Super Tiny Skirmish, published by Mammoth Miniatures, is a fun little man-to-man skirmish game that lives up to its name. The rules come in at just under eight A5 sized pages (roughly half a sheet of US Letter: think booklet size) at 24pt font. This means you get a complete skirmish game in under 500 words! The game is set in what I would consider a low fantasy setting, although the system is simple enough that you could easily adapt it to other settings if you wished.
The rules allow you to generate fighters, fight with those fighters, and even gives you a simple system for leveling up, building a warband, and gaining equipment.
The game mechanics are quick and easy: each fighter has two actions per turn, and each fighter is given four stats. To preform an action (such as attack or attempt to survive an attack) the player must roll UNDER the relevant stat on a 2d6 roll. The system is IGO-UGO, and with only a handful of miniatures per player, the game plays very quickly. The last game I played, my opponent and I were able to form two opposing warbands, play a game, switch sides, and play again, all in the space of about 45 minutes.
The game does lack any real “chrome,” but, depending on your play style, I find that as a strength. With a little bit of imagination you can easily implement additional mechanics as you see fit. For instance, my opponent and I thought it would be fun to give each fighter a unique “skill” that it could preform as an action, and assigned it to the relevant stat.
Will Super Tiny Skirmish replace other games on your table? Probably not. But that’s ok because it’s not trying to. It is what it says it is: a quick little pub game, and a refreshing one at that.
You can find Mammoth Miniatures on Wargame Vault or their own webshop.