"Cold War Commander New Units/Rules For Faster Armor Combat" Topic

Here are a couple PDFs.

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This one contains a selection of Ultramodern tanks, including the NATO stalwarts, stuff that hypothetically could be used in Ukraine (heavily inspired by Combat Mission Black Sea), and some Indian, Pakistani, and Chinese gear. I used FFT3's ratings as a bit of a guide, but there were places I had to guess and estimate since CWC is much looser with it's definitions. The points were guesses. Happy to take feedback.

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And these are my rules for fast armor combat. Basically adding one additional save roll once you take a certain number of hits in a single attack. If you fail that save, you're destroyed. It -really- speeds up combat between armored vehicles, and it brings the attack:kill ratio close to FFT3.

If you're using FFT3 ratings and trying to get closer to FFT3, why not just play FFT3?

Cool Changes.

@bishnak – I really enjoy the CWC command and infantry rules. Those produce really enjoyable games, especially solo. I just couldn't get over how it would take several turns to "wear down" a armored vehicle. Since I love tinkering with rules, making house rules came naturally. I'm not trying to rewrite FFT3, just trying to make the armor combat faster/deadlier.

@Edzard – glad you like them!

I just couldn't get over how it would take several turns to "wear down" a armored vehicle

Don't forget that it is not a single armoured vehicle. Each vehicle model represents a troop or squadron. An infantry stand is a platoon.

I prefer to play at 1:1 for vehicles and 1:squad for infantry.

But even at 1:platoon, the game already has elegant suppression rules, so hits and getting knocked out should really focus on actual unit destruction. At least for modern armored combat where there is almost always a binary functioning/destroyed state.

If, for instance, every time you took a certain number of hits you lost a point of Attack or your Save went up by one (something to represent losing a vehicle), I'd find that totally agreeable for 1:platoon play. Simply having all damage go away at the end of a turn feels like a second suppression rule.

I'd honestly say it's much rarer for a unit to be slowly damaged when dealing with attacks from MBT cannons and ATGMs. For infantry, the RAW work perfectly, and that's why my house rules do nothing to change that.

Playing 1:1 for vehicles? In that case I agree with you. The existing rules would seem quite odd if you assume each casting is a single AFV.

I've always just rationalized that morale and confusion are as a big a part of the suppression and hits as actual vehicle knock outs for a tank troop. Which I think it should be…just like you think so for your infantry squads.

I sure couldn't rationalize that for an individual tank though! Good work on adapting something to fix that for your level of game.

Two alternate approaches posted on the CWC forum. I'm not really happy with any of these.

1

So to overcome this issue I had thought about borrowing a rule from FoG. At the end of the turn instead of simply removing hit dice roll a 'destroyed' dice is rolled and if the score is greater or equal to the hits but not suppressed dice then remove dice, if it's lower then the unit is destroyed. Same thing for suppressed dice but if the dice is equal to the hits then the unit stays suppressed with that number of hits.

Obviously the values could be changed to give a greater or lesser chance of being destroyed or remaining suppressed.  

Well last night we tried out this rule and it worked well. The dead units accrued a bit quicker but overall the game flow seemed unaffected. However, what it did do was stop players worrying about how many fires to concentrate on one particular target to get a kill. So overall it just felt that bit more 'real'.

2

Cold War Commander – Alternative Firing Procedure

Each unit can only be given one Fire order in its turn.

1)Roll Attacks with all To Hit values and modifiers as normal
2)For each Hits value of the target roll one save (not one save per successful attack)
3)If the number of successful attacks outnumbers the successful saves then the target is destroyed
4)If the number of successful attacks and saves are equal then the target is supressed

Cover Save & No Save Value
Hard Cover gives a 5+ save and Soft Cover a 6+. This save can be used instead of any units normal save value if desired. Otherwise units without a Save Value must rely on all Attacks missing to survive!

Concentrating Fire
Normal firing procedure is for each unit to engage its own target; however units can concentrate fire as follows. Pick one unit as the main attacker and then declare who will support that attack. Each support adds 50% rounded down of its attacks to the main attack. Save as normal. All attacks against the same target (per Fire order) must be declared before any dice are rolled. Remember each unit may only get one fire order, but a commander could reserve the firing of some of his units and try to issue a separate fire order to them on the same target, starting the process again from step 1).

Fallback
A unit suppressed twice will fall back and potentially be destroyed as normal. The number of dice to fall back will equal the number of successful attacks in step 4).