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[rastamannParticipant 2735xp 1]

@oriskany, sorry about the delayed reply, but I’ve been AFK for a few days.

I haven’t really played FFoT yet, though I’m going over the rules now with a bit more attention – with the Brexit thing coming, and me being in Portugal, stuff will become much more expensive (about 30%), so I’ve been going over what I need and stocking up.

What I’ve bought and with what I’ve already painted, I’m able to field about a Cat I Soviet Tank Regiment (T72’s) plus an extra BMP Motor rifle battalion. Then, on the NATO side, I’ll have a German Panzer Battalion (Leo 2A1) plus a Pz Gren Battalion (Marder 1A1) and a Pz Aufklarungs Btn (Fuchs and Leo 1A4), an American Mech Infantry Btn (M113) and a Tank Btn (M1’s) and finally an understrength British Armoured Rgt (Chieftains) and Armoured Infantry Btn (FV432). Naturally, I can’t pit the Russians against all this NATO, but I can increase the Soviet strength with an independent T80 Battalion.

I’ve also tried Cold War Commander rules, but ultramodern, with British Challenger equipped forces against Russian T80U equipped units and the Russians are badly outclassed unless they can fling the tank’s missiles, where they outrange the British.

Now with the first edition of World at War (Eisenbach Gap) a full battalion of 10 platoons of T72’s against Team Yankee (which there is about 2 platoons of M1’s plus a couple of M113 infantry platoons and a M901 ITV) was a sight to see, particularly if the Russians managed to get to close range, even with the Americans on overwatch, but skillfull defense on the American player’s side did make the job very difficult for the Soviet player. The Soviet player would punch through, but with 50%+ losses.

I really liked Panzer Leader but the current Nations at War and World at War system mean every single piece of information you need is on the counters and that means no tables, which makes it basically a miniatures game using hex and coounter and that has truly made it my favourite system both for WWII and cold war combat.

In the meantime, in my Brexit panic buy spree, I’ve also bought a few cold war era (ca. 1985) warships to try out Rory Crabb’s Naval Command and will be buying some oddzial osmy’s air units to try out Missile Threat. My wallet cries in pain.

[limburger 21679xp 1]

@oriskany thanks for posting those links. I do think I’ve seen them, but it always helps to have a reminder.

It certainly is true that (most if not all) entertainment is focused on ‘Hollywood realism’ as opposed to actual real life.
This makes it extremely annoying for someone like me who wants things to be more true to life and less fictional.

It is next to impossible to judge the authenticity of a system as a result (never mind fixing the ‘problem’) although there are things that even make me go *hmmm* .

I’ve seen this in videogames as well. IL2-Sturmovik was one of the last great flightsimulators that managed to strike a balance between realistic and playable/fun.

Speaking of ‘unrealistic’ things : weapon systems like the LAW have a pretty significant back blast.
I remember reading that you need at least 2 square meters of open space (= an open door) when firing from inside a room.
Such things are ignored in FoW probably because of the scale, but a skirmish level game in 28 mm ought to have rules to make them behave.
Is this something that games mentioned so far have done ?

btw :

Probably the only time Hollywood had any respect for that weapon 😉

[neal5x5 1370xp 2]

Regarding Hacking in the Ghost Ops (Savage Worlds). There were several incidents of hacking, with the first an attempt to hack into the ship’s system communication’s system (a simple difficult TN) from the mainland. This was somewhat successful but resulted in being identified and counter-hacked (opposed rolls). The second hacking took place once on board, when the team found an open laptop from a dead tango and used that as an in to the system. While the team go into the firefight, the hacker hunkered down in the stateroom of the dead tango (shooting through the door when necessary).

I was able to add some detail to the interior of the ship, but the board warped a bit when painted, so it was difficult to show figures in the halls because the bases wouldn’t fit. I’m going to redo the interiors of the superstructure so there’s more room for the figures as well as more detail. I’m a little disappointed that the group didn’t make it to the bridge or engage the enemy on the forward half of the ship as they had planned, but that’s what happens when Stealth rolls go bad.

 

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

No worries, @rastamann , and thanks for the reply.

Yeah, I know the feeling.  I have the rules for FFoT but haven’t tried it yet.  Again, my 6mm force is,well, nonexistent. 🙁

Man, sounds like you save some pretty sizable forces, even considering this is a platoon based game (?) you’re describing an awful lot of miniatures.  I like how you have so many NATO armies represented, and a choice of using either T-72s (Northern Group of Soviet Forces, Central Group of Soviet Forces) or T-80s (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany).

