Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

[jamesevans140Participant 2055xp 1]

Once again thank you for your reply @oriskany.

What I am noticing from your examples from Panzer Leader and kindred is that in broad terms it is quite similar to FoW just that they approach the subject in different ways. But overall they produce the same. Where they differ the most is a product of where they each sit in the Tactical Sphere. Your dealing with the effects of a platoon team effort while I deal with the team effort of the fire team or tank crew. So weapon, range and speed of a given tank type we are both concerned about. Being lower down I have to concern myself with what armour plate is facing where or if the tank had moved and at what speed if it did. Like the example you have of the Russian 45mm. In FoW if it fires at long range the target is +1 harder to hit and the armour value of the target goes up by 1. So for my Pz-3 its front armour is 5 and the side armour is 3. The 45mm has an Anti-Tank value of 7.

If the 45mm attacks at long range on the Pz-3 front the shot is very unlikely to penetrate. At short range from the side it has a good chance of penetrating. A different methods but pretty much the same result from PL.

The issue I have with FoW4 are the army lists created under broad time divisions. Such as 1942-1943. Anything from say the Germans and Russians. People new to historic wargaming but say have a 40K back ground will be comfortable with this. They choose a such as 2nd Kharkov in the first half of 42. But the armies will have Tigers, Panthers and improved T-34/76 tanks running around where they should not be, yet this would be a legal points catch up game. I think it places too much demand on the players to research their history. I believe this came about from a product survey that declared their average customer was aged 13 to 17. They wanted to play in their lunch hour and was not “big” on history. This is why we have started creating campaign primers. At least then players who are unfamiliar with the history can build a historic army list for a chosen battle or time period. @timp764 has had a brief look at the draft for Izyum and Case Blau and loved it. It presents a focused history, an overview of forces and tactics and has confidence in creating a historical army list. Is this taking things too far? My main objectives are to show a real historic Russian Army commanded by Timoshenko and not the rubber stamp normally used by Army lists and players. The second objective is to show that the German Army is not a super machine and that it was actually broken. It will show a tiny period where if not for Stalin’s purges the Germans could have easily started the end of the war on the Eastern Front in Jan 42. Again I like to see the history that is usually blotted out my the tourist trap battles presented in the historical accounts.  Perhaps in short real armies, battles and history that we are going to have a lot of fun discovering.

We had a lot of fun and amusing times with our first games of U-Boot. It plays out in real time that can be accelerated. There are 4 roles with each roll having extra duties attached. Each role supervises 4 crew of the watch to get things done. Tasks are achieved through command points or crew morale. All this is done on the board and fed into the companion app. How hard do you push the crew?

So it feels like old school AD&D and juggling things in the work place. In all it works well and gives you a taste of the pressure that the crews of a U-Boat and is fun. Much too our surprise we sunk two cargo ships to the value of 8,500 and attacked a 1250 ton escort and we somehow managed to bring a working boat back to port. We been looking for something like this for a while now beginning the only co-operation game we own.

Anyway mate have a great 4th July.