"Your FOW - House Rules" Topic

I want to do a historical OOB para drop/glider landing scenario for a local game-day and want to change things up a bit for the regular players. I'd like to hear your house rules and rule modifications on things like alternating platoon activation to Op fire to para-drop dispersement…and anything in between. Whatever you felt improved the game, and specifics appreciated.

btw – we already exclude the "warriors" and some other nationality specific rules.

Thanks!!

US Rangers are veteran at our tables. Always.

The para-drop rules are pretty good… As good as any others out there, but we have tweaked them to let the off-board teams come back on-board relatively quickly. Using the PBI reinforcement rules to determine if/when a unit can come back.

Don.

Stug's and other Sp guns have a 90' field of fire.
Ambushes need to be drawn on a map of the table before the game.

Hidden movement using markers with dummies.

Alternating platoon activation (I get one you get one) instead of I-GO-U-GO

Extra,

How to you test for spotting when using hidden movement markers?

Thanks

I'm sorry as a rabid fanboy I have to tell you that no alterations or changes are allowed in 'the hobby'

Bill please kill this thread.

If a platoon does not move or shoot in its turn it can go on 'overwatch' – this is signified by placing a marker on it. This represents it observing and waiting for an opportunity target. When an enemy platoon moves that the platoon on overwatch wishes to fire at the platoon on overwatch fires once, irrespective of its RoF. The results are applied. If the enemy moving platoon chooses to continue moving after the first shot has happened the platoon on overwatch can fire the rest of its RoF. The platoon on overwatch looses its marker once it has fired.

Some good ideas so far! Keep 'em coming!

@The GM – what are the PBI reinforcement rules like? I thought about having an off board drop zone with some type of dispersement roll to get a % "gathered" at the rondezvous (starting at a very small %) then having him roll D10 or D20 each turn and add that to his % of a total force he could bring on the table…but once committed that's what he got. Mine sounds more complicated, would be interested to know how PBI does it.

@EC – I like the alternating platoon idea. Do you just let the player pick one to activate or do you use a token or card draw for a specific platoon that gets to activate? Have you used it with more than one player per side…does it slow the game down much?

Extra, do the guys you game with know you refer to them as dummies?

Hello All:

Here in a nutshell are my FoW mods (e-mail me at extracrispy at deepfriedhappymice dot com and I'll send you a draft of them).

(1) Hidden movement.

Each platoon gets replaced with a hidden unit marker. Markers come in 3 varieties: AFV, Infantry, Other. My Soviet markers are all T-34s. Could be a KV-1, could be a T-60. Come closeand find out! My "other" markers are usually trucks. Players get 50% extra dummies, their choice. Units may spot out to twice the range of their primary weapon. I haven't fully worked out the chart yet but base chance is 50%. Decrease for range, cover, slow moving etc. Increase for open ground, moving fast etc. Good troops get a positive DRM too. Once spotted you either remove the marker or put ou the platoon.

(2) Alternating Platoons.

Roll for initiative. Winner may go first or pass initiative to opponent. Move then shoot then assault with one platoon. Then just take turns going back and forth. I also work it so if one side has more units they get occasional 2-platon goes. For example 12 Soviet units face off vs. 8 German. Soviets would do platoons 2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1 with Germans doing just one each time.

(3) Opportunity Fire

A unit may withhold fire. As the enemy moves the unit may all some or none of its ROF against valid enemy targets. So an HMG with ROF 6 may allocate 2 dice to the first target, one to the next and so on, so long as it only fires 6 dice that turn. To do this activate the platoon and declare it is on Op Fire for the rest of the turn. Once on Op Fire unit is assumed to remain in that status in future turns unless it does something else . Units in Op Fire may not move though they may pivot to face a target.

EC

TT – PBI reinforcement for non-motorized units goes:
"Each turn, roll a D6 per stand in the unit, each six is one stand that is in the "marshaling area". The owner of the unit can decide which turn to bring them in, but any that haven't made it to the marshaling area are lost. To make this move just a bit faster, the first turn the owner rolls an extra D6 per stand.

Very similar to what you're doing, but the owner gets to choose which stands are brought in, and can watch them grow in the marshaling area.

Am I making sense? ;-)

Don.

1) Tanks which successfully remount after being bailed count as having moved for RoF purposes.

2) A tank platoon which takes five hits (or one artillery hit) from weapons which can hurt them (i.e. there is a possibility of a kill or a bail) are pinned exactly like infantry, with all the same effects.

