While awaiting my pre-ordered copy of John Lambshead’s Sci-fi Skirmish Scenarios: Small-unit Missions For Use With Your Favourite Wargaming Rules from Amazon (I’m in the USA), I went ahead and bought a digital ePub copy from the publisher Pen and Sword in the UK.

I just skimmed through and had some early thoughts on using it not just for sci-fi games but for other genres such as historical World War II.

The book has 36 scenarios. Of those, at a quick read, 27 of the scenarios look like they could easily be converted to any historical post-gunpowder setting.

For example, thinking about using these scenarios for World War II, many scenarios need only have a different objective to be immediately useful for a WWII setting. In one case, I would convert one side arriving by ‘anti-grav sliders’ to being paratroopers landing.

The terrain would also need some consideration; I think some of the urban terrain would convert easily over to a contested area of a war-torn town in Europe during WWII, but I’d need another pass reading over the scenarios to give that more thought.

Nine of the scenarios (scenarios 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 3.1, 3.6, 4.1, 5.1, 5.4, 6.5 to be exact) looked to be so closely tied to a science fiction setting it would be difficult to convert them to historical settings.

This book is immediately useful for wartorn Sci-Fi cities. I could see most or all scenarios could be useful for a Star Wars setting. But most scenarios could also be easily adapted for World War II, Viet Nam, or any post-gunpowder setting.

So all-in-all, this is an immensely valuable book for any post-gunpowder setting! I highly recommend it!