"Two Questions: Operations Level, and WWII newbie rules" Topic

Axis & Allies Miniatures. Get the cards and rules online. Count each unit as a platoon. Fiddle with the Close Assault numbers to indicate integral infantry AT assets, don't use the separate "bazooka man" cards. Average AT values for mixed tank platoons.

In any case, I'm pretty certain that the FoW level of playing out a reinforced company is too small a unit for the support elements it gets, generally speaking.

Squads/platoons from a weapons company found at the battalion level would be doled out based upon present needs. But for division-level and corps-level, supporting units creates a quandary. On the one hand, it is very unlikely that one specific rifle company would get support from divisional artillery. On the other hand, divisional units had to be somewhere. Think of it more as the appropriate amount of support for a mission, instead of the level of support attached to a company.

You have to remember you are fighting just a bit of an action or battle. I realiry the real battle often goes on for a day or two. In that time you have to pull back troops just to re-arm, and give them food and drink. In the heat of the battle there is time for neither. Therefore a Battalion may well fight 1 company up two back. Threfore at least for foot, the Battalion is only fighting at company level. The back two are resting or covering and being ready to take over when the first one runs out of men/ammo.

Some potentially less active units, like artillery are capable of waiting for longer periods at call. They are typicaly limited by ammunition and may have to wait quite long periods between re-supply anyway.

Very few men are fighting at any one time even in a big battle. The largest battles in Europe have a span at there most intence of about 3000 yds. Thats only 6 companies! Due to the logistics and the need to fight in essence 24 hrs a day means you may need a division to maintain that 6 companies night and day at the sharp end with the support it needs.

Games to look at on this level would be Spearhead – probably the best bet to show this kind of operation. You push platoons around but command Battalions. Simple game mechanics with limited writing down of orders. (some hate even that little bit).

Next would be Fistful of Tows. Despite the name it covers WWII quite well. It is more complex than Spearhead but plays very quickly. You can try their intro WWII rules for free. fft3.com

Those are my two favorites, I usually recommend Command Decision but it is a step up in complexity from FFT and probably higher then you are wanting to go.

Battlefront: WWII (by Fire & Fury Games) and Battlegroup: Panzergrenadier by Dave Brown are both pegged at a 'step up' from 1:1. Each stand represents a squad or 2-3 vehicles/guns and the basic unit is the company, with each side representing a battalion or thereabouts.

You can see what I mean from the BF:WWII synopsis, scenarios and orbats pages here:

link
link
link

I'd second the recommendation for CDToB. If you just use the basic rules and ignore the optinal rules they are fairly striaghtforward and give a good representation of command at the battalion level (and regiment once you get more experienced).

Chris

Rapid Fire ?
Still going !

There aren't actually that many rules which work for gaming a battalion, the the main ones have already been mentioned (CD:TOB, BFWW2 and BGPG).

There are plenty for platoon/company, and plenty for brigade and up (like Spearhead etc).

If you want something really simple but fun, maybe have a look at the Pz8 rules:

link

I still say… check out this issue of Miniature Wargames and at least consider Rapid Fire Rules

Yes. CDToB is Command Decision:Test of Battle. It's the 4th (and current) edition of the rules. It's designed to work exactly at the Operational Level of command.

Maybe worthwhile checking out Rapid Fire and perhaps Take Cover which seems to be fairly similar. Either allows you to get all sorts of assets on to the table.

QC,

Yup, it's an outstanding set of rules and I've been playing it since it came out in 1999 or thereabouts. In that time I've never found any need to try another WW2 set.

Sadly however, the original Cold War training aid has disappeared into the mists of time and Greg Lyle passed away a few years back. Consequently, I've been slowly trying to reinvent the wheel by reverse-engineering a Cold War ruleset from BF: WWII…

Cheers,

Mark

QC:
FFT3 does not have hidden units but it does have spotting. You could add hidden units (no spotting till they could be spotted) but in general it didn't seem to be a problem for us. You can't fire at an unspotted unit directly and firing indirect is not as effective.

The full arty rules are more complex but play quickly once you learn them.

He said "simple" …. Rapid Fire!first answer.
Battlefront WWII is GREAT but "sophisticated" and not simple ….and require special basing …
"I have not been shot Mum", is great fun at company level and your armies should convert easily.

