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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by Quinn S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/13/2022 17:08:12

This is currently my favorite set of platoon-scale wargaming rules. It is based on a World War II system, so there is a great realistic feeling to how battles play out. The focus is on careful maneuvering and firefights instead of just throwing blobs of units at each other. It includes three broad archetypes for armies: low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech. Low tech armies are anything from World War II to modern armies. Mid-tech is where more sci-fi elements like walkers and power armor enter the stage. High-tech armies are equipped with the full spectrum of power armor, lasers, giant robots, and psychic generals.

The sci-fi elements definitely lean more towards hard sci-fi than science fantasy by default. There are psychic powers but they are much more limited than you would find in Warhammer 40k, and melee combat is secondary to firefights. The rules also heavily focus on humanoid forces, though there is an expansion book that gives aliens some love.

The main gameplay mechanics are pretty straightforward. Each turn both players nominate a unit they want to activate then roll a die plus that unit's leadership. Whoever wins activates the unit. This process is repeated until every unit has been activated. Once activated, units have a variety of actions they can take, such as moving, hiding, taking cover, going into melee, overwatch, etc. Each player also has a pool of command points they can spend each turn to activate special abilities or influence dice rolls. Morale is handled through a suppression system, where units become less effective as they sustain fire. Light firefights don't suppress too much but a unit under intense fire will need backup to survive. Fights are generally won through effective exploitation of suppression as much as inflicting casulties, which I really like. Most units don't have very many special rules to keep track of.

Units supporting each other is key and makes for a lot of strategic decisions to make. Vehicles need infantry to help them spot threats, infantry need support elements like snipers and machine gunners to help them close the gap, and off-site elements such as artillery and airstrikes can salvage overwhelming odds. I think the game's World War II DNA really helps here, even if you're working with power-armored psychics the battles still have a really grounded feel.

The only quibbles I have with the game are some minor ambiguities in some of the phrasing. For example, some units have weapon options that cost less points than their default loadout but it's unclear if you're meant to subtract the difference or not. Overall I highly recommend these rules.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: Future Combat
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Victory Decision: World War II
by Francisco E. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/27/2017 10:24:31

This is a great game, it combines many elements from other platoon level skirmish games ( like force on force, stargrunt, bolt action , disposable heroes ), but the mechanics are very clean, cleaner IMHO.

Word of caution, infantry units get three actions.. if one of the actions of your infantry unit is not "hide, infiltrate, or take cover" you are most likely doing something wrong and your casualty ration will be high. First time I played the game I didn't pay attention to that, everything died quickly, I said this game is not for me and shelved it. Years later I decided to give it another tried, this time we made sure to be using those actions to the fullest and since then I cannot see myself leaving these rules behind...

They are truly great and if you get WWII and future combat you can do anthing from early XXth century to moderns and sci fi games...

I cannott recommend this game enough.

Francisco



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: World War II
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Victory Decision: Raid!
by Tony B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/11/2017 07:18:29

As someone new to the hobby, I've been looking for a ruleset that is more of a lets break out some minis and play game and focused on squads for a while now.

I'm also trying to keep things simple for myself. I dont want a lot of figures on the table to start. I want to have army lists in the ruleset Im using and I want some scenarios as well.

When I read the preview and the description for Victory Decision: Raid thought I would take a chance and see if it truley was what i was looking for.

After my preliminary read I was very happy with what I found within the ruleset. I was also taken aback by how many pages of army lists there are! There are tons!

I really think this is the perfect ruleset for where I am within the hobby. Once I get this game downpat and get more minis tabled, Ill be looking at the larger platoon level game Victory Decision.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: Raid!
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Victory Decision: Raid!
by Alex W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/12/2016 16:07:49

Honesty up front - I helped proofread the rules. But I offered to do that because I like them.

Victory Decision Raid is 90% the same game as regular Victory Decision, so if you're a player of that game then this version of it will be very familiar. The main difference is that rather than activating whole sections of troops, now you are activating individual soldiers, so that the game is focusing on the squad/section itself rather than the platoon.

Because of this it plays on a smaller area, 4'x4' is recommended, although I played a few games on a 2' x 3' table without issue. Because each side is only half a dozen or so figures the table doesn't get crowded.

As with regular Victory Decision, activation is a dice roll modified alternate activation, with the activated figure being able to perform 3 actions - move, shoot, assault, etc, in any order the player likes, and usually as many times as he likes too, so move - move - shoot, or shoot - shoot - shoot, are legal combos. Apart from a new overwatch order there are no reactive moves, like the parent game, but somehow with Victory Decision you don't miss them. I can only think that it's the triple action activations which somehow manages to remove the need for reactions.

