It’s so sad that the Battlfield series has to be taken behind the barn due to contracting a lethal case of CoDitis. But we can remember the good times before the CQC expack by playing The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare, a Brent Spivey game that owes as much to DICE as to dice.
The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare is most obviously inspired by the Battlefield series, but it also has a lot of World in Conflict in the mix. You choose the loadout to customize your forces, control a limited amount of troops on the field and respawning units that best suit your battlefield needs. Your pool of CAP (action points) can spent however you like, but the price increases every time you spend them on a unit that already acted. This way, you prevent the Infinity issue of Ramboing with a supercombatant! You can only spawn and respawn infantry – any vehicles must be mounted on the field. The troops come in Battlefield-esque classes: Assault, Engineer, Anti-Tank, and so on. However, not all of them are available all the time: Loadout determines not only benefits like red-dot sights or artillery, but also whether you gain access to medics, command squads and so on. The game runs on a fairly simple D6 pools, 4+ for success system. As Mr. Spivey is a consummate professional, you only ever add or subtract dice from the pool, never modifying the target number, and only rarely do 1s and 6s matter. This makes the game very fast to run. The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare features other streamlined systems as well. Instead of bothering with long terrain rules, both buildings and significant terrain are treated like garrisonable Command and Conquer buildings. Touch them and you’re in! Vehicle rules are also some of the simplest we’ve seen thus far and mostly concerned with transport capacity.The missions in the game are modeled after video game modes, and each one provides additional, optional modifiers. Spivey’s crew seems to have enjoyed the Conquest mode the most, as it mimics, to an extent, Battlefield gameplay. The game is also heavily pro-multiplayer (3+) play, though we think that limiting players to one unit per (vs. 2-player unit count of 4 per) may be a little too harsh. On the other hand, who has nine friends to play with?If there’s real criticism to level at The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare, it’s my usual one: editing. The book feels messy and it would be a lot better with a more rigorous approach. Can helicopters capture objectives while flying? We just don’t know!Summa summarum, The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare is the easiest way to put down the minis you bought for moderns on the table. If you have a bunch of friends who’d play with you, great. If there’s an odd friend leftover, even better: they can play zombies, terrorists or mercs as the neutral faction!
2 thoughts on “The Battlefield: Miniature Modern Warfare | Fortified Niche playtest!”
I don’t know how social media works, but I listen to your podcast via spotify. Is BLKOUT (https://www.blkoutgame.com) on your radar?
Digital rules are free and there is a TTS mod. Just picked up the 2p Starter set myself.
I don’t know how social media works, but I listen to your podcast via spotify. Is BLKOUT (https://www.blkoutgame.com) on your radar?
Digital rules are free and there is a TTS mod. Just picked up the 2p Starter set myself.
We were looking into it, but ran into some issues which lead us to drop the idea.