"Playing Big Games with Hammer's Slammers The Crucible" Topic

I have been involved in a lot of big games using The Crucible over the last few years and something mentioned to me by fellow period enthusiast Matt Hay made me think hard.

Matt – noted for putting on Slammers games with his club The Wessex Wyverns at the Bovington Tank Museum – link (see Matt, below)…

… said to me that, with big games, he sometimes uses the 28mm stats and play sheets for the 15mm forces to get them across the table a bit faster (while I'm on patting Matt on the back, the Big Detachment card system used in the game was also largely pioneered by him as well, but that's another story…)

Anyway, I've put some thought into this: the very substantial considerations of what happens when you are playing either on a big table at a club (with lots of players, like the eight handed game at the Maidstone club recently)

…or the bigger games at shows, like Matt's game at Bovington or the Warlords games at Sheffield or Salute

…where the game was a scale 1km long at 36 or so feet have got me thinking.

I've put some options and suggestions together on this page and would welcome feedback. link

My preferred suggestion is the 'Imperial' option as it changes so little to the game play except for making ranges and moves larger (almost two and a half times larger, obviously!), though it makes on table heavy mortars a little tricky to get into play (unless your table is big enough) simply because of the minimum ranges. You also have to be careful with minimum arming ranges on ATGWs. I've fiddled with this to try it out on a smaller table top but I'm keen to try this next time I do a big game.

Any thoughts would be useful.

John Treadaway
hammers-slammers.com

Sounds like a workable compromise that, as you said, can be an issue with minimum range weapons. You're trading scale versimilitude for playability, a fair exchange.

Maybe limit imperial ranges to models that remained stationary? Represent taking a fully aimed shot?

Interesting McWong

I have to say that my plan was not to change the system at all, just change the ranges and movement rates.

I'd always thought that – in a highly AI moderated, fully stabalised battlefield – the advantages of firing from a stationary position would be largely lost (and that's reflected, I think, from Drakes writing, I would say).

Having said that, there is a point you're making there with regard to lower tech forces who maybe don't have the quality of AI enjoyed by some of the better mercenary forces (like the Slammers) that maybe they should take a drop in the quality "to hit" roll when firing on a moving target (or from a moving platform).

I would say that that would be a different optional style rule (like, for example, the Getting the range rule in Supplement 3 which increases the chance of hitting with successive fire using mortars and such after the first round).

But – keep em coming!

John T

Great looking game.

Hammer's Slammers was the reason I became an armoured officer.

I would very much like to game HS in 6mm.

I'm on my mobile which limits what I can type, but I was talking to gameplay and balancing. Being able to move much longer distances, and being able to shoot much longer distances may encourage players to just scoot for the best LOS terrain feature and then play a very static game of just blasting at each other.

Proofs in the pudding though, nothing beats game play to make informed judgments!

All good points McWong. I'm going to have to do more playtesting:)

An interesting comment Halifax: I'd never really thought about Drake's books being anything other than an encouragement to play games rather than influence real world decision making.

John T

Perhaps you could modify the minimum ranges as well some, since real troops in action sometimes ignore those, when in heavy close fighting, and take the risk of casualties to themselves, when they are in better cover than their enemies.

Of course, there is a chance of injury, or death to their own troops, but probably less than that from others, in some circumstances.

I don't think that should be permissible all the time, but in the above case, where they might be over-run by the enemy anyway, it makes sense to permit them to void the "danger-close" minimums.

Mako – I would agree with your conclusions on that one with minimums but the only ones used in the rules are to do witharming ranges (for ATGWs) and simple ballistics with mortars: I figure if you're lobbing rounds at targets that go over cover to land on heads (or the top deck of vehicles) there should be a minimum range for the sake lf simple physics.

But I agree your 'danger close' comments.

John T

Hi John

I have enjoyed many a game using the 28mm ranges and speed (converted to inches) ive use a lower minimum range for morters etc just so they can be used on table, off the top of my head I cant remember the mods.

Going with not closing with the enemy, cover and lines of sight should be narrowed to encorange closing with the enemy to stop long distant firefight. But having a blower cover your advancing cars is a good move. This also encorages close up fire fight and abushes.

Also scenario can assit in ensuring closing with enemy to capture that vital piece of kit or information!

Cheers Matt

Hi John,

I use 15mm and have stuck with the 15mm sheets, but made the switch to inches rather than cm for all games. I did it as it makes the game much faster and more fluid, even on smaller tables.

Stuart

Thanks Matt and thanks Stuart

I'm going to do some more extensive testing as soon as I can.

John T

It's been a while since this thread is updated.

What's the progress of big games using the Crucible?

I'm going to be doing another BIG 6mm Hammer's slammers game at Cold Wars and wanted to use the Crucible rules this time. (If things work well)

Thanks for any input.

Moe

Moe

I've now tried the big stuff on a few occasions and my preferred option is how we did this one: link

Granted that was a 15mm game but that's not the relevant bit. For a big game (like this one: 13 detachments so over 100TUs of vehicles and 150 or so infantry in 40 or so TUs) we used not the standard movement but the "Imperial" option I mentioned earlier link

Also, we don't invoke the optional rule for separate detachments for initiative but use whole forces:

Each force chooses it's best current leader to bowl initiative with. That order of movement is then ascribed to the whole force, but the Leadership points are bowled for each individual detachment and pooled.

So, in the game above, the Slammers had a Captain (LV 8, as I recall) plus a second detachment with an Lt. They bowled the one initiative (1d6 plus the captain's LV of 8) against the leader of the Sincanmo: (even though they were on the same side) Cheif Diabate (LV10 plus a dice) and the three opposition forces, led by Colonel Broglie (LV12 plus a dice), the leader of the Hashemtes Major Zeid (LV8 plus a dice) and the leader of the Thunderbolts (Colonel Chiro at LV10 plus a dice).

When the initiative as established – say Broglie went first – he bowled up initiative points for himself (LV12 plus a two dice) and then added them to those of his second in command (and leader of his second detachment) – an Lt at LV6 (so LV6 plus a two dice). The grand total was made into a Leadership points pool to be used only by Broglies Legion and both detachments then moved and fired, expending points from that pool as they saw fit.

This was then repeated for the remaining four forces in exactly the same way, except that the Sincanmo had three detachments and three leaders and the Thunderbolts had four of both – meaning quite a few LPs in the pool.

All movement and firing was performed in inches rather than centimetres (so Imperial rather than Metric) so the game moved at quite a pace, finishing in around 5 hours.

How does that figure in with the size of forces you were planning to use and the timescales and table sizes you have at your disposal Moe?

John T

John, Thanks for the info. The last game had about 3 times as many TU's, although not quite organized in the same way.

I think I will have to cut things down as I plan to shoot for a 4 hour game.

I'll start doing some Play testing and slowly ramping up the figure count.

Moe.

Keep me informed on your progress Moe and I'll help out with any suggestions I can.

John T