"What are the top five things that makes a set "WWII rules"?" Topic

Soviets, Nazis, British, Americans and Japanese.

If what I see at the club is anything to go by, it's

- Tiger tanks
- another four Tiger tanks

Tanks
Tanks
Tanks
Tanks
Tanks

BTW, overwatch is overrated.

fire to keep the enemy pinned down?

I d0n't really have a list of what I look for, but rules writers that do not understand how artillery fire is called for and adjusted really annoy me.

> BTW, overwatch is overrated.

Yeah, the Armies of the world sure waste a lot of time training units to use bounding overwatch…

For me the number one rule that makes it WWII (or later) is proper handling or armor penetration. Games that use a hit accumulation system drive me nuts.

Two – op fire.

Three – Command Control appropriate to WWII. (but I'm an ASL player so this rule gets broken)

And with #3 getting broken there is not need for a 4 and 5

Suppressing fire

This is a really good question and I have been running round in mental circles trying to come up with what matters to me.

In the end the key for me is to have a game that reflects the way different weapons and types of troops interacted.

Command and control is key.

Something like overwatch is IMO relevant to a platoon commander but is less relevant in a company or battalion level game.

Suppressing fire

Isn't that what a barrage in WW1 was supposed to do?

79thPA….well said. Looking at most WW2 games you'd never guess that artillery might have been significant.

Encouragement of real tactics.
encouragement of real organisations
realistic casualty rates
realistic spotting system
realistic morale system.

Oh,and most important, rules for jagdtigers with infra red night sighting.

Well, WW1 doesn't have the integration of MGs into the infantry squad and platoon. MGs are still really seen as artillery instead of infantry weapons. And there aren't anywhere near as many other weapons in the formations, either.

But SCW was basically WW2 the warm-up exercise, and Korea was pretty close to US versus USSR with WW2 weapons and tactics, in mountainous terrain.

Opportunity fire isn't *required*, IMO. There are a lot of people that want it, but if your Op-fire mechanic isn't well-designed, it can actually encourage players to NOT seek cover. If you get defensive fire out to a moderate range (maybe as far as 300m), I think that's enough.

I honestly really like a lot of what Flames of War does. It makes sense to base shooting on how good the target is at using cover. If you base shooting on shooter's skill, veterans will quickly shred conscripts, but they will just as quickly shred veterans, and that's just not right.

There should be some mechanic for suppressing/pinning the target with rifle or MG fire, not just artillery fire.

As far as the artillery call-for-fire process goes, which nation are you using as your example? The Brits call for fire works completely differently from the Americans, the Soviets don't necessarily use indirect fire if they don't have to, and I'm not sure how the Germans handled calls for fire.

You should have Forward Observers required to call for artillery, and maybe even forward air controllers required to call for air support.

I'd like to have some semi-random events, like the Ambush Alley "Fog of War" cards.

[1] Leadership ratings reflective of the Nationalities that are fighting and the year of the battle.

[2] Troop quality reflective of the Nationalities and year of the battle.

[3] Artillery delay/effectiveness reflective of Nationality/Training Quality. (79thPA, check out Jagdpanzer 2nd Edition. I recall it having been written by an ex-artillery man.

[4] Weapons performance reflective of Nationalities. (An MG42 does NOT equal a 50.cal MG. Dont treat them the same.)

[5] Armored vehicle combat and movement quality reflective of the actual vehicles represented.

People who play it.

1) The Forest Brothers
2) Armia Krajowa
3) Wehrwölfe
4) La Résistance Française/La Resistenza/Yugoslav Partisans (tie for 4th)
5) the SOE and the OSS

-----
6) Foyle's War (which is post-WWI, but, hey, you only wanted five, so it makes a nice six)

@QC

OK, so what differentiates WWI from WWII?

Infantry units with integral light machine guns.
For most nations far better communications.
Tanks that move significantly faster than infantry
Armoured troop transports
More reactive artillery
Significantly more effective air support
Fewer fortifications

WWII from Korea?
To be honest not too much
the absence of cavalry
jet air support
helicopters in a limited role
other than that there is not in my mind much difference from late world war II

WWII from the 6 day war?
much the same as the differences in the WWII – Korea list

WWII from Yom Kippur
guided infantry AT missiles
more potent air support
better stabilisation systems in some tanks

WWII from Vietnam
Asymetrical warfare
Helicopters
Very very different in my book

I would say that most WWII rules would work for Korea and the 6 Day War but not WWI and Nam

> There are a lot of people that want it, but if your Op-fire mechanic isn't well-designed,

That would apply to any rule of any type in any game. It has no bearing on it being required or not.

