ไม่สามารถเล่นวิดีโอนี้
ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก
Rommel Rule Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- This week, the guys at Little Wars TV review "Rommel," a 2017 set of rules written by Sam Mustafa and published by Honour Games for division-level World War II battles. We score rules based on five categories, then offer a final total score at the end.
To learn more about the game, visit the official homepage of "Rommel" at sammustafa.com/rommel
As always, we encourage you leave any thoughts or feedback about the game in the comments below. Have you played "Rommel" and what did you think? You can see more scores from members of the club and download our rule adjustments for playing bigger battles at our website: www.LittleWarsTV.com
Tom we need a Blucher review then ! ;)
Really enjoyed your 2 part D day videos, any chance of some more WWII battles? Large scale battles split into two vids. Thankyou for a great channel.
Thanks guys, an extremely useful review, and one that reinforced many of my assumptions based on pre-release publicity.
Thanks for the great review guys.
Thanks for the review, and thanks for the scale explanation. I didn't get that from the actual battle report. (Which I loved.) I could have used a short demo on how the command dice are actually generated and used. But overall a thumbs up. Now on to the video about creating the D-Day table please. ;-)
Another great review guys!
I wonder how well it would work (as a house rule) to limit many of the tactics to pieces of terrain. Lay cards face down in key points of the map and have a tactic on that card that the bearer can use in that space appropriate to the terrain.
Finally! I've been waiting for this ever since your first D-Day episode
Sounds/looks like a great rule set.
Perhaps some kind of houserule could be introduced where a limited selection of ops are chosen pregame or shuffled into a deck to limit your choices at any one time.
Some kind of card/hand mechanic would be cool. Start the game with three cards, draw one card per turn. Would introduce some interesting tempo options.
Could you please put all these review videos in their own playlist? I love these videos but they are a pain to find if you don't remember the exact name of the game you're looking for. A playlist would make things so much easier.
Excellent idea, thank you! We will work on putting these in their own Playlist
I do like grid miniature games like To the Strongest, and Square Bashing from Peter Pig. Both of those games do not have the book keeping Rommel appears to have. Which is bit of bummer and probably a deal breaker for me.
Understood. The book-keeping is fairly minimal on the unit side (units can take three hits, so there is not much to track here) but there is PLENTY of book keeping to do on the Ops sheets with spending your dice and tracking them. That's going to put off some people for sure, but that said, I understand why a game at this scale needs a system like that.
Have you guys tried Spearhead rules for ww2? A fantastic set for 6mm micro.
The ops dice look suspiciously similar to the SAGA system. Excellent review, by the way. Little Wars TV is one of the very few channels where I watch basically 100% of the videos and as soon as they come out. Cheers!
The ops system is mechanically very different from how the SAGA system works. Also, you don't need special dice which is a good thing.
I liked your review of the Rommel rules but loved the two part D-Day game you guy did. Taking what you did with the rules we will be adapting it to our 4" modular hex table.
I am not sure what you meant by grand tactics rather than operational as grand tactics is just the Napoleonic term for operational warfare. Jomini in his book "The Art of War" devotes a whole chapter to grand tactics, how it sits between the strategical and the tactical. The next chapter he devotes to operations that are of a mixed nature both sitting in the strategical and the tactical at the same time. The Rommel rules better sits here. It really just depends on what 6 inches is set at. If it is 500 metres then it is very tactical, while if it is set at 10kms then it is in the early strategical. We also need to consider the time period. Such as in a theatre of War there will be a number of operational actions. While today the operational is large than a WW2 theatre or war while back then it is a number of extended battles.
Missing the chrome knobs such as MG34s. This again is another sliding scale. While in the minor tactics/individual action the MG34 is the shiny knob that is very German. At the scale of the Rommel rules how quickly the Germans can seal off a broken line, or the lightening speed that a regiment will counter attack if one of its subunits is dislodged. The fact that if an allied division attacks anything approaching the odds of one to one it will lose. These are the shiny chrome knobs that are very German at this level. Here MG34s and Tiger tanks have become part of the background noise. This is what is my opinion based on what you have shown through your great videos and a quick glance at the rules. Again thanks for your great videos as I have greatly enjoyed each one I have watched.
