"Treadheads AAR from DundraCon in San Ramon" Topic

This is an after action report of a scenario of play testing the Treadheads tank skirmish system at DundraCon on Feb 14-15 in San Ramon, CA.

AAR file: link

Unfortunately there are no pictures. The miniatures and terrain were not worthy of being posted on this forum but were adequate for the play testing. At PacifiCon and KublaCon I'll have some first class ones.

Just to give a brief summary of the game. As the tank commander and gunner you select the action you want to perform (situational awareness check, shooting or moving), determine how long it will take you (there are a number of options with a risk/reward based on your situation and tactics) and you "activate" to perform the action after that set number of turns. Seconds count and it gives a good interaction between opponents. It's kind of like playing a stop action or frame by frame video game.

The variables are crew expertise, turret rotation and hull pivot speed, aiming/fire control selection and rate of fire. After you perform an action you immediately select the next action which means no mutual orders phase. You can "interrupt" your current action and change to a different one with a successful Situational Awareness check. You cannot interrupt your opponents turn or orders – unless you blow him up.

Units that are moving are marked with a movement arrow showing the general direction they will move and are actually moved on the playing surface every five seconds moving about 50 meters. Players mutually move their units within the restrictions of the movement arrows so no waiting for your opponent to move while you stand by for your turn. This allows a small enough movement increment to allow playable over watch and opportunity fire without any additional rules, interrupts or moving a players vehicle back to his mid move. It also allows for a fairly historical rate of fire.

We recruited a few play testers. The people that picked up the game the quickest were ones that had played some of those tank video games on the internet (whose names or abbreviations I will not mention in this forum). We even had a few players come over after playing one of the more popular D6 die rolling miniature game rule sets and they said Treadheads was as easy or easier to pick up and play.

I did meet with the president of a successful game publishing company who has taken an interest mainly because of the play aids and graphics. We'll see how that progresses. I do have prototypes designed of all of the systems, gun charts and vehicle status charts. Infantry and artillery rules are in development too.

Examples:
Opportunity Fire example: link
General Rules: link
Sample Gunnery Chart: link

Thanks,
Wolfhag

That's quite an impressive presentation Wolfhag! And, quite the "media blitz(krieg) planned! A world wind tour of "Treadheads"! I'm so jealous! There are, now, so many more conventions in Northern California than the home of historical & Fantasy miniature gaming in the Wisconsin-Illinois region.

All I've been able to find here in Chicago is "Little Wars" in one of the outlying western suburbs, and the well known, "GenCon" in Indianapolis, Indiana! Rats!

Sounds intriguing.

Thanks for sharing.

Any chance of info in a PDF, since I, and I suspect others don't do LinkedIn.

Finally, any chance of you running a demo for some of the local game clubs in Sacramento, or one of the gaming stores?

I'd love to see it in action, and suspect some others might as well, but I can't make it to the conventions.

Mako11,
I'm in the SF East Bay about 90 minutes from Sac. Used to live in Citrus Heights. I know a few of the hardcore gamers in your area and I'm sure I could get something scheduled. I'll be at SacCon next month.

This game is not for everyone. It's not based on any previous "To Hit with die roll modifier" traditional games so it's a little hard for some people to wrap their head around and you have to "unlearn" the mechanics of other games.

The gunnery system uses a trajectory based horizontal and vertical movement of the round from the aim point over a scaled image of the target in the correct aspect to determine where the round hits or how close it missed. Measured in .1 meter increments it gives a potential 100 hit locations per square meter of target area with no charts or die roll to determine hit location or systems damaged. It may sound confusing but in practice it's easier and more accurate than traditional games. The best way to get up to speed is to understand the basic concepts of tank gunnery and the duties of the gunner and commander. Things like the differences, advantages and disadvantages of Ranging and Bracketing compared to Battle Sight and Burst on Target. This is found real tank manuals.

The game also tries to represent the nuances of tank armor configurations and the compound angle generated by armor slope and horizontal angle of the gun to the target. Fortunately there is a nomograph the army research dept put out that makes that an easy one step process with no math or charts. This can make a huge difference in the armor protection and you really need to include this if a tank game is going to be accurate. Compound angles can be great enough to get a round to ricochet.

Some people have remarked the charts are "overwhelming" because of so much info. However, the charts are basically composed values that are modified base values in 100 meter increments. You only need concern yourself with the range column. That will give you values without hunting around for range band modifiers, ammo modifiers, etc. The accuracy of each gun is figured on it's inherent accuracy, ranging error and aiming error but this is all transparent to the player.

Rather than traditional spotting rules we use the concept of "Situational Awareness" in 360 degrees with the greatest awareness to the front and least to the rear. One D20 die roll takes care of what the commander and crew are aware of out to the max detectable range of the target and what they can engage. However, when engaging they have a large area they are blind. Good situational awareness will allow you to respond to threats. Poor SA will allow the enemy to sneak up on your flanks.

If you search TMP there is other info I've posted.

Here is a short (very) amateur video I did to give an idea of the booklet that will be used for each vehicle in the game. You'll have in your hand everything you need, including charts, to play the game tailored for that specific vehicle. This is a prototype and just gives an overview.

Video link: YouTube link

I can let you know about my schedule for Sacramento. I'll post some PDF's later.

Wolfhag