Tirailleur,

I think we'd have to disagree on that. BF has NO 'special rules' for different types of unit. Instead it all boils down to numerical factors presented on a card for each unit/vehicle/gun type. Actions and morale are combined into a single die-roll, a la the Fire & Fury ACW rules.

And there is no 'special basing'. You can use whatever basing you like – all measurement is taken from the centre of the base-edge or vehicle edge. The size of the base is irrelevant.

I agree that Spearhead best represents what you're looking for. I played it for decades in scales from micro-armor to 20mm. If you want to adopt national doctrine you can pen in House Rules based on your own reading or from other rule sets (we used the FOW special rules for it).

Regarding the attachments: I was in a platoon that got attached to a combat battalion (along with another company). This follows Spearhead's methodology. However, our platoon would then end up working directly with a platoon from the parent battalion, along with a platoon from the other attached company if the mission called for it. So the FOW methodology isn't completely out of line. If you get heartburn from 5 platoons assisting a single parent platoon, then change the names to "companies & battalions" if it makes you feel any better.

I have found that, with reasonably fast-play rules, an experienced gamer can run about 20 pieces (+/- 3 or 4). With very detailed rules, the game will flow better if player are held to 8 – 12 pieces.

The question then, is what level of forces can you assemble with that many pieces?

I prefer to play games with 1-to-1 unit scales for vehicles (one tank model = 1 tank), and 1 stand per squad unit scales for infantry. I look for rules that are reasonably fast-play (but with enough detail to satisfy my historical interests), and that scale gracefully for multiple players per side.

With fast-play rules that means about a re-enforced company per player. If you can gather 3 or 4 players per side, you can run a battalion. If not, well, then less than a battalion.

I have found both Mein Panzer and Jagdpanzer (2nd Edition) serve well for battles with a battalion-sized force when I have multiple gamers. Each player runs a re-enforced company. The rules play fast enough that it is manageable to have 3 or 4 players per side, or 3 on the attacking side and 1 or 2 on the defending side, and have a game that flows.

Note though … not all rulesets scale up as gracefully to multiple players. Mein Panzer is particularly graceful in how it scales, keeping all players interested and involved as the turn progresses.

I have found that 1 stand per fireteam (2 or 3 stands per squad) fails to match well to 1-to-1 vehicle scales, unless all sides agree that it will be primarily an infantry battle. This is because the 10 or 20 piece guideline will still hold if you want to keep the game flowing, yet a fireteam (1 stand) is no where near the combat power of a tank (1 vehicle). A player who fields 15 infantry fireteams and 5 tanks will be crushed by the player who fields 15 tanks and 5 fireteams. And a player who runs 5 tanks and 40 fireteams (the equivalent of 15 stands at 1-per-squad basing) will just bring the game to a screeching halt the first time he tries to move or fire his infantry.

If you want to run a battalion per player, you will be better served by 1-to-platoon unit scale. GHQ's MicroArmor, the Game, seems to be well viewed by those who play it. I have read the rules, but not played them. They seem well constructed and should flow pretty well by the 2nd time you use them. And gamers who use them seem to find them fast playing and fun.

And then you have all the other rulesets mentioned here.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

"I did what Limeys did,"

I think the British Army would beg to differ… ;)

Russian infantry provide you with a great opportunity to take lunch while they move the 40 stands…

Yep.

Yep yep yep.

Don't know why it has taken me so many years to figure this out. Nor why I have to re-learn it so often.

The key to a successful game is limiting the number of stands each player runs. I can't count the number of times I've spent untold hours organizing a game, setting up the table, gathering enough gamers, and in the end wound up calling the game at the first signs of combat because, well, the first two turns of shooting each took 2 hours, and now everyone wants to go home.

… and there's usually not enough space on the table for them to really deploy anyway.

This is a question of the scale of your miniatures vs. your ground scale. On that point I almost never go beyond an 8-to-1 ratio, and prefer about 3-to-1. For 1/300 miniatures I don't go beyond a 1/2000 ground scale, and prefer 1/1000. If I were using 1/144 miniatures I would not go smaller than a 1/1000 ground scale, and would try for 1/500.

