"The change in rules over the years - Range" Topic

Just putting my drivers licence away in the critical paperwork box I found a copy of the old WRG 1925 to 1950 rules. There it was in all its glory, range bands by the ton. HMG's with a maximum range of about 600m and ve
irtually no effect even at that range. That despite contemporay documention that even the lesser, humble, Bren lost nothing in effecticeness out to 400 yds.
It was never clear why the range band ever held such sway over wargamers in the light of common sence. Presuably as folk equated competion shooting to combat shooting which appart from a very few snipers is not even close.

In some ways the Barker rules were ground breaking, in others they still held to certain aspects despite evidence to the contary. Are there myths in rules still held sacred despite evidence they are in error?

A lot of game rules are there because that's how games are made, not because they make any sense :-)

I suppose the idea that morale loss is a function of casualties don't make a whole ton of sense.

Not to hijack this . . . But do you really have WRG rules in your critical paperwork box?

Consulting my copy of WRG 1925-50 I see that HMGs have a maximum range of 1000m for observed direct fire and 2000m for area fire.

All a bit academic as the maximum location range against infantry targets is 500m.

Although there are numerous bands, the dice scores required to hit indicate the HMG only actually has two 'effective' – 4+ up to 500m and 'long', 5+ up to 2000m

As Weasel observes, probably the daftest thing in most rule sets is the idea that casualties determine combat outcomes, as opposed to combat outcomes determining casualties. This is especially pronounced in Ancient warfare where the side which broke got slaughtered, but they didn't break because they were getting slaughtered.

I have heard that Squad Leader greatly inflated the idea of infantry flung "smoke grenades".

Originally, they were used for signalling and marking targets. The idea of one grenade issuing enough smoke to cover an advance is something that it took a board game to implement, but popular opinion took it and ran with it until it ranks as "well, it must be true".

I would love to hear opinion on whether this is fact or fiction.

Not to hijack this . . . But do you really have WRG rules in your critical paperwork box?

Its in the box of paperwork that I don't want to throw away. I have a signed copy of WRG as I did a bit last minute on the rules for Phil.

Matin I will get the list out in a bit and check what mine said. I thought I had it reight.
I do know it had an area fire rate (600m by 10m if I reecall from muzzle) and another for longer ranges but not starting from the muzzle.

Thosmoss, I agree smoke is sometimes badley treated. Typicaly its too small and used much less in many games than in the real world. Not seen too many games where the smoke was too big. Even I gave up when intoduced to ASL as it had so mant Three letter acronyms that I lost track before I got to the end of the first page. It did have good ideas, but we went for something much simpler that gave a sufficently acceptable result with far fewer rules.

More rules does not neccessarily make a better or more accurate rules.

Dear List

Weasel is correct. That was the style of rules and how they were written, because that's how gamers EXPECTED them to be written and in most cases they reflected no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Much of what went into rules was gleaned from field manuals or firing range data, none of which took into account the vicissitudes of real life.

Nice, if you can see what you're firing at.

Weren't casualties just counting 'effectives'? Once a unit runs out of effective men it is out of juice.

What Möbius said. Though I don't think enough gamers, especially writers think that way. Kills in casualty count games are huge. In CoC even under the worse conditions kill rate is 3%. Many H&M games have units surviving morale at 25%, where as at Waterloo the Inniskillings were noted as not breaking, even though they'd suffered 1/3 casualties.

I like the BP or LGG system where a unit acquires morale markers, until it hits its limit. in BP it takes morale checks if in excess. You can rally morale/hits/etc off but it takes time.

Despite all the hoopla over the years about DBxxx ad infinitum (checkers with really expensive playing pieces), I consider Barker's 1925-1950 Armour-Infantry rules to be one of his finer moments (despite his having IMO "jiggered" certain target location distances to promote a closer quarters game). It is a reaction and morale game rather than a casualty/kill game. The most important chapter in the rule book is the one covering reaction tests.

B

Could we use actual titles at least once before using acronyms? Last Hussar (or 'LH' as we must think of him) just referred to British Petroleum, Call of Chtulhu and a popular clothing store, I think. I'm assuming that LGG is the League of Geriatric Gasfitters.

