SCENARIOS

[skypig53]

Question on the topic of infantry in buildings since I've yet to play an actual game.

When initially placing stands, if you wanted a stand to be "hidden" in a building would you make a note on your map and not place the actual stands on the table, revealing them only when they attack for the first time? Thus achieving an element of suprise?

[sfcgreg29er]

Ritter,

I can't take the credit for the clear plastic stands over the building. I got the idea from Ian H's website. But thanks anyhow. When are you going to update your website with some of your terrain pics snf=d techniques?? I check you siteregularly for new stuff.

skypig53,

GHQ WW2 Micro Armor the Game doesn't have ant rules for hidden placement or movement. Genrally in the rules if a unit has fired it is easier to spot because you do not suffer the terrain die roll modifier for the type of terrain a unit occupies. I guess you could come up with your own house rules for hidden placement.

fullmetaljacket,

The color of the roads is just a tan colored flat house paint. I used a black/brown wash over it to settle into the ruts. The same color is used on all the terrain pieces and then ground foam is sprikled on top.

All of my bridges are scratch built. Using styrene or cardboard.

The track is "Z" scale. I think its at 1/220 scale. Close enough I guess for 1/285.

[skypig53]

In the Modern Rules theres a depiction of a tank being close assaulted by personnel that were "hiding" in a building. Like an ambush. If your opponent knows where your stands are they're not exactly going to just meander into your trap and say "Whoops ya got me." I was just curious as I've never played before.

[Ritter]

In my rulebook, individual buildings are treated as village and city terrain. This allows a player to place units near the buildings and still get the benifits of the terrain but its not perfect. Hidden units can still be a problem...

From my rulebook...

8.5.7 Hidden Units: Nothing adds excitement to a wargame like the ‘Fog of War’. Without this aspect of play, gaming becomes much more predictable with no chance for ambushes, traps, and well thought out defenses. Incorporating this into a rulebook is difficult due to the added reliance on the players to remember unit’s locations and facing’s or have them note it on a side record. By marking hidden units locations on the map with counters, some of the excitement is lost as the enemy players will treat these counters as hostile but allowing a player to place a numbers of ‘dummy’ counters will restore the uncertainty of a unit’s location. Units that are setup Hidden are not placed onboard, rather the units location is recorded secretly on a side record and its on-map location is marked with a numbered ‘?’ Hidden Unit counter (included on the counter sheet). A player may include 1 ‘dummy’ marker for each Hidden unit allowed. Units may not be setup hidden in open terrain. Hidden status is lost anytime a Hidden unit performs any type of Impulse (although enemy units would still suffer a penalty for Hand-to-Hand vs. Hidden units). A unit also loses its Hidden status if it loses its cover. (Example: A unit hidden behind a hedge would automatically lose its Hidden status if an enemy unit moved so that its Line-of-sight no longer crossed the hedge). A player must always reveal Hidden units when an enemy unit moves (not routs) within ½ inch. A player is free to choose the Hidden units Covered Arc (if applicable) when placing the Hidden unit onboard. A player may fire at a suspected Hidden unit location but must add +2 to the Ordnance To-Hit or Infantry To-Kill rolls. The enemy player does not have to reveal the hidden units unless a Casualty Point, Break Test or Suppression result is inflicted.

9.4 LOS IN VILLAGE AND CITY TERRAIN: Due to the difficulty in placing Infantry teams inside building structures or differentiating between teams in buildings and teams outside as well as vehicles in or out of cover, use the following rules:

9.4.1 Infantry: An Infantry team (including gun crews) located in Village or City terrain is assumed to be utilizing the benefits of that terrain at all times. That is to say that they would always receive the terrain modifier to incoming fire due to the protection offered by the buildings. Tracing LOS is permitted to/from an Infantry team through a maximum of one building model. If the LOS passes through a second building, it is blocked.

9.4.2 Vehicles: Vehicles located in Village or City terrain will receive the terrain modifier for either terrain only if an enemy LOS cannot be traced to the entire vehicle. If the LOS is unrestricted and can be traced to the entire vehicle, there is no terrain modifier due to the Village or City terrain. Tracing LOS to/from a vehicle is not permitted if the LOS passes through any building.

Troy

[Mk 1]

As others on this board have already heard, my approach is to use paper chits to represent all units on the game table at the start. These chits are replaced by their corresponding models only when they are spotted under the rules. As a side issue we also use chits to represent some key terrain features or attributes (like boggy ground), and also to occasionally represent civilians.