Halftracks.

Pictors – don't forget the colonies. We'd all be posting on this site in bad German rather than bad English but for the Aussies, South Africans, Canadians, New Zealanders….

1. Points and army lists so that an army can be "yours" and part of your collection.

2. Scenarios so you can play pickup games with strangers using YOUR army.

3. An active tournament scene to foster friendly competition.

4. Convenient packaging matching the army lists.

5. Simple (yet tight) rules with games that finish in two hours.

Guys in muddied green'ish uniforms shooting at other guys in muddied green'ish uniforms.

"Pictors – don't forget the colonies. We'd all be posting on this site in bad German rather than bad English but for the Aussies, South Africans, Canadians, New Zealanders…."

I only had 5 things. Unless you'd put South Africa and Canada above Germany and the Soviet Union in terms of WWII importance.

Italy didn't even make my list. Neither did France.

Effective radio communications down to company and vehicle level
Mechanized armies and the advent of the armored personnel carrier
Specialist amphibious vehicles and landing craft
Parachute & Glider troops
Hand held anti armor weapons

What scale? Land, sea or air?

Note: the concept of Overwatch does not differentiate WW2 from WW1. It was well understood before 1914. Haig wrote it up in his book Cavalry Studies for example. Also Foch is his pre-war book on tactics.

Robert

"WWI isn't known for the options it presents a Unit for dynamic fire, movement and suppression dynamics."

This is because rules writers and players are rarely familiar with the detailed descriptions that came out of WW1. If you draw on the numerous secondary sources, particularly those that post-date the likes of Laffin and Clarke, then you will read material that is heavily influenced by the Lions led by Donkeys approach. Take a look at this detailed description of the German 88th Infantry Regiment's first engagement in WW1 here:

link

Robert

Coming at this question from the reverse direction, you can always tell a WW1 supplement that has come straight from an existing WW2 ruleset. Ground scale and frontage are usually out by one whole level of command. Platoons end up occupying the frontage of a WW1 company for example. Therefore unit frontage and depth of battlefield are two key variables that distinguish WW1 from WW2. I imagine that these two variables will continue to change as you progress from WW2 to modern battles (relative to the theatres involved) but these are not my areas of expertise.

Responsiveness of artillery does not differentiate WW2 from WW1, at least from a recipient's perspective. WW1 battlefields had multiple layers and types of observation, coordinated through a multi-dimensional comms system with lots of redundancy, and through fire mission control centres. Any movement on a battlefield, particularly of larger units, would bring almost instantaneous artillery response.

Many people believe that once a WW1 battle started that there was no comms possible at all. This is not correct. Many HQs left detailed war diaries with their message logs. There were loads of messages came in, many in near real-time. The problem, as with other wars, was sifting what was significant and being able to make sense enough of the information to act in an appropriate way.

Pre-planned late war battles focused very heavily on interrupting command and control with the artillery barrages. Bruchmüller was particularly famous for this. He coordinated some of the artillery planning for Operation Michael, which took place in March 1918. The planning was assisted by the fact that the British had just taken over the area from the French. New engineering work to lay extra cables, create new command dug-outs, etc was observed by the Germans and used for targeting purposes. Operation Mars, on the other hand, failed in part because the Germans attacked a well-established sector. The command and control processes were not disrupted significantly, so the British were able to mount a coordinated defence.

Robert

It is interesting the perception that LMGs are a ww2 phenomenon, in 1914 perhaps, but I'm sure all those chaps lugging Lewis guns, chauchats and Madsens around in 1916 would have been a bit surprised to be told they didn't have LMGs.

Aircraft
Artillery
Armour
Infantry
No-one moves without an order from above

Very interesting question. To be honest, as an INFANTRY company/battalion or battalion based game, I find FoW very hard to beat. A few friends and I played about a year (real time) campaign in a Stalingrad setting: it was absorbing, frustrating, challenging and incredibly enjoyable. Everything you want from a wargame campaign.

As near as I can tell, where things start going to hell in terms of WW2 gaming is where you start introducing AFV's.

