Valor & Victory - 1918 (German v. French Megagame)

Okay, continuing the project to add British infantry units, support weapons, and officers to further expand my Valor & Victory: 1918 Great War edition – to go with US Army, German Army, US Marines, and German Stormtroopers already created.

In the previous post, we looked at creating the unit templates in Photoshop, how they’ll be used in either virtual tabletops or printed out and cut into physical counters for traditional play, and how the base rifle squads and half-squads are created.

Now we’re starting officers and support weapons to round out the rest of this force.

So using the same Photoshop layer methodology as previously laid out, and sticking to the general design template as other counters familiar to Valor & Victory players, we start working up British officers.

Again, sourced an image.  I found lots with the British officer standing passively, puffing on pipes with one hand resting passively on the hilt of a sword.  But I wanted to use this one that was a little more dynamic with his Webley revolver.  It was pointing the wrong way, but reversing the image was simple enough.  The only side-effect is that now all my British officers will be left-handed.  😀

Also, some slight alterations to color temperature, contrast, and resolution so his uniform would more closely match those in the rifle squad and half-squad templates.

Lastly, leaders in Valor & Victory are named.  Usually these are just slapped with generic names that “sound” like they come from the nation in question.  But some people on BoW have gotten a kick out of having units named for them, a tradition I’m continuing here.  For instance, this company commander is named for @commodorerob.  😀  I should note that the “-2” at upper left is not a penalty.  Quite the opposite, this is the amount by which he reduces the difficulty of certain tasks attempted by squads, half-squads, and weapons crews with which he is stacked.  So -2 is a pretty solid commander (the best, actually, in the base Valor & Victory sets).

So on top of my -2 “captains,” I usually make up about x5 as many -1 “Lieutenants.”  Any volunteers from among our British community members?

😀  It will mean “service in the trenches,” fair warning.

Keeping with the same methodology, we start chewing away at support weapons.  First up we have the 3-inch Stokes mortar.  The “H” is the weapon class for movement – these are mobile but half-squad crews cannot use their own firepower and firepower of their weapon in the same turn, and they slow down any unit that carries them by 1 movement point.  The “6” is the firepower, the 12 is the max range, the small 2 is the minimum range.    These are mortars, after all.

The A is their armor piercing class (“A” is the lowest possible, but it does register) – although I’m not sure how often these things will be used against German tanks or “armored” bunkers.

The Lewis Gun, light support weapon, able to be carried and used without penalty by squads or half squads (even leaders I think, although I think it replaces their “1” APFP value, I have to check that – you can’t fire that Lewis Gun and your Webley revolver at the same time. 😀

Vickers Mk1 heavy machine gun.  Note it has the same “H” movement class as the mortar.  However, they have no minimum range and no armor piercing value.

Last but not least, the British grenades.  These don’t have an actual firepower value, but act as a -1 benefit modifier for assaults, point-blank antipersonnel fire, and opportunity fire against enemy infantry movement (again, point-blank only, hexes in these games are generally 30 yards).  They are “expendably support weapons” – your list has a given amount (usually 6-12) and you use them as you go.  Once your force has used all your grenades in the game, though, that’s it for them.

So this will wrap us up for British army units in Valor & Victory at the moment.  Next steps will be to create print sheets for them, print a few, mount and cut them.  Hopefully I should have them on the table as soon as this weekend!  😀