The combat mechanics are very straighforward, although the suppression mechanic of the main game has been replaced with four "health levels" - ready to fight, stunned, wounded and dead; stunned and wounded give figures negative modifiers and limit their available actions, although figures can be rallied back to ready to fight.

The game includes vehicle rules, which are just as straighforward and intuitive as the infantry rules. Unlike the parent game where army lists are an extra purchase, Raid contains fairly exhaustive lists for Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union and the USA, hence the high page count for such a straighforward game. There are plenty of options to cover different small arms. One thing to note is that, unlike some skirmish games, an infantryman is an infantryman. By which I mean that you don't customise each figure with different stats and special rules, like Nuts! or the Song of Blades family; there are special rules but if you have, say, five regular US infantry each of those five will likely be the same in game terms. I much prefer this as I find keeping track of individualised figures to be a pain.

Raid playes very quickly and intuitively. It's not a hard core WW2 infantry combat simulation, but a quick and interesting game which plays with authentic WW2 flavour. There are WW2 projects I'd like to dabble in, but I don't want to go the whole hog and paint 30+ figures and support weapons and vehicles, etc. Raid means I can paint 6 or 8 US Paras, for example, and scratch that Band of Brothers itch.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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World at War: British and Commonwealth Vehicle Compendium
by Brandon J. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/06/2014 12:26:14

The Compendium is very well done and useful. Some of the cards, mostly the Stuarts, have errors on them that make the cards useless. This is a good product, but it needs some corrections.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
World at War: British and Commonwealth Vehicle Compendium
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Victory Decision: Future Combat- Rival Species
by Ash B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/09/2014 09:12:51

A wonderful set of 'generic gribbly alien' rules to add to Future Combat games.

These rules do two important things in my mind;

1) They don't reinvent the wheel with new terms. If a Bio weapon functions in basically the same way as a weapon from the main rulebook then those rules are used. Terms like 'bio grenade' don't replace 'grenades'. Makes the expansion nice and consistent (and lean).

2) You can use these rules with pretty much any 'alien menace' miniatures in your collection. Instead of being too specific, the units are more like a 'template' for the size and type of monster you're adding to your force. Whatever models you want to use... these rules should let you get them in!

So if you're looking at adding some drooling, clicking, sneaking, murderous aliens to your games of Future Combat... this is well worth your cash.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: Future Combat- Rival Species
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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by Ash B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/11/2014 20:28:12

If you have a large pile of Sci Fi miniatures you always wanted to paint, or painted an army and the system collapsed or company went out of business, these rules will breath new life into your collection.

What Agis has written is a very comprehesive set of near-future to far-future Sci-Fi rules that should be able to fit nearly any collection of models. Vehicles and Infantry run the gamut and you should be able to tweak a unit entry within the rules to fit anything you should like to put on the table.

This ruleset focuses more on the ebb and flow of combat, allowing for a chess-game of activations between the players rather than simple I-go-U-go back and forth. Players will nominate a unit they want to activate and test their commanders to see who will get the initiative. The commander who fails the test places their unit back in the unactivated pool to attempt to activate later.

As the commander you have resources to spend effecting this roll. Command Points represent of finit pool of buffs and tricks you can use to augment units, seize the initiative and outwit your opponent.

This focus on what units are doing, rather than how awesome they are individually, makes all Victory Decision games feel engaging. There's never a long wait for your turn and the game can feel like a dance between armies rather than two gunlines pounding away on each other. This can seem strange to players not used to this format, so when teaching the game bear this in mind!

The game scales well. Between 1000 and 2000pt games will allow you an hour or so to an afternoon of battles.

The game focuses currently on Humanoid combat. If you are looking for bestial or mixed unit (monsters and humanoids) armies, a supplement will be released covering these. types of armies.

As a final thing, the designer is super approachable! Head over to the Lead Adventure Forum (home of the Victory Decision Games) and ask him whatever you want!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: Future Combat
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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by Magnus W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/11/2014 11:26:55

I've quite enjoyed my gaming with this set of rules so far! The initiative system is quite fun, leading to some exciting tension in gameplay. There is a large array of special unit and weapon rules, and rules for hovering tanks and airborne attack speeders. It lends itself to fast games and flexibility in army creation.

The main limitation in this core set of rules is the focus on human forces, from low-tech (late 20th century) human forces to high-tech power-armored human forces, with robotic drone support (Drones being modeled with the rules Single-Minded and Untrained, meaning they are immune to the morale effects of being Shaken and Suppressed, and they make less efficient use of cover).