As good as FoW is for infantry games, I have no interest in it once anyone is going to use more than, say, a platoon of AFV's. At that point, I start to think more in terms of games like Command Decision.

Given that the vast majority of combat in WW2 was infantry based, I rather think we have to ask why so many gamers insist on introducing AFV's.

Ok, they are kewl in movies and I'm also part of the Airfix generation. If I put all my Tiger IE's together, I can probably field a full battalion of the darn things, but I wouldn't dream of putting them on a gaming table.

So, why are AFV's the WW2 equivalent of Napoleons Old Guard?

I honeslty don't have an answer to that. I enjoy modelling them, but (like the Old Guard) I feel no compulsion at all to field them on the game table.

So, at lower (ie, platoon to bn) level give me a good infantry game. At higher levels (eg, multi divisional) let me have a panzer corps to try to break through the Soviet defences at Kursk.

But most of the time I just want footsloggers trying to survive ;)

"…but I'm sure all those chaps lugging Lewis guns, chauchats and Madsens around in 1916 would have been a bit surprised to be told they didn't have LMGs."

Absolutely. And all their ammo-carrying infantry colleagues in the teams would have been even less impressed.

Robert

@ Mr. Elmo: sounds like Warhammer…except for #5.

In many ways it's like a lot of games: Infinity, Wild West Exodus, Malifaux, Firestorm Armada. It's also like Flames of War (but with #5 problem) and Bolt Action.

Anyway, back to the OP, what makes a game WW2? That is really tough, but a brief list might be:

1. rules which promote genuine advantages to combined arms (ie not tanks are invincible monsters which kill everything)

2. rules which model in some way differences in doctrine, training and experience and their influence on combat effectiveness ie soft factors, not tedious lists of technology

3. rules which promote the use of fire and movement, however it is done. IIdeally they give some sort of advantage to the defence (opp fire, shoot then move, unit modes or whatever).

4. rules which penalise bunching up (or rather, give sensible incentives to spread out and deploy in depth), and in higher level games, to rotate units in and out of combat.

5. rules which model, however concretely or abstractly, the 'limitations of the command apparatus' as Halder once put it.

Someone else said this once but a proper WW2 game should always have infantry, nearly always have artillery and occasionally have tanks.

Not sure I can add much to Martin Rapier.

Perhaps number 1 would be a set of rules that wehen played the battle report could not be destiguished from a real report. That is the game reflects credibly the overall limitation of the real world that is both engaging, entertaining and informative. I am not sure if the real world modeling is correct hoe you model doctrine. Doctrine reperoduction is a complex interactions put on a player not on the rules. A tank behaves the same independent of trhe driver. Hoe the player plays is hiom being a general. I am not sure even how in fine detail you would define Doctrine! Otherwise Martin Rapier has it.

Bt definition Overwatch as a rule is invalid you can get the effect other ways.

Few rules seem to reflect artillery well. Even now the US manuals state the objective of artillery is to Suppress and fix in place. Not to destroy Tigers (which though possible is only when they have beed stupidly used like being told to stay on a hill all night) well beyond normal wargame time modeling.

Reflect the use in late war of minefields and engineering both in attack and defence.

WWI at the end of the War, a platoon had 2 lmg, in WWII a platoon had a section of 2 to 4 and each squad had at least one LMG. this is 3 times more.

@ Queen Catherine: Apologies, I came out with sort of a 'stream of consciousness' response rather than a reply to your question.

I suspect you have pretty correctly surmised the reason there are so many AFV's on wargames tables.

To specifically respond to your question though (and this is little more than a clarification of some of my musings above), I would say the 5 things I want from a WW 2 wargame are:

1. Infantry
2. More infantry
3. Artillery making life miserable for the infantry.
4. Command difficulty (interesting that this comes in so low…) Even the Germans had to relieve officers of command when they refused follow an order. If the 'gold standard' army of the war said the equivalent of "I'm not going out there!" I think that we give ourselves altoghter too easier a time when it comes to orders.
5. Confusion. I know I have railed against the number of AFV's we put on the table, but I am currently reading 'Tigers in Normandy' and see that every now and again even Tigers mistook each other for the enemy and took shots at each other. Not shooting at your own side seems to be some sort of taboo in wargames, but especially in instances where 'my platoon goes around the east side of the village, and yours goes around the west' I think keyed up men in fear of their lives are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, with only the most experienced able to do this without real difficulty.