I have found this system works well with almost any rule set that includes spotting rules. It is a very simple house-rule mod to adopt, and it really changes the fundamental character of feel of a micro-armor wargame.

Some examples:

Example 1

A unit of KVs advances in a 1943 battle. They have picked-off a StuG in the distance. Several of the KVs have been spotted. But there are two chits left, obscured from observation by slight rises in the terrain, that have not been identified yet. These two chits subsiquently seperated from the three KVs, and went a seperate direction. Were they real KVs? Accompanying infantry? Blank chits doing a feint? My opponents didn't know, until they suddenly fired at close range into the flanks of a Tiger tank, killing it.

Example 2

This is a veiw of the battlefield early in the game on a different occasion. I was to attack this board, from left to right. Just how perfect was my "God's eye view" of this battlefield? Well, yes, I have lots of suspicions of where the enemy might be. But I have no idea which chits are tanks, which are AT guns, which are infantry, which are soft vehicles, and which are blanks. That very dramatically changes the character of my game. As it turned out, 3/4 of the battle was spent trying to "develop" the situation so that I would know where to make my main effort. I did that with a subordinate command of T-70 light tanks. Once it was clear that the Panzers had deployed on the left (far side of the board, in this view) to combat my T-70s, I raced my T-34s up the right (near side of the board in this view) against a defense that consisted of only infantry, with a few AT guns.

Example 3

The blue chits on the ridge are defending Germans. The tan chits coming from the right are a mixed force of Russians. The chits in the stream determine whether it can be forded from that location up to 1/2 way to the next chit in each direction. As the attacking Russian, I needed to get a unit to the stream chits in order to read them. The one directly in front of the x-road read "no ford". I suffered a terrible traffic jam trying to keep my units in combat formation while spreading some out up and down stream to find a ford. In the meantime, some of my chits crossed right over the "not-fordable" stream. The German, with StuGs and an AOP watching from the ridge, had to figure out where to spend his time looking.


He took a chance that the chits that crossed too easily were blanks, and focused his spotting roles on the cross-road and the other side of the stream. He spotted several T-34s and some horse limbers. His AOP called down all his available arty on the cross roads, whacking the two 57mm AT guns that had unlimbered (and that he had not even managed to spot, but had surmised by seeing the unlimbered horses). In the meantime, the chits he has assumed to be blanks turned out to be cavalry, that crested the ridge two turns later and chopped up his AOP.

Now how about an example that shows just how much hidden movement can change the nature of a game ...

Example 4

This is a view of a France 1940 scenario we did at a gaming con a year and a half ago. We are looking from the German side of the board, towards the French defenses. We take no measures to guarantee a balanced game. Niether side knows the other's forces. In this battle the Germans had an overwhelming advantage, with two full Panzer companies, a recon company, and guns in support, against my French force of one platoon of Renault tanks (3 R35s and an R35bis), a platoon of Panhard 178 armored cars, a company of infantry, and a battery of 75mm guns without radios for AOP or coordination between units.

But if you were the German CO, what would YOU assume of the defenses, looking from this side?

The Panzers advance boldly on the right, while you can see the recon (mostly chits) picking their way forward on the left using all the terrain cover they can. There was one particular French chit that was driving them crazy. It was going back and forth along a transverse road, moving away every time they advanced, and moving back every time they halted. Here you can see it on the road behind the woods, in the distance.

As the French CO, I chose to engage the Panzers at range with my Panhards (hidden in the yellow bushes on the small rise on the German's right). This forced the two German players to deploy, and to unmask the great majority of their forces to me.


But it came at a high cost. At 1,500 meters, 30 Panzers fire with a lot more lethality than 4 Panhards. I had thought my mobility would allow me to take the chance, opening fire to learn what I could, and then backing out of danger. I was half-right.


In the meantime, on the German's left, some flak guns were pushed forward to lay an ambush for the mysterious chit that was doing the back-and-forth.


Don't know how impressed any of the fly-boys may have been, but the poor old poilus found the deployment of German flak very impressive!

Once the guns were positioned and still for a bit, they were able to finally spot their adversary ...


... a terrified farmer, who was mercillessly beating his old nag to get him out of the way, running alternatly from the advancing Germans on one side, and the fall of their tank-fire on the other side. Poor fellow could not make up his mind which way to run, and his back-and-forth was finally revealed. The German commanders then went through a fair bit of intramural arguing about being over-cautious in the face of phantom units. So the recon was ordered to get a move on!


