Today I have received the new book written by Neil Thomas, titled "One Hour Wargame" this last book is a ruleset ideal for wargamers with no too much time, neither space, neither miniatures.... the battles can be played in a tabletop 3'x3', and with armies between 3 to 6 units. The book contains rules for all the mainstream wargamings epochs: Ancient, Dark Age, Medieval, Pike and Shot, Horse and Musket, Rifle and Sable (1860-1900), American Civil War, Machine Age (1900-1935), WWII. All is written 158 pages!!!
At first glance, the rules are really very... very.... simple, maybe too much.... the impact are based in rolling a D6 and the score is the number of impacts that the enemy receives... modified by the troops types, o battlefield situation (flanks, or cover).
The most notable is that everything is simple and you can use the same system for all the epochs, in a similar way than other tittles by Neil Thomas, like Ancient and Medieval Wargaming. Another thing that I like a lot is the army troops creation, you roll 1D6 and you get the number of each that you receive, for example in an army of 6 units if you score 4, and you are wargaming in the middle age, your army will be composed by: 4 Knights unit, 1 Archers unit, 0 Levies and Men at arms unit. There are 6 combinations, what is very suitable for "beer and brewers" battles, of using this ruleset as a filler during long term battles.
In addition, the book has a short introduction for each period, explaining the way each unit fight. And at the end there are rules for solo gaming with random deployment rules, and Chance Cards that affect your troops or the non player troops.
The book has 30 scenarios suitables for all the epochs.
In the other hand, the book doesn't had rules for veteran or green troops, or moral rules, that you can find in Ancient and Medieval Wargaming. Here there are no armylists, and the rules don't have any flavour for the epoch...
I think that the book worth be bought if you are looking for a ruleset suitable for several epochs, with not too much miniatures and space, and time. But if you are looking for something with flavour and more complex.... I think that this is not your book.
ADDEDUM, ADDING RULES FOR QUALITY AND MORAL
As I am a modifier wargamer in essence, I think that this ruleset could get some interest, if you stablish three Quality troops: Veteran, Trained and Green. And when you difference their attacks in this way, when you attack with a Trained unit you roll your dice as is established in the rulest, if your unit is Veteran you roll two dices and choose that with the higher score. And if your unit is Green, you roll two dices and choose that with the lower score.
About Moral, you can stablish that each time that a Veteran unit receives and impact, it can recover 1/2D6 hits if during a turn it doesn't move and didn't received any attack. In the case of the Green unit, it will add 1/2D6 hits each time that it is hit. The Trained troops continue in their way.
These are my two cents about this ruleset