I try and avoid house rules for Flames of War. Not because I think that the game is perfect but because on of its biggest strengths is that it is as close to a "universally known" WWII ruleset as is likely to exist and playing with the rules as written makes it easier to play with different people without thinking too much about what rules I am using this time.

That said, the alternating activation sounds interesting…

We don't refer to stunned armor as "bailed out" since this canotes leaving the vehicle physically, which would be insane in a firefight unless instant death were the alternative (the vehhicle is on fire for example). The effect is stunned, not jump out.

Having served in the armored cav I can tell you the last place I want to be in a tank battle is standing near the outside of a tank!

J

"Disabled" or "Suppressed" would have been much better terms than "Bailed Out" -- I was some what surprised they didn't change that term in the new edition of the rules.

GM – Yep, thanks!!

Scott – Both of those sound really good.

Thanks guys!

There are too many first-person accounts of British, American, and even German tank crews bailing out to dismiss the effect. Keep in mind that most tank crews in WWII recognized that there was always something on the battlefield capable of destroying the vehicle.

So if the tank had its bell rung pretty well, and especially if there was a noticeable effect (immobilization, engine failure, smoke), the crew would often bail out until they could assess the situation and determine it was safe to remount the vehicle (or repair as needed) and continue the mission. What they were *most* concerned about is that a stationary tank draws the most fire!!!

And I've seen the same thing on modern (well, M60A1) tanks. We were conducting a live platoon night battle run at (then) Camp Irwin. I was a company XO and running as safety officer on the right flank. This was my old platoon, and A32 suddenly blazed in a gout of flame. The tube had failed (improperly borescoped) and a training HEAT projectile had exited the tube about two-thirds of the way to the muzzle, opening up the top of the tube like a can of mackerels.

Following Newton's Third Law of Motion, when the projectile exited *up*, the muzzle slammed *down". As the muzzle slammed *down*, the breech slammed *up*, smacking the coincidence rangefinder, breaking it in half, with the two halves falling into the turret.

Before the rangefinder halves had hit the turret floor, the gunner was up and out the TC's hatch (even though the TC was in it), and the entire crew unassed within probably two seconds. They had no idea what had really happened, but suspected they'd been hit by another tank's main gun round, and weren't planning to stay around for the next round!

In any case, leaving a tank that had been hit was not considered insane during WWII, as it was actually a common survival mechanism.

And the only FoW house rule I have is that you don't play them rules in my house!

(No, not really. We've played enough to know how they work. To paraphrase Matthew Quigley, "I said I never had much use for them. Never said I didn't know how to use them.")

Allen

There are too many first-person accounts of British, American, and even German tank crews bailing out to dismiss the effect.

The silly bit about FoW is not that crews bail out – it's that they get back in again.

Page 76 of the latest FoW rules states.

A tank is a thick metal shell filled with flammable fuel and explosive ammunition and their crews like being alive as much as the next guys. So when they hear a round penetrate their tank they usually jump out as fast as possible.

I love the idea that crews "hear" that their tank has been penetrated by a shot – presumably the bits of metal flying all around the crew compartment are not enough of a clue. But once their tank had been penetrated the crew would certainly have got out the place as fast as possible.

After they're sure the tank isn't going to burn they'll get back in and carry on.

And later

Mostly, bailed out means that the crew have abandoned their tank and are waiting around to see if it's going to explode, or whether it's safe to get back in

Does anyone really believe that tank crews hung around the battlefield and then got got back into vehicles that had been penetrated by AT rounds? That's penetrated, not just hit.

The idea that this is what usually happened when a tank's armour was penetrated is just ludicrous.

Getting back in to tanks like that is a job for the recovery crews – after nightfall or the next day.

As always I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary.

There are a couple accounts listed in Panzer Aces II where they got out, then when the accompanying tanks took out the threat they got back in, or they got out, fixed the track under fire, and got back in… So it's not unheard of.

Don.

See "Use of Tanks" here:

link

Allen

See numbered para 3 here:

link

Allen

Allen: both those quotes refer to to tanks being hit by something. No evidence of any rounds penetrating.

I'm quite prepared to believe in crews getting back into tanks that were hit.

well you will always find accounts of extrodinary things, and the reason is because they are extrodinary. If one considers the vast number of tanks shot to peices in WWII, then one is presumptuos to extrapolate a dozen instances to tens of thousands of cases.

