Bucha, Ukraine - 27 Feb 2022 - 15mm
Battle Carry Sabot - V0.1 Playtest
Yesterday afternoon saw the first playtest of the new Battle Carry Sabot modern tank skirmish system. The battle chosen to emulate for this “maiden voyage” was 73 Easting, fought on 26 February 1991 during the Desert Storm and the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
Rasmus had the Americans (Eagle Troop, 2 Sq/2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Captain H.R. McMasters, commanding) while I took the Iraqis (elements, 18th Mechanized Brigade, Tawalkana Republican Guards Division, Major S. Mohamed commanding).
The scale of the system is about 1:2000 (1 inch = 50 meters). This would be about 0.75mm in wargaming terms, a large tank like an Abrams would measure about 1/4 inch (6mm) gun barrel included. Even then our 96″ x 60″ (8 foot by 5 foot virtual table) could barely contain some of the engagement ranges.
Nevertheless the playtest went pretty well. I think I plotted the Iraqi minefield a little too deep, and I’d like to tweak the to-hit and penetration numbers of the “silver bullet” APFDDS-DU rounds on the M256 120mm main guns on the Abrams a little, and completely overhaul the the ballistic values on the HE-AT rounds. But the TOWs on the M3 cavalry tracks performed perfectly, as did the predictably terrible Iraqi “Asad Babil” license-built T-72 clones and BMP-1 APCs.
Really like the look of these rules for micro scale games (I like playing with my toys). How well would they work a couple of decades earlier, say around 1973ish?
Uh oh, @damon … sounds like someone wants to go back to the Golan Heights and the Valley of Tears … 😀 My only “concern” (and it’s not a problem at all, just a piece oif work that would have to be done) is the game might hvae to be “recalibrated” to broaden its applicable timeframes. So right now, if a T-62 gets a “+1” and a T-72 gets a “+2”, and M-60A1 might get a “+3” and a M1A1 would get a “+4.” That works great for 1991. Ratcheting back to earlier decades would be possible, but now the… Read more »
I’m that predictable, huh?
Ok, yes, I am that predictable…
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Would starting from the last generation of all steel tanks (Centurion, T-55, M47 or 48, Leopard 1, etc) be valid? That would take it back to the sixties and the older kit still in service (Sherman, T-34, SU-100, Pnzr IV, etc) could all be given a blanket ‘up shit creek’ armour value without making the uber-modern stuff too uber?
@damon – definitely doable. In fact, the suggestion in well-timed, since I’ll be recalibrating NATO 120mm HEAT and sabot rounds anyway. What I’ll probably do is work up a “master root sheet” for tank guns not unlike rail guns in Darkstar, where all the general gun types and ammo types I expect to use will be in one big list in a back-page spreadsheet somewhere, where I can compare and tweak them all at once to make sure all the inter-relationships are the way I want them … then copy paste these values into gaming stat lines as we expand… Read more »