I must agree with MJS.

One should always agree with MJS; it is safer.

Morale/willingness to fight should be more than a product of casualties, though casualties should have an impact. When we play Bolt Action at home any unit that has more pins than people heads for the hills..don't know how well that would go down with most folk, but it works for two of us playing company-sized battles

It's kind of funny that all those abbreviations gets dropped in a thread where someone complained about Advanced Squad Leader having too many abbreviations :-)

Could we use actual titles at least once before using acronyms? Last Hussar (or 'LH' as we must think of him) just referred to British Petroleum, Call of Chtulhu and a popular clothing store, I think. I'm assuming that LGG is the League of Geriatric Gasfitters.

What we really need on TMP is a Glossary …

In the Vietnam supplement for Flames of War, you find out that losing a single trooper was usually enough to make an entire stand of 3-5 stop fighting in WW2. You see, in the Vietnam supplement, you don't remove stands of Americans or Aussies, you give the stand a "wounded" counter and can move said wounded counter around between stands in the platoon.

So Flames of War is assuming the modern US Army "wound one man to take 3 out of the fight" idea )which isn't quite true when you start talking about the more recent fighting the US has seen).

But as far as ranges go, a WW2 rifle can accidentally cause harm much farther than it can intentionally cause harm. Any of the WW2 service rifles can hit a target at 1000 yards, but your chance of actually inflicting a casualty at that range is pretty much pure luck. You can't see a person behind the front sight beyond about 300 yards**, so precision aiming is pretty much impossible beyond that distance. You could probably put some shots downrange that will get close enough to scare someone, but that's about it.

** It's a simple mathematical relationship. The average human torso is 18" wide, which is 6 minutes of angle wide at 300 yards. 1 MOA is 1/3600 of an inch for every inch of range, so 6 MOA is 1/600 of an inch for every inch of range. The typical sight radius of a WW2 rifle is about 20" from front sight to shooter's eye, so that 6 MOA is now 1/30 of an inch (0.033") wide at the front sight. IIRC, the stock front sight blade of an M1 Garand is 0.075" wide, twice as wide as a human torso at 300yards.

Lion in the Stars:

I can not argue you math regarding your discussion of MOA.

The USMC has consistently, since at least 1942 qualified with rifles from the prone position at 500 yards, firing against man sized silhouettes. From experience I can tell you that most Marines will put most of the rounds into the black at that range.

I know that a firing range is not the same as combat, but the 1903 Springfield, M-1 Garand, M-14 and all makes of the M-16/M-4 are accurate enough to reliably put rounds in man sized targets at that range.

For a modern squad equipped with small arms I'd suggest close range (with very high likelyhood of hit) as being up to 100m, 'effective' small arms range as being 100-300m, long range as being 300 – 600m (1/2 effectiveness), and extreme range as being 600-1000m (and having a remote but still possible chance of causing damage).

There is a difference between a single rifleman engaging a single man at range and a squad or platoon engaging a opposing squad/plt. Most wargame rules ignore beaten zones for rifles but Soldiers/Marines are trained to mass fires against 'area targets' to "intentionally cause harm." As I'm sure you know, but is rarely reflected for rifle fire in wargames rules, the effects of fire are MUCH more effective when they are delivered enfilade (coinciding with the axis of the enemies formation). A squad firing down the length of an enemy column will be far more lethal than the same squad firing against the same formation deployed in a perpendicular line.

From my study of history I'd expect that Germans who fought the BEF in France (during both WWI and WWII) or Australians at Tobruk, or Japanese on Guadalcanal or Chinese in Korea would disagree about the ability of aimed rifle fire to inflict casualties up to 1000 yards.

I agree that the chance of a single soldier hiting a specific individual at 1000 yds is not high. I would also state that moving along a road in tight formation 1000 yards away from a squad of well trained riflemen is not likely to be healthy.

A lot depends on the circumstances.

Here's my thing:

Let's take a platoon of 30 some strapping young lads eager to kill whoever they happen to be fighting.