Unhappily for them, they got a move on right into the fire-trap of a battery of French 75s! And so "get a move on" turned into "run for cover" with a "mach schnell!" behind it.


But recon units dashing about helter-skelter on the battlefield are subject to all kinds of surprises. Like rushing right into the laps of a waiting tank platoon. Renault tanks aren't much to write home about in terms of mobility or gun-power, but hey, if paper-thin armor comes right up and jumps into your lap...? Of course, there isn't one gun in a German recon company that can scratch the heavy armor of even the smallest and lightest of French tanks.

At that point the Germans threw in the towel. Their recon had been crushed, and the only information they had developed was that whichever way they turned, they faced heavy guns or heavy armor. They concluded that they had insufficient forces to undertake their mission. Even though in fact they had an overwhelming advantage, their attack was called off.


Sorry if I've been a bit long-winded. But I wanted to demonstrate how important hidden units can be to the character of a game. The process of combat is not one of calulating results from perfect information. So I don't want my wargames to be. Rather, I want the stress of imperfect knowledge and the challenge of developing the battlefield. I want to know why recon, and reserves, are so important. I want to be forced to make decisions on half-information, and test my fortitude in the face of the unknown.

[thetourist]

great post!

a question or two.

do you run a game with a game master so to speak. Someone who knows where everything is and referees?

if not, the chits like the ford chits in the river and civilians, are those randomly placed?

can you tell us a little bit more about pregame set-up. how do you determine what forces you and your opponent can deploy?

thanks!

[Mk 1]

thetourist told us:
do you run a game with a game master so to speak. Someone who knows where everything is and referees?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Often I am the game master. In those cases, I am also an active player, but I take a subordinate role on one side. I receive orders from the overall CO of the side I'm on, and try to implement those orders quite regardless of my knowledge of the other side's forces.

Other times, each side just chooses on their own what they will take for the battle. I've gamed with a few guys several times, and we know each other well enough that I know I'm not going to run into a full up-to-strength Tiger II Abteilung with my T-60s.

(But then, there WAS that battle where we both agreed it would be mostly infantry, and yet when my infantry got over the bridge they were confronted with 5 PanzerJager Tiger "Ferdinands" . )

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer to win, or at least fight well, with the underdog force. Or to occasionally have an overwhelming advantage and watch the other guy try to figure out his own "better try to save my @ss" goals and objectives. I'm competitive, but I don't get my jollies from bullying folks in a wargame. I get my jollies by experiencing a variety of circumstances and figuring out how to do the best I can in each.

if not, the chits like the ford chits in the river and civilians, are those randomly placed?

Can be. In the case I showed above, I took a stack of chits with "ford" and "no ford" on them, shuffled them up, and spread them along the river.

On other occasions, as the defending force, or as the game master, I've placed terrain chits in specific places. That's kind of necessary with swampy or boggy terrain. Hard to fool yourself in placement of chits for that.

can you tell us a little bit more about pregame set-up. how do you determine what forces you and your opponent can deploy?

I do all kinds of odd things in pre-game set-up. Guys who play in my games learn to expect surprises.

The civie in the wagon was a good one. But here are some other examples:

I've used "robot" civies on several occasions. I operate them on simple algorithms. Like the wagon was running on: "Stay on the road. See tanks coming, move away. See gunfire striking, move away" So it went back and forth, every time the tanks moved, versus every time they fired.


On one occasion, a modern scenario, I had a couple of civvie vehicles moving in front of a column as they advanced. They were just fleeing. My rule was simple ... as soon as they reached a NATO unit, the NATO player could control them. Until that time, I would move them towards the NATO baseboard along the roads, but have them turn away (or stop if no turn was available) any time a NATO unit fired or was fired upon. It is unsettling to see several single chits advancing brazenly, while whole swarms of chits maneuver carefully under cover. And even after they ARE spotted, those who know me worry ... maybe its a car/van/truck full of Spetznaz? (But none of them were. Just fleeing civvies.)

On another occasion I had a cop at an intersection who told a column of tanks + IFVs that they could not pass. Had a die-role for the player who came upon the cop:
1, 2 = unresolved. No moving, wait for next higher unit of command to arrive.
3, 4 = no pass. Try another route.
5, 6 = WTF? Shoot the SOB and move on.

