"Cold War rules" Topic

Just thinking about how rules written in the '80s might give a better game than more modern rules. Back then the writers were dong the best guess of capabilities, where now we have lots of "real world" data.

T72, T80, M1 were all best guesses. Doctrine taught US tankers that they could not kill with a front shot on the Soviet tanks. Gulf War I changed that thought.

Discuss

I don't know. The rules I remember were table heavy with tons of cross indexing going on. Total drag on game play IMO. I seem to remember Frank Chadwick talking about his own rules which were suppose to be "realistic" using all the data he could get his hands on. He played a game that pitted a Soviet tank regiment against a US battalion. The game took ALL DAY to play, ran for only a couple of real game turns, and covered only about 5 minutes in game time.

Meh…

I would rather play a game that runs fast, gives reasonable results, and is fun to play. So less rule checking and chart cross checking and more metal/plastic moving and die tossing. Hey, blame GW for gamers like me wanting fun, fast games.

Fist Full of TOWs anyone??

PDF link

Pretty expensive rules, but worth every penny.

Being a tanker from the end of that period I don't remember being told that our guns couldn't penetrate their armor. Maybe that was from the M68/L7 gun crowd who were using HEAT rounds on everything so the Russians were putting out BDD and reactive armor that could defeat HEAT style weapons.

We (tank crews training for the M1A1 in 1989) were told that tank armor was stronger up front (duh) and that we should go for the flank shots whenever they were offered or could be found. We were also told that our M829s (the fabled "silver bullets") could pretty much kill anything out there. We were also told that they were EXPENSIVE and to save them for "real targets" (T64s, T72s, T80s). Use HEAT on everything else… bimps, BTRs, and T62s and less. But save the silver bullets for the big game!

no one is allowed to win @ cold war.

Those weren't Frank's rules he was talking about but rather the game that inspired Command Decsion and Combined Arms.

I thought he was talking about TACFORCE.

He was talking about a game with 300 Soviet tanks vs 150 West German tanks. This in a game system designed for platoon engagements. From this he started working on Command Decision as a way to play out operational engagements with 1 model = 5 tanks scale. (from the CD1 designer's notes)

There is apparently some evidence to suggest that the vehicles sold overseas are not equivalent to the best front-line Russian/Soviet armor, and that indeed in some cases, frontal penetrations might not occur.

Same goes for some of their Warsaw Pact allies, IIRC, e.g. East Germans, etc..

Even the early TOW missiles might not penetrate frontal armor.

My experience was in the mid '80s. Miles harnesses for OPFOR had few sensors on the front. Also the tabletop exercises used rules where it was hard to penetrate from the front (both encourage working for flank shots). But then we were using the 105.

Even Combined Arms (CD Modern) made it not a sure thing to kill from the front. I guess "modern" easier to use rules with 80's stat lines might give a fell for what we expected, then.

Sounds like Tacforce. Rough to play. Add to that WRG 1950+…in both cases one would play all day to resolve a few minutes of combat. Of course, we always put wat too many vehicles on the board at one time.

Combined Arms was a revelation for me, once I got over the scale (I was so used to 1:1). But it PLAYED!

I remember those Tacforce and WRG games that took all day to play 7 minutes of game time. They work best with companies. Combined Arms can handle multiple battalions, and that set got me away from 1:1 modern games.

WRG was fine if you played it at the level intended, combat team vs battalion, and as with its ww2 counterpart, played better with lots of tanks.

Frank Chadwicks best (imho) 80s rules were the boardgname Assault, which was essentially Command Decision. Ran loads of battalion/regiment games with that.

One of the issues wargamers seem to fail to understand is that if a division rolls forward, in relaity perhaps only a battalion at a time fights on any one fron possibly even less.

In attack there is no real point in trying toi actally breakthrough on more than a 4000 m front. In most places this will allow a relatively secure supply route and the tanks real job is to destroy the soft underbelly. With games at 1 tank is a platoon not meany models are goint to be in play at any one time. Proably 2 companies of tanks and 2 of APC's the rest will be standing by to replace the ones up fron within an hour or so of fierce fighting. After at mosr 8 hrs they will have to fall back and re-fuel and re-arm. Which bit do you want to play before logistics becomes paramount. Plus fighting on a ground that is several Km wide that looks like a bit of ground 1 km wide make it totaly unrealistic. Hedges etc are far to few so infantry fail to work.

Regarding rules. In our rules you could update the specifications to what they were thought to be back in the 80's and play very easily. I can't see how you can "unleardn" what you already know. It like the farce of trying in a set of rules to make a player represent a better general than he is its impossible. Some of our players WILL NEVER be the risk taker Rommel was.

Back in the day – late 80s – early 90s we played a lot of GDWs Combined Arms – we could play a large game to conclusion in an afternoon

There is apparently some evidence to suggest that the vehicles sold overseas are not equivalent to the best front-line Russian/Soviet armor, and that indeed in some cases, frontal penetrations might not occur."

Rather more than "some evidence", and no surprise. After all the M1s the US sells overseas are rather less than filly spec'd so why would anyone expect the Russians to be any different?

I was under the impression that export Abrams didn't have the DU mesh of the M1A1HA and A2, even if they were otherwise up to A2 equipment. Still have the Chobham laminated armor.

So you'd be looking at basic M1 or M1A1 armor statlines for the export models and 120mm guns.

There is apparently some evidence to suggest that the vehicles sold overseas are not equivalent to the best front-line Russian/Soviet armor, and that indeed in some cases, frontal penetrations might not occur.

Same goes for some of their Warsaw Pact allies, IIRC, e.g. East Germans, etc..

Even the early TOW missiles might not penetrate frontal armor.
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Some testing done after the end of the Cold War seemed to indicate that even the most modern NATO MBTs would have been unable to get frontal kills on Soviet tanks mounting the Kontact-5 ERA (which was introduced in the late '80s). New ammo was introduced, though, which was supposed to resolve the problem.

Needless to say, the Iraqis didn't get any of the stuff…

I am unaccountably amused by the idea of 'filly spec'd' M1s…

The WRG moderns set has its advantages. Although coming to it *after* Challenger might have coloured my opinion. Lurking behind the terrible layout of TTG's Corps Commander though is another interesting game (if you don't take the title literally).

WRG was a good ruleset if, as someone said upthread, you played it at the right scale. Tried many sets, playing Fistful of TOWS these days