The calculations are easy enough, particularly for 1/1000. 1mm measured on the table = 1m (or 1yd) in the game.

Then, for my battles, I try to give enough table space for some tactical maneuvering. Russian hordes or not, if you offer a few K meters of space, the bunched up horde will cover only a portion of the battlefield.

Here is an example from one of my games – "Clash at Loboikivka", a historically-based scenario from an encirclement of several Red Army rifle divisions by the Italian CSIR in the late summer of 1941.

I ran a company of Italian infantry, re-enforced by a battery of AT guns and a battery of howitzers (off-board, but providing dedicated support). My opponent, trying to break the thin line of the encirclement, started with a battalion HQ company, and received forces a platoon or two at at time, according to die roles at the start of each turn. As it turned out his roles went VERY well, so his force grew quite rapidly (beyond my prescribed limits -- when will I learn!?!).

But you can see the room for maneuver that the board provided. The Russkies have their battalion HQ company behind a hedge at the top of the center hill. They tried running a small company of T-28 tanks (5 to a company), with a battery of truck-mounted AAMGs in support, over the bridge to the right. The first tank was hit by a 47mm AT gun and immobilized, blocking the bridge. A full company of infantry has moved to the left to cross the marshes, with two platoons of armored cars providing supporting fire.

That's how I like my games. You can see that it's a combined arms clash. There is a lot of maneuvering. And if you look closely for the smoke or the casualty markers (crushed figures set on small red bases) you can also see there is lots of combat going on.

Yes, the Soviet infantry still advances like a red horde. But … the key to the red horde's advance was first to pin down my heavy weapons elsewhere, and then to maneuver to the point where I was ill-prepared to resist the rush. And the poor enfanteria suffered greatly for trying to stop them.

It's not just pushing models on a table. It's a war game.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Rapid Fire Rules, is a good choice i think ! Not complex and well supported !

Yes, an excellent book, but I don't think Crisp was saying that unsupported armoured rushes was their preferred method. :)

Going back to the orginal question, and Martin pointed it out, rules that suit just a battalion are few and far between. Rapid fire is good for a few battalions, but not great with just one. I found that Take Cover!! (out of print for ages) is similar to Rapid Fire, but the company is the basic manouevre unit and morale checks are taken by company. I streamlined Take Cover!! into my own rules – Advance to cover – that I have been using for a few years to play with a battalion sized (or more often a reduced battalion). Rules available on my blog. Take Cover!! and Advance to Cover are about as complex as Rapid Fire and their are many simularities. Infantry ratio for Rapid Fire is 1:15; Take Cover!! is 1:10.

There are some other rules that play well for single battalions (Battlefront: WW2 for a good example) but are not as accessible as Rapid Fire.

If you go to rules where one stand = 1 platoon, FFT3 is a reasonable choice as I see you have at the top of your list.

…what rules did you use for the illustrated game?

The game I showed was played using ODGW's Mein Panzer ruleset.

odgw.com/home.html

That's my current favorite. When I organize a game, that's the ruleset I use. You can see AARs of the first several games I played with Mein Panzer on the ODGW forum (at the link above).

I have a gaming buddy who prefers JagdPanzer 2nd Ed rules, and we were play-testers for that update. I like those rules well enough to game with them and even recommend them. But I prefer Mein Panzer.

Two things in particular that I like about Mein Panzer:

1 ) The mechanics of the turn sequence

The turn is divided into impulses. In each impulse, each player can activate one formation. The turn proceeds until all formations have been activated. Then the end-of-turn tasks are completed, and the next turn begins. There are no activation chits or die roles or priorities by unit type. Every unit will activate every turn, at the time of the player's preference. It is a very simple mechanism with far-reaching results.

Generally a formation is a platoon. In some lesser-trained armies it may be a company. Above the basic formation level, HQs are separate formations. Each unit in the formation, if it is within command control range, can do two things when activated: one "move", and one "action". The "action" can be many things: spot, shoot, over-watch (reserve fire for a later impulse), communicate, breach, attempt to raise morale, or even move (again). If the unit is outside of command range, or suppressed, it can only do an "action", it does not get the bonus "move". Any results are considered as simultaneous within the impulse (if I kill one of your units that was activated in this impulse, it still gets to perform it's action), but sequential for the next impulse (if I kill one of your units that has not yet activated, it is gone in the impulse in which its formation activates).