For issues other than civvies, in another modern scenario I let my opponent make "one meaningful change" to the battleboard just prior to the first game turn. I was playing Soviets, and the supposition was that Soviet maps were never quite as good, and sometimes missed important things. I figured he'd move some buildings or shift a road. But he moved a mountain! My helo assault was using the mountain to mask their approach, and so the LZ moved by almost a Km from where it was supposed to be. Messed up my whole battle plan!

I sometimes offer "intel" to both sides. One favored way of doing this is to create some complex terrain (with chits scattered about), and then write-up some notes with "a villager told you..." information. As long as you keep making your die role, you get to take and read another note, then another, etc. Some contain critical information ("a villager told you that there is a good ford 1 Km north of the old bridge"). But at least one or two of the notes contain misleading information, and some may contain completely spurious information ("a villager told you you will surely loose this war" or "the Fuhrer offers congratulations on your birthday"). In this way even I, as game master, have little idea what the other side does or does not know.

Sometimes I play as an un-identified third party. Two sides, plus me as a third. Neither side knows what my units are, nor who's side I'm on, until I go in to action. (Sometimes even then it is not clear. )

I view rules as a starting point from which a game is made. With a little time and attention I can get pretty imaginative in building my games.

[1ComOpsCtr]

Military Operations in Urban Terrain...

Conducting wargames in cities is difficult without a judge or referee or a system where the defender can remain hidden until he either decides to attack or his forces are discovered by the actions of the attacker or through intelligence gathering. Current technological advances gives the modern attacker a slight advantage with the use of electronic and heat sensing equipment, but the true advantage is still with the defender. From a wargame sense it can take a substantial numerical advantage to clear a town or city that is well defended.

As an example I will recount an action from a previous Marine exercise...



You will note the two M-84 AFVs advancing along highway 17 in the lower left corner of the picture. These two vehicles were part of the advanced guard of the JNA, whose commander believed the locals would view AFVs as unstoppable and allow them to establish a blocking position at or near the main intersection in the heart of the city. Just beyond the picture's view were several APCs and additional AFVs moving to establish control over the MSR into central Bosnia.

As a construction note: The Hexes are Geo-Hex, the RR track in by Heroes & Ros, the buildings are by a variety of manufacturers including GHQ, the vehicles are also by a variety of makers primarily in "Z" scale, as are the civilians which you can't see in this view but who are there throughout the scene.

The Bosnian defenders had recently received US made M-60A3s and M-113 ACAV AFVs but were not fully trained though they did manage to fight the JNA to a standstill with the help of a few Croat T-55s, a couple of T-34s, and an M-10 or two and lots of militia against the JNAs trained troops, but the nature of a built up area's natural defenses accounts for their primary advantage.

All-in-all during this action the JNA (Yugoslav National Guard) lost 6 M-84s, five T-55s, a dozen APCs, and 55 infantry KIA, 112 infantry WIA, and 61 infantry including the local commander captured. The Bosnian/Croat defenders lost 1 M-60, 3 M-113s, 2 T-55s, two T-34/85s, and one M-10, plus 40 infantry KIA and 66 infantry WIA. The JNA never got to the center of town in force, and were not able to disrupt the transportation of refugees to the coast by UNHCR with the help of the USMC, who did carefully lend a hand with some artillery counterbattery against two JNA 120mm mortar positions that were shelling the refugee camp. The Marines had 1 WIA, a corpsman at the camp.



The UN lost two aid workers in the same attack and the UNHCR's Mercedes. 32 Refugees were injured in the attacks but all were evacuated the the USN's facilities on ship.


I use this picture only as an example of the detail to which games/simulations can go to draw the players/participants down to the level of the figures on the board. When you, as a player, can see every detail your would expect to see in the real world it makes the pressure more real, and your decision-making experiences important to you and your commander as a training tool.



This picture was not of this specific exercise but it does indicate one in progress over much of the same terrain... You can see the on board company staff receiving their troops (figures in the green boxes in their hands), which are about to be placed on the table as they deploy from their "Frogs". The four Marines directly to the left (pictures left) are the company NCOs who are acting the part of the platoon leaders for this exercise while their officers are working in the Battalion CP to gain experience at that level before having to do it for real. The Major to the picture's right is the Air Ops Officer

The simulation memtioned took four hours actual time and was conducted in a space that was 10 feet long by 7 feet wide, almost all of it urban terrain, which has been seen in other postings on this site or may be viewed on our web site. Just for reference the road upon which the M-84s are entering in the top picture is the road exiting the board one third or the way from the lower right corner of the last picture. If you look close you can see the grain elevator and the RR station hotel that is across Route 17 from the station building in the top picture.

http://www.commandoperationscenter.com

Will
ComOpsCtr

[Xveers]

This is some scenery I knocked together for a possible scenario I'm working on. It's still in the formative stages but I wanted to see how about half of it looks... It's being run at a local game store so I'll have enough space to deploy the entire map.