And good call on the mention of the T80U’s missiles.  So many times people forget that these Soviet MBTs have a limited ATGW capability, starting (I think) with the T-64.

Your World at War game almost sounds like the Battle of Langen Gap out of the Team Yankee Novel.  We go over this in much more detail in the Team Yankee series we did a while back.  But as you probably know, US companies are organized into pure tank or pure mech OOBs, only when they go into the field for maneuvers, exercises, or even combat … does one company in each mech battalion and each tank battalion swap one platoon of tanks and mech infantry, so each battalion has a tank-heavy “team” (modified company, the way a “task force” is a modified battalion) and a mech-heavy team.  These combined arms units are of course much more flexible in actual tactical ops, as we see in the novel.  This is how a “tank company” winds up with a mech platoon,as you describe.  The ITVs come down from battalion or regiment.

Panzer Leader has some issues, I’ve always admitted that.  Most people who play “Panzer Leader” nowadays will you t hey’re really playing The Arab Israeli Wars with a WW2, Cold War, or Moderns “skin” over it.  But you’re right, you’re still relying heavily on the Weapons Effectiveness Chart, a Combat Results Table (“Kill Chart”) and especially a Unit Function Table for specifics like split move and fire, mounted infantry fire, overruns, CAT, carry, wheeled vs. track movement rules, amphibious, and a slew of other “special rules.”

I’m not familiar with the systems you describe, but I have seen some games that really do try to cram everything on the counter.  They either wind up with large counters (which  means large hexes, which means fewer hexes on the map, which in turn means very abstracted-design map sheets) – or oversimplified game play – or the counters are a confusing mess that I needed reading glasses to read.  🙁

But again, I certainly haven’t seen everything.  That Naval Command game sounds interesting.  We’ve been talking about modern naval warfare gaming in connection to possible Falkands 1982 content, the problem there is the b est candidate so far is Harpoon, which is a great game, but VERY heavy and basically impossible to do in miniature.  Even at 1″ = 1000 yards, I guess that would make it 1 : 36,000  … I literally had to play the game on my dad’s tennis court once.

[grimwolfuk 10506xp 3]

The latest episode of SITREP enjoy…

SITREP Podcast: Can You Go Too Far? Some Minis Shouldn’t Be Made Or Do They?

[suetoniuspaullinusMember 12198xp 5]

More Anvil Industry PCMs:

[mkultra99Participant 814xp 1]

The Anvil stuff suffers from “GeeDubitis” too much for me.. I’ve been spoiled by Spectre and Empress with their great sculpts and reasonable anatomic proportions.

Also, ‘Missile Threat’ is great fun.. I recommend anyone interested in air operations give it a try (or not interested, because Im a tank and boots guy and found it lots of fun). I especially liked playing scenarios in the Vietnam Conflict.

[oriskany 60771xp 0]

Good afternoon, everyone ~

Okay, plans are starting to firm up for this weekend.

So far, it looks like …
SATURDAY: 12 NOON ETZ / 17:00 GMT :  Rasmus and his Japanese against Damon and his British.  If either of you have to back out or if I’ve misinterpreted your replies, no worries, just let me know.  I’ve been itching to play either my Black Dragons or Americans anyway (bwahahaha …)  But we might have a heavy cruiser smackdown coming up.  😀

SUNDAY: 12 NOON ETZ / 17:00 GMT :  No one’s “signed up” for anything yet.  I’m finishing Lebanon maps for Valor & Victory – so we can do 1982 Moderns wargaming with anyone live.  Dylan (Elessar2590) tried Valor & Victory in Vietnam last week and seemed to enjoy it.

Other options are Valor & Victory Vietnam, TCME (Panzer Leader in 1991 Gulf War), or even Russia vs. Ukraine Panzer Leader in Ukraine 2014-15.

But I want to keep Sunday something modern, in case we’re able to stream live as part of the Sitrep media platform.

So if you’d like to check out the Darkstar Game on Saturday, or (better yet) take a chance on live Modern Wargaming on Sunday, just let me know so I can build a scenario.

PING ME A PM and I’ll send a link to the web conference meeting.

Thanks, and I hope to see some of you this weekend.

[rastamannParticipant 2735xp 2]

@oriskany – FFoT has some nice TOE’s for both WWII and post 1950 forces, so makes it easy to build some pretty accurate forces. Then, remembering that each infantry stand is a platoon and a single vehicle represents 4-6, you can get the regiment 3 battalions of 6 miniatures each (the Soviet companies are represented by 2 minis, as they are smaller than Western MBT companies, as you know), so I can get the whole regiment with only 18 tanks. At the moment I have about 200 vehicles (including IFV’s, ATGM, etc.) for Western and Soviet forces, so that comes to a nice total.