At the start of the game all players identify how many formations they have. The force with the smallest number of formations determines how many impulses there will be per turn. Players who have more formations than that will activate two formations on the first impulse, or perhaps two formations on the first and second impulses, as needed to ensure that there is no impulse in which any player does not activate a formation. This accounting is updated as casualties mount, so the number of impulses per turn may decline during the game.

Mein Panzer achieves many interesting results with this one structure.

It keeps all players involved all through the turn. As each player is only conducting combat with one platoon at a time, impulses move along quickly. The result is a very fast and involved feeling to the game -- making it quite enjoyable.

Players whose formations have more "command" resources generally have more "formations" to activate. As the player chooses which formations to activate on any given impulse, this leads to far more tactical flexibility. So in 1941 German Panzer IIIs activating by platoon often out-maneuver Soviet T-34s activating by company, even though the gun/armor/speed stats give the T-34 the clear advantage. I like that A LOT!

It makes players think, organize, and plan in formations, even though they are moving individual units on the battlefield. It hampers units that are outside of command control range, or who have been suppressed. Being outside of command control is fine if you are providing covering fire, but if the action is hot, you want to be near your command!

Suppression in particular plays very well. As a player you are confronted with the problem of the unit being pinned … it can move, but if it does, it doesn't shoot. If it shoots, it doesn't move. And if you want to remove the suppression you need to do nothing else, and still you must make a die role (see below) and may not succeed. The result is that, when units start to get suppressed, you shoot less and start to pull them back to try to get them out of combat for a few turns. Your infantry will "stall" on the advance, or "melt away" on the defense, when confronted by superior firepower. You don't have a table of morale results that tells you that happens -- it's just clearly the only way to recover your combat strength. I like that A LOT.

It also makes indirect fire quite interesting. If you are in an army which provided direct links from front-line spotters to support batteries (US, Brit or German for dedicated support batteries) it can make fire come down very fast. The spotting unit uses an impulse to communicate the call. The receiving battery, when activated, can then fire. It might be the very next impulse. It might not. Enemy units in the target zone may move away on the next impulse. Or they might not. If the battery is not in dedicated support, there will be a chain of communications needed to reach the battery. That's a chain of impulse activations paid by the spotting unit, before it can complete the call for fire. The higher up the command chain you have to go to reach artillery, the more impulses you spend. Sure, your platoon leader or company HQ can spot for indirect fire, but if it doesn't come fast, he's the wrong guy because you don't want him busy for many impulses. What you really want is a dedicated forward fire support team, attached TO the battery or battalion that is in support. It can take a LONG time for Soviets to get artillery support. But when it comes, it is at full force -- not degraded by some "table of effectiveness", but perhaps degraded by the Germans having moved out of the target zone.

As your force takes casualties, you might lose activations. Lose a couple HQs or platoons and your force will face opponents with more activations on the first impulses of the turn, meaning more maneuver and more firepower per impulse, meaning more bad things for you.

2 ) Most die roles start with a "troop quality" factor

Most throws use a D20. You consistently want to score less than your "to make" throw.

Trying to spot an enemy? Your troop quality number is your starting point, modified by terrain, weather, condition of the troops (moving, emplaced, etc.)

Trying to hit an enemy? Start with your troop quality number. Add the typical modifiers -- range to target? firer moving? target moving? target in cover? etc. etc.

Trying to remove suppression? Start with your troop quality number. Add typical modifiers -- in cover? in command range? taking fire from un-spotted enemy? etc. etc.

The impact of this is simple. Better quality troops do everything better. Not a lot better. But enough better that you will notice it over the course of the game. And the harder the task is to do, the bigger the difference becomes. Perhaps your battle pits German troops with TQ9 against Soviets with TQ11. That's not a very big difference when you stationary shooting a target in the open. But add a few modifiers, your Germans might be at a to-make number of 15 or 16, while your Soviets would be at 17 or 18. The Soviets have only half the likelyhood of hitting.