I doubt there is anything remarkable here, just my 2c to a topic I've been thinking about for a while. Personally I'm probably going to stick to my FoW infantry games for the foreseeable future…

It is interesting the perception that LMGs are a ww2 phenomenon, in 1914 perhaps, but I'm sure all those chaps lugging Lewis guns, chauchats and Madsens around in 1916 would have been a bit surprised to be told they didn't have LMGs.

While I know that the BAR was fielded in WW1, what differentiates WW1 from WW2 (and honestly up to today) is the proportions of heavy weapons versus rifles. A modern US infantry platoon has more belt-fed MGs (SAWs and GPMGs) and artillery (mortars, GLs, and AT missiles) than a WW1 Regiment.

A WW2 battalion had at least as many machine guns and artillery (mortars and guns) as a WW1 regiment. The Germans with their MG34s and MG42s that were the first general purpose MG were even worse, I think a Panzergrenadier battalion had more MGs than a whole WW1 Grenadier division!

A WW2 battalion had at least as many artillery tubes (mortars, infantry guns, and anti-tank guns) as a WW1 division, IIRC.

Good point on friendly fire… though by no means the first war in which this took place, it should certainly feature in any set of rules covering WW2.

Hand-in-hand with friendly fire goes command and control: if the player can (utterly unrealistically) move his troops about using telepathy with permits inch-perfect placement and split second timing, then you will not replicate the confusion that creates blue-on-blues.

Again, this is not limited to just WW2, but I would not consider a WW2 set of rules which does not address this: large battlefields, multi-national armies, lots of air support / naval gunfire = a recipe for friendly fire.

The US Army in WW1 used the Chauchat as the LMG within infantry platoons. The BAR did not make it to the front line in any numbers but a few made an appearance.

There is a lovely painting of a Marine light machine gunner during the fighting in Belleau Wood here:

Robert

"4. Command difficulty (interesting that this comes in so low…)"

Yes, I'm not sure many other people have mentioned it at all! (well, I did:)

"…there's something worth pushing back on here.

While WWI had airplanes [and air attacks], tanks, motorized transport and LMGs, they no more _typified_ WWI battles, tactics and training than the use of horse cavalry typifies WWII.

And whatever the ratio of LMGs was in WWI, you'll be hard pressed to say that a typical or representative WWI squad, platoon and company had the weapons and training of comparable WWII companies."

Just to push back on the push back ;-)

Airplanes and air attacks typified late WW1 for sure. Artillery batteries were issued with medium and light machine guns for air defence for example. Sulzbach noted in his autobiography that his battery was issued an MG08/15 in late 1917 and then a second one in 1918. This reflected the increasing tactical threat from ground attack aircraft for example. Multiple categories of ground attack were used, with bombing being projected well behind the enemy lines to interdict supplies. A lot of time went into these plans at Army and Army Group levels.

Tanks were a major feature of battles in 1918. The heavy infantry tanks that spearheaded break-ins were then linked to the medium tanks for exploitation and also to armoured cars for break-out attacks. Hundreds of tanks were used for the Battles of Cambrai, Amiens, Soissons, etc.

Motorised transport played a massive role, even down to the use of tank transporters and artillery portees:

link

The rapid relocation of General Pershing's AEF force from St Mihiel to the Meuse-Argonne was almost entirely down to motorised transport.

As for LMGs, this photograph of an Australian infantry platoon shows at least two Lewis guns.

Yes, WW2 units had more but LMGs were a crucial part of the fire and movement tactics of late WW1, particularly as shortages of manpower became more evident.

How do you think WW2 infantry training differed from WW1?

Robert

Won't a lot of these things be scale dependent too?

Not a lot of naval gun fire in a squad level skirmish and platoon fire-and-move won't really show up in a game where each stand is a battalion.

How do you think WW2 infantry training differed from WW1?

At least in the US, use of radios to call in artillery fire, more troops cross-trained on weapons, different rifle, different focus on bayonet training (and shorter bayonet)…

I'd also have to agree with the comment about tanks being able to move faster than the infantry (though the Brits did persist in building Infantry tanks that were only as fast as a walking soldier).

Faster strategic and operational movement and tempos, fewer troops controlling wider areas, and command-and-control techniques getting modified or developed from scratch to support that. Though that has been a more or less continuous process throughout history, and one I expect to continue into the future.