I've also trimmed the pictures so that they fit on the forum neatly.

An overview of the North part of the map, centering on the railroad junction.


Detail of the Northwest corner, with the river, bridge, and swamp. The Bridge was a bridge extension done by CinC (I think). I hacksawed one of the supports to create a pair of abutments, then painted and gave the structure a blackwash to dirty it up. The river's a lot brighter than normal (due to flash on this photo) so the river details are more noticable. It's actual colors are more along the lines of the first picture.


Grounds eye view of the north end of the village and the guard tower. The grain elevator's from JR miniatures, and the tower itself is from CinC. Inside if one squints, are a pair of german troopers.

[1ComOpsCtr]

Xveers,

Very nice pictures, with one exception...

You need to shrink your photos down to a size that makes viewing them possible without having to move so far to one side that you need to move the screen position bar which makes reading the words/lines difficult.

Your photo software should have a "Photo size" function. A width of 10" or less works really well on this forum because of the limited width.

Thanks for your quality workmanship. Please see if you can repost a slightly smaller sized photo...

Thanks,

Will

[1ComOpsCtr]

Xveers,

Thanks for shrinking the pictures. I am sorry you had to crop the photos, but I understand you wanted the detail to show above the need to show the full view. Sometimes you can do a detail photo as well as a wide angle to show both views.

When you apply a base paint coat to the top of a hex it helps to paint the sides of the hex at the same time. Doing so will help eliminate the white areas (if you want to do that) and make the surface color more uniform. It isn't necessary to continue the top finish down the sides though it helps to continue a road or water coloring about half way down the side of the hex, again for a more uniform appearance.

I hope you will continue posting your terrain pictures. Everyone's pictures provide an insight into the different ways to achieve the same goal: a better wargame!

Will

[Xveers]

CompOps,

Thanks for the compliments! I appreciate it, since I don't consider myself a 'pro' in scenery at all... As for painting the sides of the hexes, I'm aware of it but I haven't found the time to do them. My proccess is essensialy: basecoat the hex, sprinkle ground cover onto wet paint, let dry, then use fixative to secure ground cover. With that production pattern, it's not possible for me to paint the sides without them becoming covered with groundcover. When I get into my final exams in december, I'll probably paint the sides of the hexes (at that point I'll be able to take over most of my living room and do them all in one large batch).

I don't mind the request to re-size my pictures (the way the forums make you upload the pics elsewhere makes it particularily easy), and I feel I've managed to make everything that I wanted to be shown to fit in.

As another aside, I glosscoat all my units and buildings first, often giving a few coats of gloss before I apply a light dullcote copy to kill the shine. I find the gloss is far harder-wearing and more forgiving with a green hand.

[sfcgreg29er]

I have been thinking for a while about creating a scenario where US forces break thru enemy lines and rescue POW's in a POW camp and return to friendy lines. This will be along the lines of the actual event where Patton sent a force to rescue his son. I found a Panzer Leader scenario on line from which I can determine forces.

Having said this, I have to first build a POW camp.

Below are some pics of a sample guard tower and perimeter fence which I scratch built using styrene. The fence is regular ol' black vinyl house screen which was dry brushed light gray and washed with some streaks of rust. The fence posts are 1mm dia. styrene rod.







Also a pic of an infantry support stand with a 60mm mortar crew and BAR team.



I've started designing the POW barracks and hope to have them done within the next few weeks. I figure the POW camp will measure around 6" x 8" and have a guard tower on each corner.

[sfcgreg29er]

Got started this weekend on some more guard towers for the POW camp. I'm making a total of six towers.

Just need some paint...


Close up...


More to follow.....

[sfcgreg29er]

Started some of the barracks...


Close up...


Plan to make about eight barracks, guard barrack, dispensary, and camp HQ building.

More to follow...

Here is the link for the Panzer Leader Scenario. Its entitled "Operation Rescue"
http://www.rainbownerd.com/wargaming/pbstuff.html