Reply To: Historical and Modern Wargaming – Where the "Fluff" is Real Life

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Good afternoon @phaidknott – I’ll have to re-watch the Fallujah vidoe and make sure I didn’t misrepresent myself, but Medics in F0F don’t actually “heal” (downshift) any wounds at all.  They just activate a different wound table, which only slightly bumps the chances for an “OK” result, and slightly mitigates the chances for a KIA.  They don’t technically “heal” anyone, just provide a slightly better table for the dice rolls when it comes to assess how bad wounds actually are during the First Aid check (actually would be better alled a “wound assessment” phase).  Medics / corpsmen rush about, providing  immediate stabilization and triage for anyone is reach.  So I’m cool with the way they behave in FoF, especially given the ground scale of a 20mm game.

I take your point though, note in larger scale games like Valor & Victory Modern Expansion, the medic TEAM (a two man team, lead and assistant) can effect a single UNIT in a turn (which again, could be up to four men in a single hex).

The Marines were just getting some good rolls on their corpsman, and note they still lost the game by a comfortable margin.

FOO and FAO isn’t really a thing in modern Marine forces, at least not on this command echelon level.  NCOs are trained and briefed on this, and anyone close enough to the radio (PRC-77A1s in my day) can call it in, depending on who else is present.

Nowadays, a Marine rifle squad is no less than 15 men, with an assistant squad leader and a SSO (Squad Systems Operator), as well as three fireteam leaders and the original squad leader, bringing the total people who could possible call in a company or even an assigned battalion sized asset up to six personnel in a single squad.

FAOs / FOOs are largely a gaming convention (I’m looking at you, Flames of War), and when they appear in real military units we’re talking about brigade / division / or even corps-level assets, which this game certainly didn’t include (again, that Blackhawk and A-10 were there for narrative and “glamor shot” purposes).  🙂

There really weren’t any support missions in this game.  The Blackhawk and A-10 you’ll notice didn’t really do anything at the end, I just wanted to get the models on the table for some photos.

There wasn’t a “platoon” on the table.  That was a single Marine rifle squad with a couple attchments (SSgt with a PFC driver, GySgt with a LCpl driver) and a Navy Corpsman.  Nothing close to a full platoon (about 45+ men).  So if it would be “only one chap in the platoon” – there wouldn’t be any support missions at all.  Which is cool, in that F0F game there were no support missions.  🙂

Hope that cklears things up.

I take your point, though.  In our Valor & Victory games I usually only allow Leaders to call in support missions (usually 4 or so per company).

In our Panzer Leader games, any combat unit can call in a fire mission because that’s a platoon / battery based game, every single counter on the table has at least one 2nd Lieutenant a a staff NCO, up to a dozen regular NCOs.