Now lets put them in a fire fight and take a snap shot at a random moment. What are they all doing?

A few guys are confused and trying to get a grip on what is going on. They aren't firing right now.

A few guys might have lost it completely and are cowering in panic. They won't be firing at all.

A few guys are taking cover now but when things seem a bit less deadly, they'll pop their heads up and shoot back. They aren't firing now though.

Someone is probably trying to unjam his rifle or fix some other broken piece of equipment. He won't be shooting for a bit.

A few are fumbling to find ammunition, reload weapons or scrounge up extras. They aren't firing right now.

Did anyone get wounded? THe wounded guy isn't firing and neither is the guy taking care of him.

How many men do we have left now? Half the platoon?

Out of those, how many would be firing but they can't make out anything to shoot at?

How many of those firing are shooting at an identified target rather than just pulling the trigger?

How many of them think they're shooting at something but the particular bit of rubble or brush they are shooting at has nobody there.

How many of our 30 are actively fighting at this snapshot and of those, how many actually have a realistic chance of that fighting producing a casualty in this particular moment?

Circumstances and training will modify those numbers a fair bit, particularly as regards to morale.

Weasel, do you have a 'cohesion' number for that platoon? What's it's training factor? Both contemporary concepts that aren't any better than the old system.

You can't see a person behind the front sight beyond about 300 yards…. the stock front sight blade of an M1 Garand is … twice as wide as a human torso at 300yards.

How many of our 30 are actively fighting at this snapshot and of those, how many actually have a realistic chance of that fighting producing a casualty…?

These observations, and conclusions of the impact they have on combat, all rely upon a baseline assumption of the behavior of the targetted troops.

Yes, it is exceedingly hard to cause casualties by individual aimed fire at enemy troops that are disbursed and in cover.

That is NOT due to the size of the front site, or how many individuals are shooting. It is due to the behavior of the enemy you are shooting at.

If that enemy is marching towards you in the open, it is entirely likely that individual aimed fire will cause casualties. Significant casualties. Not just at 300, but even at 500 yards/meters range.

One of my greatest objections to the infantry combat rules in the original WRG 1925 – 1950 ruleset (the old tan-covered version) was that a platoon of riflemen, with their LMGs, could not stop a company of enemy infantry from advancing across 500 yards of open terrain. An MMG or HMG was even more helpless -- an MMG could not even stop a platoon of men from advancing across open terrain. You could pin one fire team at a time, but you couldn't cause many casualties, and the other teams would just keep on marching, and then you'd pin another, and the first one you pinned would start marching again, and there was just no way to stop them.

I played those rules for years. I could never figure out the infantry combat rules, because a WW1 style assault always won, 100% of the time.

The question is not the accuracy of the weapons nor the firing forces' ability to create casualties, it is the effectiveness of cover, any cover, in protecting the troops being fired upon. The infantry small arms fire should be shockingly effective in generating casualties, so that the receiving side is forced to seek cover.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The USMC has consistently, since at least 1942 qualified with rifles from the prone position at 500 yards, firing against man sized silhouettes. From experience I can tell you that most Marines will put most of the rounds into the black at that range.

I know that a firing range is not the same as combat, but the 1903 Springfield, M-1 Garand, M-14 and all makes of the M-16/M-4 are accurate enough to reliably put rounds in man sized targets at that range.

Even my SVT-40 and PSL are capable of putting entire magazines into a standard silhouette target at >500m. Just not with me behind the trigger using iron sights. My bad eyes need glass to be able to do that, have since I was 17 or so. There are some tricks to shooting with iron sights at those distances that the Marines in particular still teach.

My comments were limited to shooting individuals, and I should have stated that.

A formed body of troops moving is a much larger target than one man, so the range at which you can expect to cause casualties is much further. If we're talking a full Napoleonic line (or WW1 line, for that matter), modern firearms will be able to lay waste to such a formation at 1000m or further. Any side-to-side variance is still going to hit someone, so as long as you are doing a decent job estimating range you're going to get a hit. Probability gets weird here, because your target may not take up the entire "circle of impact."