I do believe they based the original game off of Team Yankee but they originally set it in a fictional region of Germany called Eisenbach. Now they went for the actual thing and have paired up with an author to write them a nove called “Storming the Gap: first strike”. They really did embrace the concept of the task force when building the game, so they’ve got the combined forces approach there 🙂

I did love Panzer Leader and still have it (though I missed the release of MMP’s updated version, which was sad to me), but truly the ability to not have to look up tables is rather appealing to me and the current World at War system makes it’s really easy – the counters are large (.75″) and the hexes are 1″, so they can accomodate the numbers:

The numbers work on a “bucket of dice” system, which I prefer, as it makes stuff tend to the average and thus feel more realistic to me than 1 single dice roll modified by stuff (though there are some modifiers here as well). So in the counter above, the lower numbers represent how many dice to roll and the upper right number is the score you need to equal or better.

As for the naval side, I only ever played Harpoon on the Macintosh sometime in the ’90s, which I certainly loved, but didn’t try it on an actual tabletop (or tennis court 🙂 – that must have been amazing!)

The Naval Command system abstracts scales to where 1 cm = 1 Nautical Mile (so our 6×4 table will represent an area that is roughly 120 NM x 180 NM) and is marketed as a game rather than a naval sim, so has more in line with, say, Victory at Sea, than Harpoon, but the game play sequence is interesting, as it has 5 phases:
1) initiative
2) movement
3) detection – including Active and Passive systems and ECM
4) attack
5) damage control

This one gets a “deal of the day” discount on Wargame Vault very often. I will be painting my stuff for it ASAP and try it out also over the next couple of months and will try to keep you posted.

[oriskany 60771xp 0]

Good point, @limburger – I don’t know if you could fire a LAW from inside a building, I’ve certainly never tried it and don’t think I would. 😀

There are some light AT infantry weapons that are specifically designed where you can fire them from under brush or inside buildings in ambush positions, the old West German Armbrust comes to mind.

But no, most of them would  not be safe.

What really brings me a chuckle is when I see or hear about people in some games fire much, much larger ATGWs from inside buildings, Saggers or Spandrels or Milans or TOWs or the like.   Smaller unguided weapons like LAWs, SMAWs, B-300s, AT-4s, maaaaaaaybe … depending on the building and maybe if windows or a back wall were already blown out or some such.

But bigger ATGW missiles …. just no.  🙂

Lots of great activity on the thread again, I promise to reply later today, it’s almost 1AM here and I need some sleep.

[oriskany 60771xp 2]

@neal5x5 – those ideas of hacking and counter-hacking (cybersecurity) sound really great.  Seriously, it puts the whole “off board support” idea in a radically different context than what we usually see … just mortar or artillery or air strikes zooming in from heaven.

The closest I’ve seen to that (mechanically) are games of The Arab Israeli wars where both sides have available off-board air strikes.  When the Egyptians call in a strike, the Israeli player has an option to use one of his air strikes to try to interdict the enemy air strike.  It’s almost as if there’s another game taking place far overhead.  Now would the Israeli player use that sir strike to try to interdict?  It almost seems a waste … to trade airstrikes 1:1 with the enemy when you air strikes are stronger and you’re really only “buying” a chance to interdict.

Well … it depends on what the Egyptians are trying to hit.  😀  And where Israeli air-defense ground units are.  Does the Israeli player trust the resilience of the probable intended target, and is he cool with its potential loss in context of the overall mission (Israelis are on the attack on this one)?  If so, reserve that airstrike to go after Egyptian tanks, Sagger, or artillery.  If not … maybe divert that air strike to intercept.

Two separate games, yet intrinsically interconnected – much as you describe when the first hack took place from the  mainland, and then the second took place locally from a laptop on-site.  Was this a “Hack of Opportunity” or did the operators know there would be a networked laptop onboard?

And man, that ship is awesome, with all those passageways and compartments!  That must have been a freakin’ ton of work!  Seriously epic stuff there.  😀

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

Finally taking a chance to catch up on some replies …

@suetoniuspaullinus – I love the way you’ve painted those PMCs, especially (and this may be a weird detail) – the “dusty boots and trousers.”  It looks like they’ve really been running around on those desert bases. It’s a great touch that adds a lot of realism.  Is “Ares Consulting” you’re own PMC firm?  😀

@mkultra99 – thanks for the tip on Missile Threat.  Checking it out on BGG I am actually a little intrigued by this entry in particular: “Detailed yet simple rules for Naval Vessels and Submarines. Naval Vessels can launch and recover helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and could potentially be caught unprepared for combat…”

The reason is we’re looking at next topics to cover on the Ops Center after the Arab Israeli Wars Part 04.  A leading contender is the Falklands 1982.  The reason I want to do this conflict, and sooner rather than later, is it’s one of the rare opportunities to do NAVAL combat in moderns.  Let’s face it, regular armies vs. insurgents of some description is something that happens all the time in post-1945 warfare, any kind of moderate-large scale naval combat is a rare beast in “modern” era wargaming.

Of course Larry Bond’s “Harpoon” is always an option, but MAN … that game is heavy.  A lighter, easier, more entry-level and flexible version might be better for when / if we tackle this topic.

Thanks @rastamann – those counters look great!  I fear I would would have to put on my “grandpa” reading glasses to see them, even at .75″, though.  That is a nice, big counter, though.  The hex sizes sound very similar to Valor & Victory, is you donwload and print the available map sheets at the standard size presented.

MMP’s update for Panzer Leader … eh … I wasn’t that impressed.  I’m assuming you’re talking about “Hill of Death?”  They did add mechanics for commanders, if I’m not mistaken, which I do find interesting.  But honestly most of the “improvements” to the system were already corrected in Arab-Israeli Wars, and most PB/PL fans were already retrofitting those game mechanics back to WW2 scenarios for PanzerBlitz or Panzer Leader.  Add to this the huge piles of outstanding material people are publishing on their own (Imaginativestrategist.com, PatStorto.com, Gregpanzerblitz.com) – new maps, thousands of new counters, new settings to include 1919 theoretical WW1 extensions, Japanese vs. Soviets in 1938-1945,  US in an invasion of Japan 1946 hypotheticals, Cold War, Gulf War 1991, Iraq War 2003, every possible WW2 historical scenario, Desert Leader, ParaLeader, Finnish Blitz, PanzerBlitz 1941, PanzerBlitz 1942, Italian Panzer Leader, Hungarian, Italian, Finnish, Polish, French (for Panzer Leader 1940 by both Raymond Cruz and later redone by Alan Arvold), all Mike Bettinghof’s work, Brian Train’s work, Byron Henderson’s writeups and campaigns …

It’s literally become it’s own universe, all driven and supported pretty much solely by the community.  😀

I will totally check out Naval Command, as again, I am in the market for something easy to use for possible Falklands naval wargaming.  😀 Thanks for the heads up!

[oriskany 60771xp 3]

Apologies to everyone – I’ve way behind in battle reports.  Real fast, here is the recap for the Valor & Victory: Vietnam game played between myself and Elessar2590 last weekend, with Elessar playing Australians on defense (2 companies, “A”CO, 7th RAR, ATF) vs. attacking guerrillas of my 274th Main Force Regiment, National Liberation Front (Viet Cong).

Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, January 1968

Obviously, the Australians have a ridiculous advantage in firepower, but my victory conditions are much easier.  For instance, I get 10 points for each objective hex I take (he gets none or anything he holds). Also, he gets only 1 victory point for each casulaty inflicted on me, while I get 3 points for each casualty I inflict (knocked out officer, medic, or fireteam), make that 6 points if Elessar doesn’t manage to evacuate that casualty.  He also can’t fire into civilian hexes, and if any casualties are killed by his incidental fire, that’s 6 more victory points for me.

So let’s see how this goes …

Final situation:

Final Score:  Congrats to @elessar2590 !

[rastamannParticipant 2735xp 0]

@oriskany, very nice battle report and cool graphics!

From what I see of your map, it’s almost entirely usable by the World at War system (they’ve got one for WWII as well, called Nations at War) except for the buildings – as a hex is about 250 meters 1 hex could be an entire village or small town.

I was unaware how much underwhelming MMP’s efforts were. I went looking for it and fully agree. Now I did know of the imaginative strategist, but not the others, I must investigate further! Thanks for the pointers!

And yes, I went for cold war for much the same reason you want to try Falklands. I would really like to explore more symmetrical warfare that is post 1980’s.

 

[suetoniuspaullinusMember 12198xp 4]

@orikany

great batreps ?

And yes, Ares Consulting is my ‘IP’ ?

ARES PMCs

First Squad done. I’ve changed the paint scheme slightly and will stick to a Tan, Black and Multicam scheme overall. Although the minis are a little more heroic than I would usually prefer it I rather enjoyed building and painting them. Second squad is ordered and I’ll might get a third at Salute (jungle themed with boonie hats in case a client needs to have a Predator hunted down ?).

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