Having seen REAL tanks hit with REAL rounds in REAL situations, I can atest that if one survived one pressed on the gas petal. And if one were within a knocked out vehicle and alive, one got out as fast as possible and did NOT return or even stand near such a vehicle. I've seen a tank that burned for two days; not something I would bail back into.

And I've, BTW, never seen a vehicle "penetrated" that also had survivors. Usually things like the turret popping 50m in the air is a signal that the tank was destroyed.

Now I would agree with the bail out notion if it were accompanied with perminant issues like a thrown track, or a disabled gun, but in such cases no one would get back in during the battle.

Believe what you like. The evidence is there in the historical record.

Allen

I think perhaps we're talking in circles in our little thread-jack. I am not a fan of their wording either, but the fact is that most wargames have this mechanism under some name.

So I let it go. It could be better done, but honestly there are plenty of cases of "they should have shot but didn't, so we shot 'em again!" in the historical record, and cases of "we bailed out, when all was well we got back in, not wanting to wait for the recovery team." So I'm willing to use their terminology, it doesn't really matter.

Don.

I like the idea that A.N. Other effectivley nicked (stole) yhe Tiger –
"Shortly afterward, while the tank still was being shelled, a German soldier returned to the tank and drove it off. About 10 minutes later, the remainder of the crew made a dash along the same route their tank had taken."

Imagine trying to explain to your CO that someone stole your tank. LOL.

The evidence is there in the historical record.

You have produced evidence that crews may have bailed out their tanks and got back in again ooccasionally.

But no evidence that this happened after the tanks had been "penetrated" as they say in the FoW rules.

Do you really believe believe that this jumping in and out of tanks was a regular occurrence, as it is in FoW.

Do YOU really believe that your tanks are travelling 4 Km per inch? Or that any game that puts artillery on the table is to scale for its figures?

There is a certain point in all games where you suspend disbelief.

Don.

Imagine trying to explain to your CO that someone stole your tank. LOL.

heard a story of one Coy that came back with one more APC than they had when they rotated in.

There is a certain point in all games where you suspend disbelief.

This point comes very early indeed with some sets of rules.

It's just a mechanism to indicate a tank is temporarily not playing, you can call it supressed, stunned, bailed or whatever.

Flaming Monkey – I assume you are referring to more recent tank combat, with modern 105s and 120s making kills. The main tank guns for most of WW2 were small 37-50mm guns firing solid AP or APHE with minimum bursting charges, so the behind the armour effects are much less dramatic.

It's just a mechanism to indicate a tank is temporarily not playing, you can call it supressed, stunned, bailed or whatever.

You can call it anything you like, but the rule writers have deliberately chosen to call this state "bailed out" and then go on to justify their decision with designers notes that read:

"Mostly, bailed out means that the crew have abandoned their tank and are waiting to see if it is going to explode, or whether it's safe to get back in."

Total tosh.

And despite numerous people pointing out that this is a load of nonsense they maintained their justification in the second edition of the rules.

Does anyone else know of any other ww2 rules that have the mechanism of crews bailing out and then being able to return to re-crew their tank? Any other set I have or have read or played seem to have bailing out as a morale failure.
FOW has bailed crews exzempt from morale/ignored in morale and this favours the big armour values when opposed by small weapon damage values.

I personally cannot think of the BF "bailed" figure as bailed, just out looking to talk in person to his infantry support or inching forward on foot recce to get a better veiw, while the tank stays out of action.

As such, I would house rule that bailed out is actually that, vehicle hesitancy and subsequently , make an adjustment to its |"to hit" value. Whether you would also "knock back" the vehicle to represent that would also be worth considering, like a d6-2 inches.

I believe the more common situation is that the crew are dazed by a round bouncing off the tank. This is in fact mentioned in the same paragraph as the quoted line about getting out and waiting to see if the tank burns.
I never cared for the "bailed out" term either but it works fine in game play. Just replace bailed out with suppressed. Since there is no pinned result for tanks this is the closest you will get to slowing down armor.

Wow, sorry I contributed to this threadjacking :(

Anyway, I did think of an area that we need a house rule: status of troops. I play Italians, and short of buying their ugly $11 USD set of markers to ruin the scenic concept with, I can't find a way to indicate my troops status effectivly.

