Rapid Fire!
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Rapid Fire! is a set of wargames rules used to recreate famour actions from World War II using miniatures and model vehicles and aircraft. It owes a debt to the influence of pioneering UK wargamers such as Donald Featherstone, Peter Gilder and John Sandars.
The current rules stem from Richard Marsh, Colin Rumford and Dave Tuck who drew up the provisional rules in the 1980s, with subsequent developments causing some existing players to question the future direction of the game.
In 1994 the rules "Rapid Fire! Fast Play Rules for W.W.II" winning 'Best Rules' at Leeds Wargames Club 'Fiasco' show in 1996 and 1998. This was followed by a supplement for further organisation charts and scenarios for NW Europe and the Russian Front followed.
The authors met up for ‘Mad Easter' in 2005 for the launch of an advanced rule book in London. .
The RF website continues to expand, with more chart downloads being added, as well as articles, scenarios, painting and making guides and photo galleries.
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[edit] Design concept and rules
The Rapid Fire! rules control a game using scale models (most commonly in 20mm) on a table typically 8 feet (2.5 metres) X 5 feet (1.5 metres). The game mechanisms are designed to allow a battle to be fought to a conclusion in an evening.
In Rapid Fire!, actions involving infantry, armour, artillery and aircraft can be represented. The game allows the larger wargaming scales to be used, taking advantage of the aesthetics of 25mm and 20mm models.
The quick play nature of the rules means that many aspects are simplified. For instance there are only 6 armour classes (A the best to f the worst). Gun classes are also simplified to 6 categories (1 best to 6 worst). As a consequence, it is best to use vehicles and weapons from the same period of World War II (i.e. early or late war).
Artillery fire is devastating but rules controlling observers ability to move and observe balance this power. Aircraft also feature and can be either shot down or driven off.
No ground scale is stated but appears to be approximately 12" = 500 metres. Troop scale is 1: 15 for infantry and 1:5 for vehicles and weapons. This is strict whether or not the number of models fit into an organisation or not. Similar scaling methods are used in other wargaming periods, allowing larger, more visually attractive, models to be used than the ground scale would otherwise allow.
Since this reduction in the number of figures would make historical tactical units seem far too small -- two figures to an infantry platoon, for instance -- scenarios typically represent an infantry battalion as a reinforced platoon. As a result, infantry weapons such as grenades are given an excessive range, if measuring by the real-world space a battalion would occupy.
However, this is one of the compromises which allows a combined-arms battle to be fought, allowing the gamer to make choices about where tanks and infantry are sent into battle, rather than being a subaltern trusting to luck as to just whose tanks drive over his foxhole.