You mentioned Blucher, I'd love to see you play a game with Blucher and review the rules. I'm a fan - both of little wars TV and Blucher... and am hoping to play some Rommel soon.
Great review. Like your format.
Thanks, Joseph!
You guys should try Look Sarge; No Charts. It is an interesting set of rules.
We will add it to the list, Kevin!
Hey gents. I just discovered these videos and am particularly interested in this game. Do you think you could play it without the grids and just measuring 6 inches for movement? I have no terrain with grids, so wanted to play without having to draw them onto my battle mats.
Bought the rules after watching your Normandy game. What I really didn't need was another set of rules!
I'm wondering if I can recreate the Battle of the Bulge with this ruleset......
You absolutely could if you employ the scale adjustments we used in our game. It's going to be a bigger battle that this one and require more table space, but it's entirely possible to do.
Yes I didn't realise until the end of the video that you had made scale adjustments and that makes perfect sense to me. Any plans on a doing a short video on your table design? @@LittleWarsTV
@@13thLegio Next week we'll have a terrain tutorial about making the bocage, but otherwise we don't have a video in the pipeline for the rest the table design.
I’d love to see Bulge in this ruleset. Siege of Bastogne, St Vith, Peiper, or the whole Operation would be fun!
Have you guys heard anything about Conflict of Heroes Duty Bound?
I prefer 6mm and 15mm to play larger units on a large table space.
Saves money and storage space.
I like 28mm scale too. I just can't afford the same units in the unit numbers as in 6mm scale and 15mm scale.
I am glad you play a lot of 6mm scale and 15mm scale in your table top war games.
Good review. It will save a lot of people buying it when it is not for them...I would rather do this scale as a board game - on a computer probably. But there are folks who like this kind of thing.
If you like grand tactical ww2, should give ‘Rommel’s Battles’ from KISR publications. It was written years ago but fantastic
Might well have to get these; divisional level would be perfect for Operation Martlet 1944 or Rommel crossing the Meuse in 1940
Though militarily "operational" isn't defined by unit size, but by political goals, it is often used as shorthand for battalion to army sized. If each "unit" is representative of a company I would say the percieved level of the player is the brigade or divisional level. Generally a military commander thinks in terms of two levels down. I.e. a battalion commander is thinking about his platoons.
Other than that minor nitpicking, great review.
Blucher review. Ideas if this game would work well as a pacific war adaptation?
Hey guys!
Great Review! Have you heard of the ruleset panzer war? I wish you made a review of it
Not familiar with Panzer War, but we'll try to look into it!
I happen to have a large wool felt table cover already grided in 2 3/4 Hexs. Do you think that would work out OK?
We have not tried playing this game with hexes before in the club, but I have heard of other people attempting this before. Units in Rommel can move diagonally between square grids, so using hexes doesn't seem like it would be an issue.
Thx. Great work you guys do BTW😊
I’ve played this set of rules three times now. It’s a good, interesting set but I don’t really like it because it feels more like a board game than a miniatures war game. Good review though. ;)
That's my whole thing as well. It works for miniatures, but at that level of play, why bother? Save time and energy by printing out maps and counters. With that said, I had a great time playing in this D-Day game and it looked great. This level just tends not to be my cup of tea for wargaming visuals.
@@IronIvanKeith why bother...The look of your D-day game was spectacular. Playing that as opposed to playing Day of Days by MMP or Normandy '44 by GMT is obviously visual. I play miniature games partially for their beauty.
Has anyone in the club considered a "staggered" (like square bricks) grid to facilitate diagonal moves?
(Or, just go whole hog and use hexes.)
do you think a 4" hex grid would work compared to squares?
