As a further insult to Donald Featherstone’s Close Wars appendix rules to his 1962 book War Games, I have scaled these up to 54mm and taken them outside to a bigger outer space and another planet, the far off galaxies or planets of Yarden. How will they work out?
Previously on Man of Tin blog we have featured my hexed up version of these Close Wars rules:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/close-little-wars-featherstones-simplest-rules/
Rainy day? Crowded alien planets work quite well on your tabletop (if forced inside by British wet weather) using different borrowed pieces of your Yarden (Yard / Garden). Fake plastic or real plants, rocks, stones etc create a sense of a cluttered planet / terrain etc.
As a child growing up in the 1970s, life changed around about 1977/78 when Star Wars came out as a rival to Airfix, Weebles, Cowboys, toy cars, Knights, Busybodies Etc.
This is primarily a ground troops / infantry based space game without much in the way of space vehicles or larger laser cannons, otherwise the ranges become toooooo big!
Create your own big laser cannon range and dice hit rules as needed.
Imperial (Earth) measurements and Earth GMT time will be used throughout (with Metric for those as likes)
Weapon Ranges
Space Laser blaster pistol – 12″ or 30cms
Space Laser blaster rifle – 24″ or 60 cms
Space laser bow – 12″ or 30 cms
Space Laser swords – melee weapons only.
Space Laser spears – 6″ or 15 cms
Movement ranges
Natives / Aliens / Savages – 18″ or 45cms
Space Infantry (<4) – 18″ or 45 cms
Space Infantry (groups of 4+) – 12″ or 30cms
Astromech droids 6″ or 15 cms.
Humanoid Robots – 9″ to 12″ 22 to 30cms
Hover Infantry on Space Bikes – 36″ or 90cms
Star Crawler vehicles, lunar buggies – 24″ or 60cms
Usual Melee Rules. Usual hit d6 Dice throws. Featherstone savings throws if you like them.
Add other rules, weapons and characters as you see fit.
Mark up a garden cane with 6″ intervals or use a metal retractable ruler as needed.
Find some knee pads or a garden kneeler if playing outside.
Before you play, some essential research for your Close Little Star Wars:
a) watch movies and TV, from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica to Flash Gordon (Black and white 1930s) or the colour movie 1980, choose your favourite. Flash, ah-ah!
b) find some suitable plastic figures, raid the pound store for suitable plastic figures. Read our previous blog posts and Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog for conversion possibilities.
Track down the very scarce 1981 Airfix Space Warriors, they’re now in the V&A museum of childhood collection as toys of their time http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O41122/space-warriors-space-crews-airfix/
There’s the very odd Britain’s 1980s metal based Star Guards range with vehicles and aliens. There are more recent 54mm Star Wars Command plastic figures that were cheaply available c. £4 a box in branches of Wilko (2016). Some good deals on the eBay / Amazon / internet too!
Pound store fire fighters and their equipment make good space stuff.
Alternatively you could upscale the rules to use old or new 10″ Star Wars play figures (buy bundles of the more battered ones on EBay) but the fiddly weapons tend to get lost in gardens. The Playskool Heroes Star Wars series for younger children have weapons moulded on.
Hopefully H.G. Wells, father of modern science fiction, would approve of this futuristic version of Little Wars.
Let play commence in a galaxy / planet / garden “far far away …” in my next blog post.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/in-a-garden-far-far-away/
Posted by Man of TIN blog, September 2016.
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