Reply To: Just sniffin' glue! (UJWC)

[oriskany 60771xp 4]

@ceppie – Ah, damn it.  That’s another typo.  Yes, that should read M-577, not 557.  Why do I bother?

Yeah, these counters are RIDDLED with mistakes, the whole “game” is literally 2 days old.  I built these armies in two hours Sunday and played with them live on Twitch that same day.

No M2 on the TOC:  I supposed you could put one on the counter.  I didn’t.

Yeah, there’s a lot of issues in these counters.  Fundamentally, some of them use Arab-Israeli Wars math and some of them use Panzer Leader math, if that makes any sense.

Note the American infantry have a movement of 2, while the Iraqis have a 1.  This is to reflect my Panzer Leader conversion to 150m hexes instead of 250 meter hexes, but I never retrofitted back to the Iraqi counters which are ripped straight out of Egyptians published in Arab-Israeli Wars.

And as you note, the Iraqi infantry have a 6 in range, the Americans have a 2*.  This 2* is a Panzer Leader rule, 5.56mm ammo (short) with 1/2 firepower available out to double the distance.  So 8-I-2 along with  4-I-4, in a manner of speaking.

Regarding the defense, I don’t even consider body armor a factor.  Not in a game where you’re usually shooting 25mm Bushmasters, 12.7mm DsHK, and 120mm sabot rounds at each other.

However, the Iraqis should be knocked down a bit.  Again, they are ripped right out of the Egyptians in 1973, whose infantry were hard as nails.  Not so much the Iraqis.

Defense in infantry units has to do with the size of the platoon and the training of the men.  Now American Army platoons are pretty small, but they are well-trained and yes… at least have some body armor.  We should keep them at 8.  8 is what tough German platoons get in WW2, Commonwealth platoons, etc, USMC platoons, etc.  US Army and British platoons usually get a 6, again, not a reflection of their “toughness” but the generally smaller size of the unit.

So the Iraqis will probably knocked down to a 6 DF or so.  The shouldn’t be as tough as American platoons.  The platoons are roughly the same size, but the Americans are well-trained, volunteers, better-equipped, and oh yeah, haven’t had the shit bombed out of them for six weeks.

That said, I don’t want to jack up the Americans past 8.  That gets obscene.  I hate when games give super-high values to units on a subjective basis.

This also leaves 10 DF available for USMC units.  Again, not because they’re tougher.  I don’t like subjective reasoning in my games, as much as I would love to give the USMC killer values just because “I said so.”  Rather, the Marines organize into 13-man squads instead of 9-man squads, so we’re looking at 55+ man platoons instead of 40+ man platoons.

The Iraqis will need a 2 in movement.

As far as the ranges go, I’ll have to make up my mind whether to go with the AIW or PL model.  The AIW model will give the Americans a 4, leave the Iraqis at 6.  Yes, Iraqi units should have a longer “I” class range, they’re firing all 7.62mm COMBLOC and not 5.56mm NATO / .223 Remington.  If I go Panzer Leader model, the Iraqis will go down to a 3* (RF3, with 1/2 value available to 6).

I’ll probably do the latter.  I like the shorter ranges, and the “range bracket” nuance.  It shows how SOME weapons that are baked into the platoon can reach to a longer distance, but not all (M60s, M240s, PKMs, so on).