@Martin Rapier, apologies Martin, I'm obviously not making myself clear. (Something I seem to be excelling at in this particular thread!)

Under normal circumstances, I will start reviewing any game by looking the command techniques utilized and seeing how they square with my understanding of the period in question.

On reflection, my normal 'one/two' of wargame design review is command first (after all, as gamers we are looking to replicate the command problems faced by the real soldiers) and weapons impact second.

Yet, in WW 2 terms, I am SO tired of wall to wall panzers/T34's/Shermans/whatever, that instead I rated infantry as the most important thing, then more infantry, then artillery and then only got around to commenting on command problems as the 4th point out of 5.

So my "intersting that comes so low" was basically an aside that I realise now I should have left out.

Again, apologies for that!

I shall try to pay more attention to what I rave on about in future.

On a slightly different note, as I continue to read 'Tigers in Normandy', I see that not only were Tigers shooting at other Tigers from the same company, the darn things were also being shot at by German 88AT guns (much to the consternation of the Tiger crews who were pretty much invulnerable to head on shots as we know, but were horrified when AT rounds from an 88 went straight through them…)

"…no offense, but if you are seriously trying to say there's little to no difference in WWI to WWII training, weapons, and tactics"

No offence taken. Apologies if I wasn't clear. I am not trying to suggest that there is little or no difference between WW1 and WW2 training, weapons, and tactics. I am trying to push the limits of our understanding to the point where we are more clear about exactly what those differences were. WW1 is my special interest and I have read multiple training manuals across the major nations that fought on the Western Front. Also war diaries, anecdotal accounts, and regimental histories with particularly focus on how training was actually provided (manuals are one thing but not the only determinant of how the various arms were trained). There are still a lot of misconceptions around WW1, hence my contribution to this thread FWIIW.

Lion in the Stars, thank you for teasing out some more of the details. With respect to 'radios to call in artillery fire', WW1 infantry companies had access to comms systems in both attack and defensive modes. They were not 'radios' exactly, although wireless transmitters were taken forward. Captain Corcoran wrote in early 1917:

"The wireless, as I have said, is now an essential part in all trench warfare. When the infantry advances to an attack, the operator is always slightly in the rear. Where formerly a detachment of men had to reel out hundreds upon hundreds of yards of cable to establish telephone communication between a trench, newly taken from the enemy and the first line reserve behind, now the operator simply picks up his box, his ground mat and his aerial single-handed and advances simultaneously with the attackers. Arriving at his new position, he props up his aerial, lays his ground mat, and communications are established almost at once.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of his duties. When an enemy trench is being taken, it is he who reports the progress of the encounter… If a gas attack is coming, it is he who sends the warning to the men behind to put their [gas masks] on. If the aeronaut can be called the eyes of the army, the wireless man is its ears."

Would it be that a smaller infantry unit in WW2 could have intrinsic comms that are portable across much larger distances compared to WW1? Would that be a fair description?

WW1 infantry were cross-trained on weapons. Riflemen were trained to become proficient with grenades, rifle grenades, Lewis or other light machine guns, and, interestingly, enemy equipment including medium machine guns. Mortar crews were trained in the use of enemy artillery. In the British army, some units encouraged infantry to train in the use of trench mortars. The specialist Sturm- units in the German army trained themselves and others across the widest range of weapons possible, including enemy weapons both British and French. I am not sure what the key differences would be with respect to this aspect and WW2.

I liked your comments about operational tempo, fewer troops controlling wider areas (which I think is a very important difference and points us in the direction of how the training/weapons systems/c&c were different) and the modified command-and-control aspects. It would be useful to get at this in more detail, as it is another area where there are many misconceptions about WW1.

Robert

"On a slightly different note, as I continue to read 'Tigers in Normandy', "

Is that the Wolfgang Schneider one? Yes, very interesting. I was especially delighted by how many scenarios I can now put on legitimately fielding Tiger IIs:)

We should probably avoid getting too diverted by WW1, but a very telling comment is this one:

" fewer troops controlling wider areas "

WW2 troops were just able to do more 'stuff' over bigger areas, more quickly and with fewer men than their WW1 equivalents, even if weaponry and broad tactical concepts were similar. Things just worked better in WW2, for a whole range of reasons.

Hi Martin, yep, just confirming that it is the Wolfgang Schneider title I'm reading. As you say, its interesting how many Tiger II's we can field in Normandy!