J

The reason I suggested the house rule for pinning armor is that I have read literally hundreds of accounts where artillery was used to drive off attacking armor. When can that ever happen in FoW? If your tanks find themselves under a barrage template then on the next turn the thing to do is to move--usually forward. If a tank platoon could be pinned by the barrage and then refused to unpin in its own turn then the choices would be to sit still and get hit with a repeat barrage--or retreat. Much more realistic. I've always hated the way FoW make tank crews braver than infantry. Infantry faced with heavy fire can be forced to ground and pinned. Tank crews faced with heavy fire just ignore it and press on unless they are actually destroyed by it.

Scott, your discription and the image of tank crews conducting mass bailing out of their tanks under artillary fire sort of makes my eyebrow raise in a very roger moore way…..

[qoute]I've always hated the way FoW make tank crews braver than infantry. Infantry faced with heavy fire can be forced to ground and pinned. Tank crews faced with heavy fire just ignore it and press on unless they are actually destroyed by it.

Unlike some who get wrapped up in terminology, this is one of my pet peeves too – "if a tank platoon is pinned, it can move, shoot, and do calisthenics as normal" (paraphrased, for those with no sense of humor). Then why call it pinned? Why not "unaffected"? Or "mildly annoyed"? I didn't understand the reasoning for the rule at all.

So I like Scott's house rule.

Don.

don,
Is the pinned status not an effect when and if the tank is close assaulted by infantry or conducts a close assault itself? Their ROF is reduced to 1 for their mg's.

Having been in a tank receiving small arms fire, you don't actually know you are being "pinned" down untill something doesn't work. Like, you know, a tread comes off or the main site goes out. Clues in infantry, which I served 12 years in, are much more obvious. You hear bullets, feel explosions, and taste dirt-- these clues are not available to armored crewmen…

J

But did you ever bail out and then get back in again when shots were being fired in anger?

>btw – we already exclude the "warriors" and some other >nationality specific rules.

That's a VERY good start :-)

Otherwise, I've still to figure out how 'gone to ground' recruits are easier to shoot at than 'trained' or 'veteran' guys.
'cause they yell 'mummy!!!' all the time ?

I've always thought, perhaps wrongly, that is was in movement that more experienced (doesn't mean only 'elite' BTW) troops made a difference as a target.

Along the same line, I'm not sure that Russian infantrymen were much greener than their German counterparts (some of them had fought against Finns or Poles previously), but their tactical formations certainly made them an easier target, if not experience !
A platoon firing at a 'close order' platoon (teams less than 4" away ?) could get a dice bonus (-1 to hit), be it German, Russian, or whatever.

Otherwise, FOW's chain of command rule, with teams under command if next to another team which is next to an other team,etc…looks pretty weird IMHO
This is the distance from the HQ team which should count for control status, if 'plausible results' are soughted after.

Derek, you get far too stuck on a name, rather than the effect. Would you harp on as much if it was called Stunned or something else?

As for chain of command, infantry orders are passed down the line, either verbally or by signals, so the FOW system works well enough to cover that.
You don't wander around in a blob just so you can hear the LT's voice personally.
The Section commander gets his orders (directly, by radio or field signals), then he passes it on to everyone else. 2 sections up & one back, or similar formations aren't possible if you insist on a command radius from just the platoon commander, assuming that the command radius isn't pointlessly massive.

As for the Original topic, I don't use house rules as a general rule. When I play with 3 seperate gaming groups in my city alone, barring my interstate trips, playing the base rules is the easiest path.

Having said that, the various different unit activation methods do sound interesting. However I'm curious how they affect the platoon size of armies. If I have 8 platoons, and you have 4, it appears to me that the smaller army can get a tactical advantage over the larger one, since you get to counter your opponents moves more readily. I go-you go, while being unrealistic, does at least mean neither side gains an advantage.

>The Section commander gets his orders (directly, by radio >or field signals), then he passes it on to everyone else. >2 sections up & one back, or similar formations aren't >possible if you insist on a command radius from just the >platoon commander, assuming that the command radius isn't >pointlessly massive.

