1 BC (One Brain-Cell) Snowball Fight Rules for Miniatures

Last year I was inspired by some blog posts by Alan at Duchy of Tradagardland and Mark at Man of Tin's blogs to make a 'non-lethal wargame'; a snowball fight  using the Snowball Fight Rules by Mark the Man of Tin. It was a different, but also a fun way to wargame, without taking into account the horrors of war. In fact, it was so successful that I decided to make another 'snowball fight' this year as well. I could have used the same miniatures that I made for the snowball fight last year of course, but last year I bought a bag of really ugly and bad looking soldiers. - Probably the worst ever made, so there weren't many things I could use them for. - Well, maybe except for using the hand grenade guys as snowball fighters, since they were the least ugly of them. Since I used the same pose to make soldiers last year, I decided to see if I could use them to make civilian snowball fighters this year . I painted all the hand grenade throwers in the bag, which with a simple Miliput and paint conversion gave me two snowball fighter armies of four each; one Red Army and one Blue Army:

Team Red

Team Blue

This is how ChatGPT envisioned how my armies would look boxed if ever made from Airfix:

The rules

The Snowball War rules by Mark the Man of Thin worked just fine. To reduce the number of turns and quicker game, I wanted to see if any of the other free wargame rules I use could be amended for a little snowball fight. One of my absolute favorites is the 1 BC (One Brain-Cell) Toy Soldier Rules by Pete Kautz. These rules are actually turning 25 years this year. They are free, very easy to learn, and quick and easy to play, and I have used them for many wargames . I based my “snowball war rules” on these rules with a few changes:

• The Snowball Fighters will fight as individual characters and not units.
• There will be no morale test since there are no units. Also, it's a snowball fight just for fun and it won't breake morale.

The game

Although it is designed for tabletop game, I decided to take this miniature snowball fight out into the real snow to set the scene.

The scenario is as simple as most snowball fights in the world; knock out the other team, and the last team standing wins. Blue (to the left) vs. Red (to the right):

Turn 1

In the first turn Red Team made a run for the trees to seek cover behind them. So did the Blue team, except for a couple of them who advanced slower and made a long shot and stunned one of the Red fighters:

Turn 2

In the next turn that Red fighter wasn't stunned anymore and both of the Red players made a really hard 'ice ball' each...

...and managed to hit one of the Blue players so hard that he was out of the game.
Further into the wood a couple of Red players tried to encircle 2 Blue fighters behind a tree, and actually manage to daze one of them. The other Blue snowball fighter made an 'ice ball', and knocked one of those Red attackers out of the game:

Turn 3

In the start of turn 3 an 'ice ball duel' takes place...

...and further into the forrest a single Red player tries to outflank 2 Blue players:

The 'ice ball duelists' actually manage to hit one another and both a Red and Blue player are out of the game. Further into the forrest that sneaky Red player successfully outflank the 2 Blue players and dazed one of them:

Turn 4

In turn 4 the last Red player standing from the 'duel' makes a run for it and help his Red friend encircle the only Blue player standing:

The other Red player throws a really hard 'ice ball' on that Blue player and knocks him out of the game:

Turn 5

In the last turn the last Blue fighter wasn't stunned anymore and got up on his feet again:

He didn't actually manage to do anything before he was knocked out by an 'ice ball' from one of the Red players. This shoot made the Red team winners of this snowball fight:

I really liked the rules and they were really quick to play with only 5 turns in 20 minutes. Which was 'long enough' considering the outside temperature this day. Hot coffee in the mug was a 'must':

Blog PostScript 

It seems like another phenomenon are trending on Facebook these days. -At least in those groups my wife follows. The 'new thing' is to have ChatGPT (or similar) make a caricature of you based on a photo and information found about you online. I provided a photo and the url to my blog: