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This topic contains 484 replies, has 35 voices, and was last updated by madman1960 5 years, 7 months ago.
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February 20, 2019 at 2:32 pm #1351841
@grimwolfuk thanks, will look into that 🙂
February 20, 2019 at 3:08 pm #1351870The rule set is great and flexible from fire teams up to platoon level and higher.
February 20, 2019 at 4:52 pm #1351935Going to ask the community I had the Empress IFV Warrior to paint and was wondering if these would work.
February 20, 2019 at 5:18 pm #1351948Well, @grimwolfuk – the colors LOOK good in the photo, but I can say that Vallejo paints have always treated me very well, both traditional and air brush. The only Vallejo product with which I’ve had mixed results are the washes, you have to reeeeally remember to thin them out ESPECIALLY when painting on lighter colors LIKE DESERT or arctic schemes.
February 20, 2019 at 5:40 pm #1351959February 20, 2019 at 6:28 pm #1351968Okay, time to get to some more responses. 😀
@grimwolfuk – Ultracombat is definitely on my interest list. Skirmish Sangin, Spectre, and Plausible Deniability aren’t quite in my wheel house because I prefer battles to skirmishes, but I’m hoping that Ultracombat takes the basic Radio DishDash concept and ratchets it up one echelon level to platoon+, as you say. Definitely more of “my jam,” so to speak, taking that ASL / Valor & Victory scope and converting to miniature combat.
@flatbattery – Thanks, and I agree. One criticism that’s often leveled at hex & counter (or really any non-miniature wargame) is that it’s too abstract or not as immersive because you have to imagine or visualize what’s going on, where as a miniature game “shows” you.
Wow, I couldn’t possibly disagree more.
The degree to which almost any miniature table is “lying” to you staggers the imagination of anyone who’s ever actually been on a battlefield or knows how combat works (even if only in an academic sense). I look at virtually any miniature table and have to close one eye and cock my head and imagine … “yeah, that’s wrong … but I can sort of see what they were going for here …”
The three exceptions to this:
1) Teams / Clubs who build absolutely massive tables like the one @piers featured earlier, or people who set up 20-foot tables at 10mm, 6mm, or 3mm.
2) People who stick strictly to infantry skirmish games with 5-10 shooters on a side, where small arms fire tends to be murderously short (even this depends on the table – urban environment is usually a good choice).
3) Miniature wargames that focus more on settings where melee combat is the norm, or at the most – black powder weapons. Here, the engagement ranges collapse to such a short distance that most of these grievances do not apply. 😀
Conversely, a non-miniature wargame (of which hex & counters are admittedly only ONE selection, there are lots of others) – by dispensing with miniatures, frees itself of the “ball and chain” of limited scale, practical tables, etc. You can make your tactical wargame table 10,000 miles across if you want (as you have to do in, say … Darkstar) or 3-6 kilometers (as you do in say, Panzer Leader / The Arab-Israeli Wars).
You can look at the board, and because you know how the game works, you instantly “see” what’s really going on, in the proper scales, ranges, proportions, and geometries. The way a real commander does (who uses an “abstract” map, by the way, they don’t stand on the battlefield with binoculars and point 😀 ). The board isn’t lying to you. Immersion is not broken by tanks shooting at each other at 20 paces, parked bumper to bumper, or infantry having virtually the same engagement ranges (200 meters) as MBTs (4000 meters) or artillery 30,000 meters).
Battles that are typically portrayed miniatures cannot be immersive in my opinion because the table fails to explain or excuse how that battle is taking place at all. By rights almost everything on, say a FoW table or BA table … should be dead 20 tables away. This causes different arms to have improper interrelationships (e.g., when can infantry engage tanks and how), which causes tactics that would work in real combat not to work, and vice-versa (tactics that do not work to suddenly work in the fantasy-land that most miniature wargames present).
All of which is fine. I mean these games are often made for people who only know what they’ve seen in games or in movies. To their credit, some game companies have tried to explain this away, or introduce rules that suggest some kind of logarithmic scaling or range mechanic, which I support, but now you’ve dumped a pretty steep level of abstraction into a genre that “prides” itself on having little or no abstraction.
Still don’t know why “abstraction” is a bad word. I get the feeling that most miniature wargamers don’t know how much abstraction is soaked into the games they play.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to “preach to the choir” (“rant to the choir” might be more accurate) – if you play ASL you clearly get it. And man, congrats. That’s not a beginner’s game. If you play ASL you definitely jumped in the pool at the deep end. 😀
@hobbyhub – No worries, sir. At first I was very, very confused by your post, but then saw where you were reconsidering. No worries. By no means do I imagine that any kind of scaled- or command-tactical wargames are for everyone.
But they are wargames.
12,000+ titles published since 1954 (Avalon Hill’s Tactics II), Victory Games, Matrix Games, Decision Games, GMT Games, GDW games, FASA games, Avalon Hill Games, Avalanche Press Games, High Flying Dice Games, HexWar, Multiman Publishing, SSI Games, SPI games, that’s 13 companies off the top of my head, I’m sure a look at Wikipedia would get me 50+ more – Strategy & Tactics, World at War, Modern War – there are three periodicals just for this market space. These are all hex & counter or some other form of zone-based, unit-driven mechanic wargames.
One last thing, please note that the Sitrep has taken the decision to specifically remove the word “Miniature” from our title in order to approach more of three-pronged inclusive approach: miniature, non-miniature, and computer modern games.
We also took the “war” out of “wargaming”, I think that might be a YouTube algorithm thing. Not sure on that. 😀
February 20, 2019 at 6:52 pm #1351987@oriskany ultracombat (Normandy) is aimed at platoon level with additional units but you could run with multi platoons to have larger games at a smaller scale.
February 20, 2019 at 7:01 pm #1351988@grimwolfuk – “ultracombat (Normandy) is aimed at platoon level with additional units”
Yeah, I was agreeing with you: “ratchets it up one echelon level to platoon+”
???
February 20, 2019 at 7:21 pm #1351990I see dude I was just seeing what the rules said and hopefully the ultracombat modern inc Helicopters etc.
February 20, 2019 at 7:25 pm #1351992Time for a picture post..
Indochina War French ?
February 20, 2019 at 7:54 pm #1352015Just got the Feb Release of the beta KS rules for Ultracombat so I’m going to see how close and what changes between the different settings.
February 20, 2019 at 7:59 pm #1352017@oriskany, I think I’d describe “deep end” as an understatement, and I’m still playing the starter kits. I have got the first module and full rules, but man! that manual is daunting. My only consolation is that my opponent/teacher is ranked 8th in the UK and played ASL since release, so makes it a little easier. Sadly he’s moved away now so games aren’t easy to come by and there are no other local players or any willing to try.
Hence why I’ve backed Storming the Gap, it looks so much easier to learn and will have a solo system included (if it reaches the stretch goal), and the wife is willing try. Will be printing the starter kit for it this weekend, so hopefully I’ll get to test it. The wife took delivery of U-Boot today so I’m sure I’ll probably be prowling the north Atlantic instead though.
Preach/Rant away all you like, as you have real life experience I’m sure many would agree that your opinion carries some weight that shouldn’t be casually dismissed. It always helps to get a more educated perspective after all.
February 20, 2019 at 8:12 pm #1352020IMHO at the 28mm scale there isn’t really any use for vehicles, except as mobile cover. It gets very silly in 40k
If you’re looking for ArmA content then this channel is probably already on your list :
February 20, 2019 at 8:13 pm #1352021The desperate battle at the Valley of Tears (Israel vs. Syria, October 7, 1973) continues:
System: Avalon Hill’s The Arab-Israeli Wars. @damon playing Israelis, @oriskany playing Syrians.
Turn Two – Syrian advance continues, lead tank brigades are now fully across the Purple Line, advancing 750 meters before being struck again. Damon has no shortage of targets here, obviously, he has LOS on nearly everything thanks to his elevated positions on the Tel Hermonit hill. So he has to carefully choose his targets. He’s picking off APCs still loaded with infantry for double points, as well as mine clearing PT-54 tanks and MTU-12 bridgelayers.
Again, consider OPEN IN NEW TAB to get best resolution on these images.
Speaking of killing bridgelayers, the first Israeli fighter-bomber streaks in to take out my poor brirdgelayers attached to 81st Armoured. Awww! He’s just a bridgelayer! They barely have guns! And didn’t even shoot at anyone! He just wants to build his little bridges! 🙁
Things get more serious to the north. Okay, by now Damon has clued in to my intentions. The way the overall map is laid out, there really is only one viable path for me to make an operational-scale breakout (the point of the Syrian victory conditions). I can’t swing to the south because the Bental Reservoir blocks my path. I can’t go up the center because he’ll collapse both wings on me and butcher me in a crossfire (PRO TIP – in breakthrough games – never, ever, ever go up the center). That leaves only the north, which Damon now realizes ad commits another four IAF fighter bombers to blunt. This time I put up counterfire (a heavy decision as this counts as opportunity fire, any Syrian unit that uses it will be unable to fire or move <i>next</i> turn). But it turns out to be worth it, I actually shoot down one F4 Phantom! BA-BOOM!
A wide-angle view of the situation at the end of Turn 4. Originally feinting to the center, 78th Armored Brigade now pivots and faces northward to join the 81st Armored in a single titanic shove of Soviet-built steel. There are still over 150 Syrian tanks rushing up, and the range has now closed to within 1000 meters in some places (4 hexes). Also note @damon is bringing up some of his tank platoons off of Booster Ridge to the south. Flexible defense, baby!
Increasingly frantic to keep the Syrians at bay, @damon keeps calling in air strikes. Great, but remember I get 2 VP for each air strike he calls in. That’s just that much LESS air support going to other sectors that probably need it more, like the tragic 188th “Barak Brigade” – historically fighting a battle perhaps even more desperate to the south.
At last, the Syrians … open fire.
With lead Syrian elements of 85th Mechanized and 81st Armored just 750 meters from the edge of the table (upper left), Israeli reserves and Damon’s redeployed tanks off of Booster Ridge to the south are arriving just in time to seal this possible breach.
Seriously, JUST in time, I was within inches of winning the game right here.
In his haste, though, Damon moved one platoon of Sho’t Cals in the open atop t he north shoulder of Tel Hermonit ridge, and T-62s of 81st Armored blew them to kingdom come. A massive frontal fusillade also opens fire on another of Kahalani’s platoons on the top of the ridge, including a hail of dreaded AT-3 “Sagger” guided antitank missiles from that infantry battery hidden in Al Qila. I get on the 7:1 odds column on the Combat Results Table, the deadliest there is, but remember that Damon gets a +2 for hull down shielding and a +2 for Improved Positions (historically, tank firing ramps). This means a total +4 defense bonus on my d6 roll. That a very serious modifier, but I get lucky with a “2” and just barely kill that platoon. That’s two platoons down, a full quarter of Damon’s initial force.
The first crack has appeared, and I’ve got my crowbar pushing in deeper every turn . . .
But my “crowbar” is also crumbling and on fire.
Will I run out of tanks before @damon runs out of time?
February 20, 2019 at 8:46 pm #1352025@stvitusdancern one for G
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