OMOG - Supplements in the Works

Three additional projects have been launched to add to the OMOG games. OMOG and OMOK are very basic skirmish games for toy soldiers. The OMOG games cover the standing armies of their times. They work because the armies of an given era tend to arm small units with comparable equipment. For instance, a squad of solders in World War II was usually 10 to 15 men, including a commander, riflemen and a three-man automatic rifle or light machine gun section. In the 19^th Century, the small unit normally had the same number of men led by an officer with sword and pistol. This is all basic and allows for a simple, fast and fun game. I have purposely avoided complexities to keep OMOG and OMOK playable according to their original purpose:

Easy to play toy soldier games that can be played anywhere with a minimum of special equipment. A 6" measuring stick (any ruler will do), common 6 sided dice or home–made spinner, and a bag of army men for the game you are playing. The basic system of movement remains pretty much the same for all OMOG and OMOK games. In fact, most of the differences in each version take into account the weapons and tactics available to small units in a given era.

I already have OMOG Muskets for 1701-1849 style wars and OMOG Oldstyle for a game like Little Wars getting ready for upload.

Three things came up. Since last year, I have been working on a Space version of OMOG. I was recently asked about a Samurai and Ninja version. Then there is the matter of using OMOG 19C for colonial wars. It does not cover the native armies that were short on firearms very well. I had toyed with the idea of making entirely new games but now feel that a supplement to existing rules would be best.

OMOG Advanced covers modern combat. With a little work, the weapons firing could be converted to the use of energy weapons common to science fiction stories. Other weapons would also take a little tweaking, as would be the addition of armor for space. Things like low gravity and toxic atmosphere could also be added. The big problem is keeping it simple. I have been watching science fiction since I was a child. There were Flash Gordon and ^th Century, the original Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, Starship Troopers, Space Above and Beyond, and Farscape. There is a lot and it has to be sorted out and reconciled into a single simple system. Unlike other games like Laserblade, OMOG is a squad-level battle that follows military lines. The space supplement may take a while longer.

Buck Rogers serials rerun on Saturday morning TV, Star Trek (Original, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise), Star Wars, Buck Rogers in the 25

I was asked about a Samurai Game. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the easiest and most practical route be to would make a supplement for the OMOK Medieval Game. A Samurai Game would have to be a separate thing with a few rules unique to it to capture the flavor of the Samurai genre. The supplement would have to take into account the specialized weaponry and ways for fighting. Progress is being made..

Next comes the Colonial era of the later 19^th Century There’s the Sudan, Egypt., Zulu Wars, French in North Africa, American West, India’s Northwest Frontier, Deutsche Sudwest Afrika and the Boxer Rebellion, to name a few. The OMOG 19C rules covers most of it. The trick here is to arrange numbers so that native units that are largely armed with close combat weapons can strike a balance with well-armed colonial forces. Also, working up a chart to take into account some of the unusual native weapons.

There are a few things to work up. For instance, natives would have old matchlocks or flintlock muskets to confront troops with rolling block or breech loading rifles. Some natives may also have captured rifles with very limited ammo. How to account for muskets against cartridge rifles? There are ideas, but the trick is in seeing how they work into good rules. These are games and playability is an essential consideration.

To put it bluntly, I believe that basic OMOG is a winning formula for quick, easy-to-play squad level toy soldier games. The movement system is easy to use. Shooting and resolving combat is reasonable, with various adjustments for the different eras: 1701- 1849, 1850-1901, 1901 - 2015+. and 1000 BCE to 1600 CE. There is also Old Style, which is like Little wars without actually shooting metal slugs at your costly miniatures. We can adjust it further for specific eras and conflicts. Play can be done with figures of any size. My original idea back in 2010 was to use troops from a bag of toy soldiers. They ranged from about 45mm to 60mm. Most of the common Army men were clones or copies of Tim Mee Vietnam troops, Imperial Desert Storm types and Matchbox figures/ You could also find bags of BMC and Americana Civil War, Alamo, American Revolution and World War II guys. The game can also be played with 20mm, 25mm and 30mm figures as well as 1.48 and 40mm troops.

These are infantry and horse cavalry games, so I have not included vehicles. Were I to do so, I would probably limit it to small vehicles such as Jeeps, kubelwagens, light trucks, tankettes and light tanks. The biggest of them might be an M3 Stuart, Panzer II, BT7 and Japanese Type 95. Of course, this would be a long time in coming and use of vehicles would be very limited. (If you want vehicle combat, try Tankplank and Tankplank Advanced Supplement.)

 You can find all of the current OMOG games here:

http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/downloads.html