The circle of impact is something that varies with individual weapons, but it's not a significant factor within 200-300m. At significant ranges it may become a factor. I consider my PSL to be accurate enough that I could confidently take head shots at 600m (group size of less than 12" at that range), I've gotten several one-hole 100yd groups out of her with good-quality Czech surplus ammo. I haven't had a chance to take my SVT out and see how she will shoot yet, but I expect similar performance.

Most AK's don't shoot that tight, they tend to run 4-8" groups at 100 yards. So it's possible for someone using an AK to aim at a person's chest at 300 yards and miss simply due to the usual point-of-impact variance.

But that near miss of one target could turn into a hit of one of the targets shoulder-to-shoulder next to it in a massed formation.

Even if the mass is not shoulder to shoulder in the simple and obvious sense, it may effectively be so if it is deep enough, so being 'spread out' is not necessarily as useful as it sounds.

I played those rules for years. I could never figure out the infantry combat rules, because a WW1 style assault always won, 100% of the time.

You reminded me of the drawbacks of infantry component of these rules. That is with the mathematics of the unit size. If you broke up a platoon into the right size teams you could overwhelm a like sized platoon broken up into the wrong size teams. The side with the most teams generally won. You always wanted to break out LMG team/man from their squad because that makes two targets. Each target must be dealt with by the enemy. A four man team is no stronger than a 2 man team when it comes to eliminating it.

Being a separate team is being 'spread out' in these rules.

One of my greatest objections to the infantry combat rules in the original WRG 1925 – 1950 ruleset (the old tan-covered version) was that a platoon of riflemen, with their LMGs, could not stop a company of enemy infantry from advancing across 500 yards of open terrain. An MMG or HMG was even more helpless -- an MMG could not even stop a platoon of men from advancing across open terrain. You could pin one fire team at a time, but you couldn't cause many casualties, and the other teams would just keep on marching, and then you'd pin another, and the first one you pinned would start marching again, and there was just no way to stop them.

Yes that was a major problem. We used to play hybrid rules roughly based on WRG system and we had a specific mod to deal with this allowing MGs (depending on type) to fire directly at more than one enemy fire team within close proximity (and no, you weren't allowed to get round this by stringing units out like Brown's cows!).

You reminded me of the drawbacks of infantry component of these rules. That is with the mathematics of the unit size. If you broke up a platoon into the right size teams you could overwhelm a like sized platoon broken up into the wrong size teams. The side with the most teams generally won. You always wanted to break out LMG team/man from their squad because that makes two targets. Each target must be dealt with by the enemy. A four man team is no stronger than a 2 man team when it comes to eliminating it.

Also true. Our rules were a lot stricter on how platoons were broken up into elements to avoid some of the more gamey basing schemes designed to exploit this.

The only issue that may have saved the infantry but was not understood by us at the time at the time was the area fire of MG's. However many rules and players attitudes did not approve of shooting sideways while being protected from the from fire from the front.

Play battlefront WWII.
Simple.

We used to play hybrid rules roughly based on WRG system and we had a specific mod to deal with this allowing MGs (depending on type) to fire directly at more than one enemy fire team within close proximity…

We went with a very simple house-mod that allowed bipod or pivot-mounted MGs to fire at any two adjacent targets, and tripod or turret-mounted MGs to fire at any 3.

But it was still almost impossible for an emplaced MMG to stop a platoon from advancing and overwhelming it.

Playing those rules I just could not understand why the Russian "human wave" attacks of 1941/42 didn't march all the way to Berlin.

You reminded me of the drawbacks of infantry component of these rules. That is with the mathematics of the unit size. … The side with the most teams generally won.

This was, in some respects, a self-correcting problem in my experience.

