitting around, this could be a perfect use for it.
I’ve always thought that there was great potential for using laptops in miniature wargaming. Even better: someone should write a program for managing tabletop games with a PalmPilot.
Keeping Paint On Plastic Figures
Matt Fritz has an article on how to keep the paint on plastic miniature wargaming figures.