Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

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Thanks, @jamesevans140 … had a great holiday and look forward to a big weekend before flying out next Tuesday to meet up with Justin and Gerry for Historicon.  😀

But overall they [Panzer Leader and FoW] produce the same. I would agree with this overall.  They both aim for a blend of historical fidelity and playability.  The only fundamental difference is scale, and fundamental changes to the math and dynamics that come with clicking up in scale.

Flames of War (or other “pure tactical” WYSIWYG games):  You see a target.  You want to shoot a target.  You roll to hit.  That shot hits or misses, applies force against the armor, delivers a result based on did you hit, did you penetrate.

Panzer Leader (or other “command tactical” unit-driven games):  GROUP A wants to shoot at GROUP B.  A volume of fire is applied based on the strength of the unit (x) its rate of fire (x) and the length of the game turn.  There is never a roll to hit.  There is never a “shot fired.”  There is a aggregate volume applied.  In any case, %(x) men will always “hit” (y) target over (z) time period.   The variable is a scaled probability envelope measuring the range of potential effects that your volume of fire will have against the combat effectiveness of the target unit.  Units are never “destroyed” in Panzer Leader.  They are rendered combat ineffective through either collateral impact but more typically psychological damage to their will to fight, damage to their equipment, and manpower diverted to care for casualties.

This is the reason ranges in PL are usually so much shorter than people expect.  “This gun has a max effective range of 2000 meters, the hexes are 150 meters, why isn’t the range of this battery 13?”   The range measures the average threshold where 50% of the guns in that BATTERY of guns will hit 50% of the time against 50% of a target types and score telling damage 50% of the time.  The laws of averages slashes that number way, way, WAY down, but delivers a much more plausible result at the “command tactical” level.

Of course FoW handles it differently, but FOW is aimed at a very different “level of action.”

I mean, here’s the board for Omaha Beach.  Granted, this is a very large PL game.  But at 150 meters a hex, every one of those hexes is just under a 5-foot table at 15mm.  Basically, every hex is a FoW table.

The issue I have with FoW4 are the army lists created under broad time divisions.  Gotcha.  Yeah, that would be annoying.

1942-1943 … 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. Oh hell no.  I’m totally with you there.  I see what you mean about 42-43 bracket, yet when you try to play something as early as Feb-March 1942 … you’re getting tanks that didn’t debut until the second half of 1943.  A LOT CHANGED in those 14 months.

The same basic problem popped up in their new Fate of a Nation release.  Which is a great book, I spent three episodes of my Ops Center series good things about it.  But one warning I did give, it more or less lumps 1967 Six Day War with 1973 Yom Kippur War.  Notes ARE GIVEN to warn players from using 1973 equipment and units in a 1967 game, but at a “tournament” setting I can see this becoming a problem.

I have a feeling whether a game (or an edition of a game) is “historically accurate” depends more on the players than the game system or books.  I mean people used to mash up Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz, putting PzKpfw IVHs in 1941 Barbarossa scenarios just because the original boxed set didn’t have enough counters.  🙁

Again I like to see the history that is usually blotted out my the tourist trap battles presented in the historical accounts.  – we are of one mind here.  Although I feel like a bit of a hypocrite saying that after completing 25 hours of game play recreating OMAHA BEACH.  That landing’s certainly never been covered in books or movies.  😉

The U-Boot game sounds fun!  I remember seeing John and Justin play it on the site.

More Vietnam videos to edit, then Darkstar and more Normandy (British tanks later outside of Caen).  A busy weekend ahead!