Looking for old tabletop war rules - online

[Adrian II]

Tabletop war goes back to Antiquity. Modern versions with miniature tin soldiers and guns go back as far as the nineteenth century and possibly much further.

These days we have a gazilion games with miniatures, cardboard markers and huge rule books like Flames of War - extremely complicated, slow and often tiresome. My kids and me are not going to spend an entire Sunday afternoon discussing whether a gun on a particular piece of cardboard has or hasn't the right to fire at a cardboard company seven hexes removed.

We don't even have the freaking markers. We have toy soldiers.


So I have been looking online for older, more practical rules. A friend pointed me to H.G. Wells' rules for the tabletop and garden wars he played with kids and adult friends, called Little Wars (1913).

So is there anything else out there I could use? Any online rule books or sets used for private or maybe even genuine military war games?

P.S.
And while we're at it, does anyone have simple instructions to make the spring breechloader gun Wells talk about?

It seems they are banned from toy shops these days. Of course they would be, like everything fast, pointy, risky or otherwise useful in a boy's life.

[frogbeastegg]

I think you have more chance of an answer in the front room so I'm sending the topic over. I'll leave a re-direct here too.

[InsaneApache]

Not strictley tabletop wargaming but when I was a nipper we use to hide toy soldiers behind castle walls made of lego whilst the attackers hid behind tanks and armoured cars. We used to kill the soldiers using spring loaded canons firing pot rivets, the end of which was covered in solder.* The one with the soldiers left standing won.

Not sure if you can get the spring loaded cannons anymore (prolly banned!) but fantastic fun for the kids.

*You can even make molds out of wood.

[Megas Methuselah]

I absolutely adore RISK.

[HopAlongBunny]

Just Google: miniature rules *period...ex.napoleonic*

Wish I still had some of my stuff; the rules we used were an amalgam of 3 different rule sets, all changes playtested for balance and run through a statistical analysis; "sigh" those were the days...

[Banquo's Ghost]

I've used the rules of the Society of Ancients for more years than I can count. They have a set of links here which might yield some free rulesets - or you can buy the SoA rulesets for a pittance.

Amusingly, we used these rules at Sandhurst (in a semi-official way - and remember, this was way back when a gentleman bought his commission )

[Adrian II]

Thanks for all the suggestions. My boys wil definitely have a 'those were the days' memory with all the rules I found and the other stuff that's out there, plus a couple of outrageously expensive purchases we envisage - we just have to have those 15mm grenadiers, you see, so I'm mortgaging the house. We are still negotiating with the missus what carpet we are gointg to cut up to build the landscape.

I found some Edwardian toy soldier rules that promise at first sight to be excellent for both simplicity and depth. The Wells rules are good to falll back on, but there is much, much more.

For those interested here are some sites that (besides the one mentioned by our esteemed Sandhurst alumnus) deliver goodies:

Historical Miniatures Wargaming Resource Site
Old Trousers

Pretty soon we want to to be set up more or less like this:

[Captain Fishpants]

You might find http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/ worth a click.

The site does exactly what the name suggests. Lots of periods, lots of rules. All free.