He's a big inspiration for me, and he likes these rules. The one person I know who has used these rules a lot is Just Jack, author of the BlackHawkHet blog. So how is a player ever supposed to complete their objectives, other than getting in close and hoping for the best? But he put very little effort into the one way he made death very likely. I think it's the biggest problem of NEiS, because Ivan worked really hard to make everything else so realistic that enemies are super hard to kill. I've seen other systems do this far better, like Two Hour Wargames. And it becomes this very unrealistic process of attacking and retreating that doesn't seem to reflect how close combat happens in real life. So I just had to make up my own way of doing it.Įven worse, if a figure loses in hand-to-hand combat but survives, they retreat 3". I love Ivan, but he gave very little thought toward what would happen once you finally get close enough to actually make a kill.Īlso, there's no indication in the rules for what happens in a 2-on-1 fight, which I had happen a lot. So you finally get your squad close enough to make contact, and then it's just a dice game. For one thing, it's just about the only way to kill an enemy unless you get some really lucky rolls. My biggest annoyance with NEiS is with its approach to hand-to-hand combat. I like all those and will be keeping as much of the flavour of NEiS like that in preference to "just adding every game system in existence I like". I will be trying it at some point and have played a couple of games of FoF and of course have collected small bags of multi sided dice! I don't have it in front of me but I know FoF doesn't get into the same level of detail as NEiS wrt troop qualifications, such as troop type, experience, motivation and fanaticism. So much of the basic game would have to be adjusted to allow for this but I do like the feel. Despite specifying troops of this quality would be individuals in a force of special forces I have seen scenarios specifying an entire force of green well trained but never under fire troops would all be D12. Finally a super elite INDIVIDUAL of which there may be only one or two on a platoon to company size force would roll a D12 giving them an eight in twelve chance (2 in 3) chance. An elite soldier, part of special forces would roll a D10 giving them a 60% success rate.
An average quality trooper in a larger standing army with reasonable training would roll a D8 so would have a fifty fifty chance of success.
A poor quality troop would roll D6 meaning they would have a 2 in 6 chance of success. For those not familiar with FoF every action and defense has a fixed success roll, say 5+ is needed for success. So for a start one thing which intrigues me is the variable die "size" used in Force on Force and whether it might be incorporated. Frankly if this gets no feedback of note I may mover this to the "official" Nordic Weasel forum. I know Josta is looking to pursue his Awe Frik rules but I am hoping he would be willing to chime in here from time to time. That is what I am looking for thoughts on "doing it this way not that" and "it was handled so much better by XXX". I still need more time on the system before I feel what I might want to change and whether I want to go into it here will be based on feedback.
So is there any interest, other than Josta and me, for a thread with our own ideas of changes or additions to these rules? I have a few other games from which I will happily steal and modify to suit NEiS's systems.
I have a beta copy of his Hammer series which I have quickly perused and have his Fivecore company command, which covers the game scale I most like but doesn't scratch my particular itch. He has other newer irons in the fire so he will gladly answer questions and engage in discussions in the support forums on TWW but will not develop it further.
As stated in another thread NEiS is not going forward according to the author.