Hexes are covered in the rules, and there are a bunch of groups who use them instead. The 4" part will just depend on the size of your bases, ideally you'd want 6 bases to fit in the area, plus any underlying terrain.
Why oh why switch support to Facebook. I am not willing to sell my soul to FB just for support for a set of rules.
So the rules are a none starter for me.
The forums were getting hacked, so the move was made to Facebook.
Running forums is a time consuming pain. But yes, finding topics is challenging.
How does this compare to Spearhead or Panzer Korps?
Question and a bit off topic. Will there be an episode on the English Civil War or 30 Years War game in there near future? I'm fascinated with that period of warfare. Matchlocks and pikes. Medieval yet almost modern era.
Nothing in Season 2 I'm afraid, but I will say that we have played some ECW at the club.
@@LittleWarsTV Well, keep it in mind for season 3. Really enjoy the videos. Never played miniatures before, but played some Avalon Hill games back in the day. If there was a group/club in the Gloucester County NJ area, I'd definitely visit them and check it out.
Interesting as I am looking for something to play larger scale games so battles are not one offs. Are their solo options in the rules? Hard to find players in Malaysia. Would be a laugh I’df one day you review the reprints of guys like Charles Grant, Bruce Quarrie and Donald’s Featherstones books which got me into this hobby. I guess they would rank really high on the flavour but not so much on the other aspects.
Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame? One of the training games from the US Naval War College?
I assume you're familiar with the History of Wargaming Project (www.wargaming.co)? They're reprinting many of the older rules and what-not. (Presentation is not going to get really good score, most of the time, though.)
Bruce Quarrie's world war 2 rules got me into wargaming - in fact I wrote a set of rules based on them and sold three copies to a local hobby shop (now since defunct).
do you guys play any 15mm games?
Lots, yes. We play WW2, FIW, Napoleonics, and ACW in 15mm, among other periods. But those are the most common in the club.
I have looked under free stuff, Rommel notes, Rommel revisions and cannot find your changes for the Overlord game. Where is it?
Our Rommel rule revisions are a free PDF offered in the same post as the scenario itself. Both the PDFs can be downloaded there in the Free Stuff page.
@@LittleWarsTV Still unable to find. Receive only "search soes not match..."
Looks interesting, but what are the best places to get models in such a small scale?
You can play Rommel with 15mm or 10mm models without any trouble. We happen to use 6mm here, and all the minis you saw in the D-Day episode were from Heroics and Ros. But guys here in the club also have a lot of GHQ minis.
Baccus have a fantastic range of 6mm and are currently expanding their ww2 range.
2mm (Irregular) and 3mm (Picoarmor in the US, though the manufacturer is Oddzial Osmy in Poland) . 2mm would be more basic whereas 3mm is close to 6mm in the options available, and most of what's missing are variants you can't tell apart at 3mm . 3mm is what I'm looking at for Rommel.
I was wondering could I do a 15mm flames of war scenario on a smaller scale but similar idea
Just play FoW
@@gozza7199 yea ik but it's not really like the same cool mechanics lol
You should only olay FoW in 6mm. In 15mm, the ground to figure scale and ranges are so warped the gane ends up looking ridiculous; i.e. tank parks and such.
Don't change the ranges or rules at all, just use 6mm rather than 15mm, and all is good.
Who makes grid mats?
Cigar Box Mats does some grid mats and they have great customer service. We made our grid mat for this game with pencil on felt and it was very easy to do.
Which scale does rommel use?
The scale of the game is 1 base = 1 company. But if you mean the actual size of the miniatures, it can be played in a number of different scales.
Just wondering if the game is grided what is stopping you from putting a topgraphical map as a play mat? Just find an appropriate scale for
1:100000 scale map or something a divisional commander would use and then use that as a playmat. Just google maps for famous battles.
Nothing. And I've seen people print out satellite Google Earth images on large sheets to play, too!