AFAIK, for most WW2 armies, forget about radio for section commanders, for others (US army), take fresh batteries along with your teams <g>
Hand signal doesn't work more than a few dozens yards away and in optimum terrain situations (no dense vegetation, walls,etc…) and usually out of enemy sight
As soon as 'real' fighting began, most period accounts talks about shouted orders

Command radius from platoon leader hasn't to be a 'on-off' proposition IMHO, rather substract -1 for rallying teams if more than 'normal' (4" ?) command radius, or -2 if more than 2 times 'normal' command radius,etc…
It would prevent veteran platoons gamers to spread their men unrealistically

This was the actual near presence of the platoon leader that prevented men from staying 'in the hole' if fired at(as a matter of fact, this was the very reason behind having officers or senior NCOs at the head of platoons) not his only his gesture or voice
For the sake of demonstration, just imagine a platoon commander leading his unit into heavy fighting from 200 yards away…(around 8" in FOW)
Infra sections/squads combat mechanics were NCO business, not platoon leader business

As far as assault (close range combat) went, everyone
(green to veterans) has to be packed near enough to bear sufficient firepower on target
According to OKH sources, infantry regulations called for 250 yards (attack upon dug in objective) to 450 yards (attack upon unprotected objectives) company attack frontage (two platoons abreast)
At FOWs 'smaller' scale (infantry fighting), this is about 10" to 16"

>If I have 8 platoons, and you have 4, it appears to me >that the smaller army can get a tactical advantage over >the larger one, since you get to counter your opponents >moves more readily. I go-you go, while being unrealistic, >does at least mean neither side gains an advantage.

Good point, though it could be argued that smaller forces are somewhat easier to manage/to get reacted than larger ones.
I suppose a dice throw bonus for the larger army, if initiative is tested, could do the trick
Otherwise, an other option would be 'I move one platoon-you move two' or 'you move two every other one' if numerical superiority is between 50% and 99%

<Q>Derek, you get far too stuck on a name, rather than the effect. Would you harp on as much if it was called Stunned or something else?</Q>

No. But then it wasn't me who wrote the designers notes as follows.

Mostly, bailed out means that the crew have abandoned their tank and are waiting around to see if it's going to explode, or whether it's safe to get back in

They had a chance to write something more reasonable when they released version 2, but that stayed in.

At the very least they deserve to be mocked for it.

Marcpa, 8" doesn't translate to 200 yards in FOW. There is no fixed ground scale, or even a telescoping one. You can't even compare game distances between steps.
If you want a better, more detailed explanation, Email Phil at Battlefront, since he's the one that explained it to me, some time ago now.

As for hand signals, it certainly works over 20-30 meters, and thats between individual soldiers. Yes, it's more usual for the gap to be 10-15m, but not much closer than that outside extremely close terrain. You don't want more than one person inside the blast radius of a grenade after all.

In Extended line (the usual assault formation in fairly open terrain) that makes a single squad/section about 50m wide. Stick another section up as well, with a 3rd as fire support (again, pretty standard), and you easily cover 150m frontage with just one platoon. Once you're in the assault, it stops being about the platoon commander, and it's down to the section commander to take control.

Yes, it's all about volume, but (at least in my experience, before radio's went lower than platoon level) every soldier is supposed to call out the orders as well, to ensure that the guys 50m away on the MG can hear what the secco wants as well as the scout next to him.

50-100m was the standard width of an US 8 man patrol, and they used hand signals.

i do not think Fow has any more or less wrong in terms of its command chain effect than other rules. It is just the scaling thing again that makes it seem a bit skewed.
The idea than at 12.01 inches you have no command and 11.99 inches you have automatic full command is actually less representative of reality in my mind.
Movement should be inversely proportioned to area covered by the force moving, since less time is needed to do the communication.

If you want a better, more detailed explanation, Email Phil at Battlefront, since he's the one that explained it to me, some time ago now.

Or read link

Haha Derek, if you actually care to make a comment that adds to the discussion rather than a pointless cheap shot, feel free. I doubt that will happen however.

KevanG, you've got to draw a line somewhere to get a game that doesn't take a dozen dice rolls to move a single platoon somewhere. I know that in reality running even a section of guys through anything other than an open field is a C&C nightmare, let along a platoon through woods or scrub.
But do we need to model that level of detail to get a good company level game?
The CO couldn't care less that you have to close up to 5m apart in single line to get through a thicket of brush, he just cares that you made it to your allocated position to provide covering fire.

Sturm,

I agree, I just beleive you need a sliding scale mechanism rather than an on/off switch for command control. As with all discussions, It makes you think about it. World war 2 is all about vision. If the commander (at what ever level) can see everyone he commands and they can all see each other, CC seems to be easier. Hence why i think fixed radius do not really work nor an unbroken chain. There is no impenetrable wall to vision or radio comms at limit of radius and the "chinese wispers" command daisy chain has issues too. I'm sure there is a basis way of doing an abstract system to do command this way somewhere…..maybe I'll have a go at writing it!