Welcome to the homepage of Stourbridge Modern Jets Rules (hereinafter SMJR) the Stourbridge and District Wargames Club wargames ruleset for simple, Beer-and-Pretzels (although as a British gamer I much prefer the term Lager-and-Monster Munch) Modern Jet Combat using 1:144 model aircraft. The game has been run as a participation event at several wargaming shows around the English Midlands over the past couple of years and has proved quite popular. The game was written by Owen Cooper and tested by divers hands, mainly the hardcore of Dave "Mad Dog" Orton, "Von" Mike Drew (Ace of the DDR Luftwaffe) and "Big" Al Southall. The most recent implementation of SMJR (as a PDF) can be found here http://www.geocities.com/o_cooper/smjrv1.pdf

NEWS: 23rd March 2008 - Website goes live, having finally pulled my finger out of my arse and written up the rules which have spent the past three years existing as scribbled notes and a few undocumented rules floating around inside the heads of the players.

TOYS! TOYS! TOYS! We play SMJR with big planes - 1:144 jet fighters from the likes of Airfix and Revell. These are probably a bit big for the 8' x 8' table (2.44m x 2.44m for metricists), in reality 1:300 would be more practical, and much more realistically scaled to the ranges and movements would be tiny dots of grey paint on top of our flight bases. But we don't give a stuff, mainly because the lovely lovely 1:144 aircraft look like this... ...and that, sunshine, is reason enough for me. The basing materials are simple cork drink coasters that are coated on one side with a shiny, hard-wearing plastic. You will find these in any household store near the tableware or you can steal them from kitchens and dining rooms up and down the length of the country. We spray-paint these light blue and drill a hole in the centre to accept a 3" (7.5cm) nail. A hole is drilled in the aircraft, the nail point is heated on the gas stove and rammed home, melting it's way into a secure fit under the model. Be warned though that nails exposed to hot gas flame can actually catch fire (can't they Dave?). Those of a delicate nature may prefer a more gentle, caring method such as two part expoxy.

DESIGNERS NOTES (or, so then Coop, what can I expect for my £0.00 that I paid for this?) SMJR has one raison d'etre and one raison d'etre alone - get bloody big nice planes on the tabletop. That's it basically. Pretend to be Tom Cruise, racing off into the skies to defend The American Way against the hosts of Xenu and Modern Psychiatry. The game was inspired by the culture at Stourbridge of coming up with new and novel participation wargames for the UK show circuit, the "ooohhh...." factor of the Revell 1:144 kits and a large dollop of sheer bloody-mindedness whereby the prevailing wisdom was that A - you can't do jet combat on the tabletop and B - even if you could (which you can't) you can't do it with 1:144 aircraft which are far too big. To be fair, A is actually true (sort of). Like most wargames you can only ever really offer up a caricature of whichever facet of military history you are trying to game. However this doesn't really bother me. So long as I could create a game that felt like you were engaging in fighter combat and kept the nice plane models everything would be ship-shape and Bristol-fashion. So a lot of things were chucked out and the idea was to create the simplest possible game of modern-jet-combat-caricature and still keep things fun. Like most of the rules I have ever written, SMJR is actually an unholy mix of several different sets all monged together with bits hacked off and rewritten and mutated and so on and so forth. For the record SMJR lifts wholesale from Hammering Iron II (superb Peter Pig ruleset for ACW naval and riverine warfare), Crimson Skies (FASA boardgame which inspired all manner of Stourbridge experimention into air combat) and AD&D (saving throws with the d20). SMJR started life as a game written to be a participation game at shows with a game length of around 45 minutes and to be of a complexity such that a novice can work out what they are doing after a couple of turns. So, while it wasn't written for kids, it was written with an understanding that a lot of the players would be children. If you are looking for a game where different aircraft and ordnance systems behave differently then look elsewhere! This is a simply a good fun game of big model aircraft shooting around the tabletop, of fast play mechanisms and tension-filled dice rolls to try and dodge that missile that is homing in!

THE MEN WHAT DONE IT - Stourbridge and District Wargames Club. We have an active forum which doesn't require pre-registration (you can if you want an avatar and a posting history) as you can always post as Guest. Stourbridge meet on Fridays in Amblecote Church Hall, Vicarage Road, Amblecote, Stourbridge, West Midlands, England.

Mail me o_cooper@yahoo.com