@@LittleWarsTV I have always wondered how people would set up historically set up scenery on wargame tables. This seems the best way and kind of cool because you have to deal with the historical terrain ie the same problems they had.
What scale
Have you chaps tried Tim Gow's, Megablitz, or Bob Cordery's, Hexblitz? Both are more operational.
Hexblitz no, but I've read the rules for Megablitz a few times over the years and always intended to run a game at the club but still haven't! But the rules look short and sweet for this operational scale.
@@LittleWarsTV to some extent, Hexblitz is Megablitz on hexes.
Could you just drop the tactics?
Or, just have a more limited set of tactics?
We've discussed a more limited set of tactics as one option, but haven't actually gone so far as to try it. Another option we considered (but haven't yet attempted) was simply giving the sides less Ops dice to play with, meaning they would naturally have fewer opportunities to select Tactics.
@@LittleWarsTV limiting tactics (choices) is a good idea. Limiting ops dice is not. The time synch is in having too many choices, so reduce the choices. Reducing ops dice doesn't actual reduce choices, directly, it only means you can exercise fewer of the choices you'll still struggle to make.
Plus, limiting ops dice would make it start to feel more like Mem44, with somewhat capricious limits on tactics. 🤢🤮
Rommel is great to play at this scale, and I would argue the chr9me comes from the map and the minis.
9ne final suggestion...rather than squares, take a look at terrain and topology. Using an area movement system with areas formed by natural terrain and sized to be as close to the same size as possible makes the whole board look more real or natural, retains the advantages of grid movement, and can even be enhanced with small terrain icons to handle such things as LOS, cover or obstructions. The nap in Simmons Game's "Napoleon's Triumph" would be a great model to emulate, IMO.
And by the way, great review, as always!
@@Goodtobetheking00 "area movement system with areas formed by natural terrain" - that's a genius idea! And in northern France so easy to do with lots of fields bound by hedges...
@@nickjones6401 exactly! Normandy, and other parts of Europe, would lend itself to this approach nicely, IMO. Napoleon's Triumph implements in a really great way on its map. Check it out.
@@nickjones6401 also...I think roads should matter, even at this scale, so I would suggest implementing a simple road move rule that provides at least some advantage for using roads between areas. Also well implemented by Napoleon's Triumph, btw.
As for using Facebook instead of a dedicated forum, Battlefront did the same thing, with similar amounts of flak
Yes, it seems like a problem many publishers are facing. Forums are dying a slow death across the entire web as more and more people migrate to Facebook as their social media hub. The big problem with FB is that it's TERRIBLE for archiving information and searching for files (two things you really need to be able to do for wargaming rule support).
Yeah, it hurts those of us that don't do Facebook to the point I won't even consider these rules because of that.
@@LittleWarsTVI think one of the main drivers is that FB is free while hosting services are getting more expensive. I think FB is terrible though. It’s hard to keep track of any threads and even harder to find anything, FB search sucks! It’s all here and now and a relentless stream of pictures of painted miniatures. I like to see that too sometimes, but not so much that it gets in the way of discussion.
Can we buy the rules online?
Yes, the rules are available in book or PDF format directly from the author on his website for Honour Games!
@@LittleWarsTV weird I couldn't seem to find them! Thanks for the reply, gonna be picking up GQ3 cause of y'all! I'm starting a 6 year WWII campaign so it will be fun.
If the tactic mechanics are sloppy and too detailed, couldn't you print off cards of each tactic and deal those at random? Say 2 cards are given to both Axis & Allied commanders and they can only play 1 card per turn. Then, draw a new card to gain a different tactic?
Ok, I know this is a frequently asked question and you have a page on it, but could you work through the math for your review scores?
The individual numbers are 0 to 10, with 5 proportions of 10%, 30%, 30%, 20%, and 10%. 10% of 10 is 1, 30% of 10 is 3, and so on: the final score should be between 0 and 10, but your scores are 0-100. How does that work?