Once again it is a simple mechanism consistently applied, so that the game flows quickly. But it gives you the ability to watch German Pz IIIs out-fighting Soviet T-34s, even though the T-34 gun/armor/speed stats are better.

That's what I like to see in my games. I am a big fan of "realism", yet I also prefer rules that play reasonably fast. I know some things need to be abstracted, but I hate seeing rules that just tell me 10 Pz IIIs are better than 10 T-34s, when I know they aren't. I much prefer rules that let me see HOW and WHY 10 Pz IIIs can out-fight 10 T-34s, even though the T-34s are better tanks.

Just some random ponderings. Hope they are helpful to others in their gaming…

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

One of the bigger issues I have with the so called High level games is that they fail utterly to capture the ground or the size of a unit deployed. We go for a troop to ground linear distortion of about 5:1 at 1/72 1"=10 m/yds and 1mm=1/yd for 1:144 its 1mm= 10m or about 7 to 1. This does give issue as built up areas and houses give a 25 to 1 to 49:1 ratio. However we (MG) approximate and provided you have at least 10 houses in a built up area "squeezed" a bit too close you can get somthing like credible, as there are no sight lines direct throught the village excepy where there should be. At these scale ratois you get the right number of hedges and ditches at the correct spacing for the ground you are representing (Google sat pictures if needed as a guide). This lets the infantry and tanks behave correctly. Tanks will take up about the correct amount of ground say 500+ yards in defence ( inclueing alternate positions). Infantry have the correct annount of cover so the artillery works correctsly. Game like Spearhead realy fail to capture ground in any credible way as do most of the rest. You can put on a company and call it a battalion but if it behave and looks like a company its is really a company.

It is true that there is a practical game limit of 50 pieces per person and even that is very high. For inexperienced players in a quick game more than 4 and less than 15 is a good guide.

Its like houses you could have 40 houses but in the end the fun stops around 10 to 15 houses as it just a case of some old sameold after that. Credible but not fun.

I think the ground scale distortion is much worse in 1:1 level games than the "higher level" (generally a single vehicle = a platoon). A village in a 1:1 game should occupy most of the board – not a very interesting battle.

Using the typical 1" = 50' of 1:5 games you can have much more varity of terrain and ranges can make some differences (all shots are not point blank). A 20mm model occupies enough space to a least roughly cover a platoon's area of operations. (Micro armor tanks are much too small and do lead to over concentration.)

TomT

In any case, I'm pretty certain that the FoW level of playing out a reinforced company is too small a unit for the support elements it gets, generally speaking.

First, try playing with two infantry companies plus battalion heavy weapons platoons, maybe Regimental support. (For the Krauts, that's a hell of a lot of firepower, the Yanks aren't too far behind).

Then, adjust your mindset.

Your company on the table is merely the leading element of the entire battalion, there's another company or two behind you! If your battalion is operating one-up, two-back there is one company on the table and two companies in reserve; and if your battalion is operating two-up, one-back there are two companies on the table and one in reserve.

Every US infantry battalion has an artillery battery available to it (numerically speaking, anyway, I understand it didn't quite work that way in reality). And that number is roughly maintained across the rest of the belligerents.

Every US Infantry Division had a Tank battalion assigned to it, so your "battalion" should have at least one platoon of Shermans and one platoon of Tank Destroyers available, because there was also a TD Batallion assigned to your division. (Leg infantry usually get towed TDs and armored rifles get tracked TDs)

Your Division also has a full cavalry recon squadron, so your "battalion" on the table could have a platoon of 3 M8s and 6 jeeps. If you're operating independently as a battalion, you probably have at least one Cav Recon Section assigned to scout for you, or your General is trying to get you killed.

I can keep going.

Thoma Thomas,
I think you have a typo in the text. Typucaly a platoon protects about 500m frontage in defence of this about 250 to 300 is actually covered, the bits either side are protected by fire. Thus at 1" to 50 foot as you quote the platoon front will still take up 15 inch a lot more than a 20mm figure base. Not sure what you wanted to say.

Lion in the stars,
This was bought home to me recently in our canpaign. Ater 4 or so hour of intensive figting you needed the reserves as the guys need be replaced as they ran out of everything. In a real battles go on 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, this needs a lot of treoopsd even to keep a platoons worth fighting all the time.