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by Mattias J. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/25/2013 16:13:22

Rules look really solid and has alot of the more advanced features i like to have in my wargames. Only thing i am missing are proper "alien" rules, especially for larger sized infantry (like for example AT-43 Karmans and Cogs). In fact it would be really cool to have the authors take on each of the AT-43 factions, hint hint Agis ;)



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by Tim W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/17/2013 10:08:13

This is now my go-to game for all 15/28mm sci-fi gaming. I find that most other "Design-it-yourself" sci-fi games are either too simple or too complicated for my liking. ViDe strikes a nice balance. Additionally most other games have either no point values (not very handy if you want to play pick up games) or have point systems that are easily exploited. ViDe uses points to build balanced forces, but does not let players min-max to the point the game becomes broken.

ViDe FC uses the same core rules as the WWII game. I see this only as a good thing as that is an excellent set of rules to build upon. They keep both sides in the game, minimize time spent doing simple tasks (like moving units through difficult terrain), keep infantry in the spot light with a long list of available combat actions and have the best morale rules I've ever used in 20 years of table top gaming. New to this version are command points and overwatch for even more tactical choices.

There is a large list of sci-fi unit types and an even larger list of sci-fi weapons. While all basic troopers in WWII had the same stat line, ViDe FC has different types of humanoid infantry units with different levels of protection and additional abilities to reflect the technological impact of advanced personal armour. In addition to tracked and wheeled vehicles, there are also hover tanks, VTOL units and walkers - all in a variety of sizes and relative technology levels. New weapons include: several varieties each of lasers, plasma cannons, missile launchers, sonic weapons, rail guns, guided mortars, particle accelerators, microwave guns and kinetic pulse weapons.

So if you have a bunch of minis hanging around from games that have gone by the wayside (or hey even if you have some new sci-fi minis!) I highly recommend this set of rules.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Victory Decision: Future Combat
by John K. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/13/2013 19:10:57

So far, I don't see much SciFi about these rules. They are really just the same as the WWII rules with a few cosmetic changes to fit the SciFi theme - eg Walkers are essentially just tanks that ignore rough terrain; "Drones" are referred to but not defined (a standard Drone Strike is considered Precision Artillery - but there are also "Drone" teams in the lists with no explanation I can find about what makes them Drones; there's an additional reference about AI-controlled drones - maybe those are supposed to be robots; Robots are listed once - where it says you can just consider your soldiers to be robots controlled by AI instead of humans; Lasers do additional damage when then hit (with no explanation as to why).

So if you want to play WWII-style battles with SciFi miniatures, I guess this is the way to go. But it really adds very little to do with with either future (or even near future) combat.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Victory Decision: WW II - Polish Army Guide
by Alexander K. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/27/2012 12:25:01

I'm very happy to say that the writer of Victory Decision, Agis Neugebauer, took the time to write some Early War supplements for his ruleset. The most recent additions to his collection of Army Guides/Field Manuals are the Early War German infantry and the Polish Army books.

This book includes Polish Rifle, Motorized, Cavalry and Motorcycle platoons and offers units mounted on horses, trucks, motorcycles - fighting on foot and most important of all, the rulebook supports a lot of vehicles and tanks that often get overlooked but which the Polish army actually had at their disposal. Such as the R35 and 9TP tanks and the older and heavier armoured reconnaissance vehicle wz.29 Ursus.

The book also includes profiles for the AT guns and artillery, howitzers and Bofors AA guns.

Just like with the main rulebook and other supplements you get unit profiles for both single and multibased infantry, so no one gets left out. As usual you get the PDF book in two copies, one full color and one “printer friendly” if you buy it through Wargame Vault.

There isn’t much of historical background except for some descriptions in the unit profiles, and there is also not much “filler material”. The book is completely about new profiles for the Polish army.

Not much more to say, this is a welcome addition for anyone playing Early War Poles and who want to try out a new set of rules with their miniatures, or people already playing Victory Decision who want to try out the Polish army in Early War.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: WW II - Polish Army Guide
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Victory Decision: WW II - PzKpfw VII Löwe
by John C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/18/2012 12:28:03

Great freebie, a really interesting examination and game stats for the Panzer Lowe, one of the war's planned heavy metal monsters!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: WW II - PzKpfw VII Löwe
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Victory Decision: WW II - Australian Independent Company Field Guide
by Larry J. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/04/2012 13:07:01

Another great release by Agis and company. The victory Decision game system is one of the best WWII miniature games I have played in a long time. Fast, fun and easy to learn. Well worth a look if you are interested in WWII gaming.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Victory Decision: WW II - Australian Independent Company Field Guide
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World at War: Add On
by Matthew W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/28/2012 06:49:52

simple to use but how can I review something I haven't looked at yet?



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
World at War: Add On
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