Sure. Let's say, for example, a reviewer scored a system as "average" across the board with a 5 for each category. That final score would be calculated as 5 for Presentation (that's 10% of the total), 5x3=15 for Playability (score here is multiplied by 3 as it represents 30% of the score), 5x3=15 for Mechanics (also 30%), 5x2=10 for Historical Flavor (score x2 as this category is only 20%), and finally a 5 for Support (worth 10%). That's a total value of 50 in this example. Let's say you scored a system as 9 in every single category as a second example. That total weighted score would be (9+27+27+18+9) a 90.
Uh, did Greg just say, "Free copies of the Command Posts to print out and color"?
Available here: sammustafa.com/downloads/
crayons *not* included :)
The scale is Operational, compared to what I have played.
Regarding miniatures, a lot of 15 and 6mm games can be played with flash cards with the unit type written on them. It's really common to see Blucher and Rommel played this way.
Can I get one of those T-Shirts... well winter time.. Hoodie?? lol
Sell me a t-shirt?
While this video is nice; we see yet another WWII rulebook and it's rules review. The bulk of Season 1 rules reviews were WWII. It would be nice to see other historical periods. The second most popular period for wargamers is the Napoleonic period. We've only seen Snappy Nappy, and Black Powder. You guys know that I would LOVE to see a General D'Brigade game and review, but Blucher or Lasalle would be nice. Also how about more popular rules like Flames of War, Bolt Action, Johnny Reb, Fire and Fury, Age of Reason, and Tactica.
Three of the sets you mentioned will be reviewed this season, yes. There are many more systems we play here and intend to get around to reviewing.
Have tried several times to get into this game, but can't. Just isn't fun to me.
YET TO WATCH !!!! After watching the excellent D Day wargame, I am so looking forward to this rules review ( (after I have written this).
Hackers and bots are quickly destroying forums. While I despise the FB and dont use it I understand why small businesses are fleeing to it.
Hey Greg !!! Smoke weed !!!
Desert fox style !!!
Im probably never ever gonna use this because im poor haha...
Go to Baccus, buy a few things of 6mm, or if you really want, go to a 3mm company, buy them. The models are place holders, and as infantry are on strips at that scale, and you really only need one as a place holder (think of the Risk pieces when they started using infantry, cavalry, and cannon to denote the amoung of units). You could get a good sized force easily on the cheap.
I'm really looking for an excuse to buy some 2/3mm miniatures. I figure my painting skills won't be distracting if everything looks like solder beads anyway. Got any game suggestions?
@@mcguirecrsr To be honest, you can play pretty well any game with smaller scale. That said, what are you looking for exactly (eg WWII, SciFi, Anchients, Fantasy...).
@@mcguirecrsr Not 2 or 3mm, but here is an example of a "28mm" game being played in 6mm, hopefully giving you some idea of how easy it can be to just swap scales. But, given a flavour of game I may be able to give some guidance. There are a lot of games I have not given a go, but I have been looking into more and more lately, especially recently at the non 28mm games.
www.google.com/amp/s/rollaone.com/2016/05/16/saga-in-6mm-part-1/amp/
FaceBook sucks!!!! for information transfer and community building. Forums do this job much much much better.
Meh It looks OK but I prefer flames of war
Kory Bradley yes you can't beat FOW for that non historical ww2 feel......and that shoulder to shoulder tank fest that all great tank commanders avoided on the battlefeild😉☺
@@rickybell2190 too each there own, I dont war game for the nuances I play for the fun
Little Wars Josh here. We just played FOW at the club 2 days ago for the first time! We had a lot of fun, but it does have a “non historical “ look to it due to battlefield congestion. The next time we play, we agreed to reduce the number of miniatures used and try that. And look for a FOW video from us in the future.....perhaps.
@@dieseldejavu I didn't mean any offense, Flames of war and a little bit of bolt action is the main games i have played. It depends on how many points you played Most are playing at 100 points
Kory Bradley none taken!! Love your feedback and glad you watch!