It went something like this:

Game 1:
Russian player takes:
Company of Russian tanks = 10 pieces to move and play
Company of Russian infantry = 43 pieces to move and play
German player takes:
Battery of German StuGs = 14 pieces to move and play
Company of German infantry = 36 pieces to move and play

Game AAR:
Turn 1: Russian moved the tanks up 1 full move.
Turn 2: German StuGs and Russian tanks exchange fire. 4 Russian, 1 German StuG destroyed. Russian tanks move into covered positions.
Turn 3: German StuGs move towards new firing positions. Russian tanks spot no targets.
Turn 4: German StuGs continue moving. Russian tanks spot. 2 German StuGs destroyed.
Turn 5: Armor exchanges fire. 2 German StuGs, 2 Russian tanks destroyed. Surviving Russian tanks pull back.
Turn 6: Russian infantry moves up 1 full move. Germans spot, and German infantry company fires. After 25 teams have fired there are still no casualties. 1 1/2 hours into turn 6, German player got bored and went home. Game ends.

Game 2:
Russian player takes:
Battalion of 2 companies of tanks = 21 pieces to play
German player takes:
Company of tanks = 17 pieces to play

AAR:
12 turns of swirling tank action, with no infantry to bog it down.

The result, in my experience, of the WRG "Armor and Infantry" rules regarding infantry, was that we NEVER fought battles with armor AND infantry. We fought with tanks. Infantry was not welcome on the board.

You couldn't use enough infantry to make them relevant in a tank battle, because the basic unit of infantry was so pathetically weak compared to the basic unit of armor. You needed 3 fire teams to make infantry relevant to 1 tank. And yet each fire team took as much of the player's time and attention to move and shoot as 1 tank. Any time the infantry came onto the board in a tank battle, the game ended within 1 or 2 turns, because no one wanted to play such an overwhelming number of infantry pieces.

This is one of the dominating consideration in my choice of rulesets today. I really like ODGW's Mein Panzer, because I can play tanks at 1-to-1 scale, infantry at 1-to-squad scale, and mix both on the table for true combined arms combat in company and battalion-sized games. The updated Jagdpanzer rules are also pretty good in this regard. Schwere Kompanie looks like it would work well too, for 1 player per side company-sized battles, although they don't seem likely to work as well for multi-players per side battalion-sized games.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Dunno. My experience with Barker's rules were different. Perhaps one of the influencing factors was that we tended to play on terrain-intensive tables carefully reproduced from topo maps of France – lots of impassable streams, heavily ditched roads, woods, scrub, towns, etc, all of which conspired to restrict the free movement of infantry and made target acquisition for attackers difficult.

In one memorable game defending a town with a single bridge across an unfordable creek, I effectively paralyzed a tank supported platoon of infantry with an AT gun and two snipers. The opponent led with the tank going across the bridge with the platoon supporting from the friendly side of the creek. The tank was taken out from the rear by the AT gun when it had to go to slow movement mode to negotiate a sharp turn right after crossing the bridge. When the platoon crossed over, they spent most of the game fighting reaction tests for short range fire from snipers they could never pin down. It was a very instructive game for me.

In another game, I was able to destroy an entire company of attacking infantry when they advanced down a road defended by a single platoon supported by a pair of pre-registered mortars. I halted them with LMG fire, neutralized the company with mortar fire (neutralize the platoon HG and no one moves), then picked off one stand after another until the company collapsed from successive bad reaction effects.

Conclusions drawn over many games were that cover and concealment were essential for the defense, realistic terrain was very important and supporting weapons were essential to a successful defense by inferior numbers. A single platoon thrown out unsupported to defend a clump of trees in the middle of a golf course was a hopeless situation.

B

We went with a very simple house-mod that allowed bipod or pivot-mounted MGs to fire at any two adjacent targets, and tripod or turret-mounted MGs to fire at any 3.

Yes, IIRC that is pretty much what we went with too.

But it was still almost impossible for an emplaced MMG to stop a platoon from advancing and overwhelming it.

Again, more mods required so that when 3 elements get suppressed/neutralised/killed by the first burst of direct fire, the rest of the platoon gets somewhat 'discouraged' from marching blithely on towards the MMG. I can't remember how well the original rules as written handled this but I know we tinkered extensively. And likewise with pretty much everything else; but I always liked the unity of the underlying game system as a framework.