Wolfhag | 21 Feb 2016 8:07 a.m. PST |
A few guys mentioned them as their favorite rule sets. It appears you are in the minority. What do you feel they have to offer that some of the more current and popular rule sets lack? What is your favorite rule, feature or mechanic of the game? What could be done to make them more popular? Thanks, Wolfhag |
Garth in the Park | 21 Feb 2016 8:27 a.m. PST |
Advanced Tobruk, wow, that brings back some memories. I think we stayed up all night once in high school and played a turn of that. What could be done to make them more popular? Put everybody in a Time Machine and set the controls for 1976? Slow the rotation of the Earth so that each day has about 55 hours? |
Garth in the Park | 21 Feb 2016 8:33 a.m. PST |
I'd forgotten how expensive games used to be back in the day. Each of those TRACTICS books was $10 USD US, and there were three books: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractics Thirty bucks in 1975 is over $132 USD in today's money: link Like I said on the other thread yesterday, count me among those who think that games are a lot better now than back in the Good Old Days. And cheaper, too! |
Lt Col Pedant | 21 Feb 2016 8:49 a.m. PST |
Is 'Easy Eight' 'Battleground'? If so, that was fun, slow, but had lots of character. I wouldn't play it today unless I was younger, or had a time machine, too. |
Bill Owen | 21 Feb 2016 9:10 a.m. PST |
Tractics (& its samzidat precursor GRT) was very detailed but my teenage mind could focus, memorize and adjudicate quickly. Statistics, slope, angle of incidence and hit procedure was very detailed. Played 70 designed scenarios with sand table made and orders written between 1970-1972. The greatest flaw were the soft systems like turn sequence: Side A Moves Infantry, Side B Moves All, Side A Moves Vehicles… switch A & B on alternate turns. So the key tactic against heavy frontal armor was to wait until you moved second! I think that TSR published a modification perhaps to introduce Opportunity Fire but I never played that. I moved on to platoon-per-stand rulesets eventually Command Decision… and Great Battles of WWII for company-per-stand. Perhaps portions of Tractics' armor stats/procedure could be grafted into a more realistic soft systems like found in NUTS! to cover reaction-based and campaign elements. Could be offered as Print On Demand since the market's size is so uncertain. |
M C MonkeyDew | 21 Feb 2016 9:28 a.m. PST |
Advanced Tobruk is a development of the original Tobruk rules, that debuted some 14 years ago or so and has been supported by new, and re-releases up to the current day. tactical-level-gaming.com The rules divide AFV's into nine different target aspects rated for armoured protection, and each weapon is rated for armour penetration. The rules use alternating impulses during which players may activate up to a platoon of troops or vehicles, dependent on distances involved and the presence or absence of leaders. The board games use historical maps for the most part but the game is easily translated to the tabletop, with each mark of vehicle having its own reference card and squads limited to about three types per country. Guns are all referenced on a single chart for all nations. There is a programmed operator sytle solo module that works very well with any scenario. Currently Advanced Tobruk covers the war from Poland to the fall of Berlin. There is also a couple of Korean war modules but I am not sure if either is currently in print. Despite GitP's invocation of a time machine, original TOBRUK is readily available as BRL1192, named after the ballistics report upon which the original designer Hal Hock used as the basis of his rules. This set uses well more than nine target aspects and cross references each gun and target against all angles in a series of tables. BRL1192 at the moment only covers North Africa. Americans and French will be added to the system in the coming weeks with a Morocco/Tunisia expansion. A Kursk expansion is in the works. Bob |
Bismarck | 21 Feb 2016 9:51 a.m. PST |
I only paid $11.95 USD for my boxed copy of Tractics and that was somewhere around 77-79. It included all three books as well as reams of charts. In comparison the WRG sets were 3.95. The company level one, smaller sized and with blue cover was IIRC $5.95 USD They were too detailed and slow. No suggestion to improve them nor would I want to. |
Who asked this joker | 21 Feb 2016 10:27 a.m. PST |
only paid $11.95 USD USD for my boxed copy of Tractics and that was somewhere around 77-79. That sounds about right. |
Marc33594 | 21 Feb 2016 1:24 p.m. PST |
Just got mine out and got you beat. Sticker on it, barely still readable, was $10.00 USD from American Eagle which if I remember right was up in Seattle. Must have gotten it just after it came out as I was stationed in Oregon 74-76. Each of the booklets carries a price of $10 USD on them. |
nazrat | 21 Feb 2016 1:27 p.m. PST |
Out of those three I only ever played Easy Eight's Battleground WW II. It could hardly qualify as a favorite since it was so badly organized and WAY too detailed for casual play (we NEVER finished a game), but it DID get me into WW II gaming so it gets huge credit for that. |
Garth in the Park | 21 Feb 2016 1:32 p.m. PST |
"Each of the booklets carries a price of $10.00 USD USD on them." Right, that's what it shows in the photos, too. That was my point: $30 USD for all three books, in those days was a lot of money. Equivalent to over $130 USD now. |
Mako11 | 21 Feb 2016 3:08 p.m. PST |
Can't recall what I paid for mine, back in the day, but they were sold as a boxed set. Tractics was my first set of rules for WWII and Modern miniature gaming. They had enough "To-Hit" modifiers to make them interesting, for both tank, and infantry combat. Plus, they had comprehensive rules for destroying buildings and bridges, obtaining air support, conducting airstrikes, nuclear and chemical attacks, etc., etc.. Lots of vehicle data too, considering their age. They are/were a well-rounded set of rules, and I liked their dicing conventions too. Easy Eight is another similar set, with two actions per player turn, card activation of figures/vehicles/units, and a decent combat results system. |
Rudysnelson | 21 Feb 2016 4:47 p.m. PST |
We like Fire! Ogon! Freur! For our tank to tank combat. The rules were play tested at 6mm, 10mm and 15mm at a ground scale of 1:25, 1:50, & 1:100. All played well with the ground scale dependent on the size of the forces. Interesting features was that the gun penetration and armor thickness were all converted to a classification. So if a gun penetrated at 5 or less then there was not the constant checking or counting for target effects. So if you had a 6 armor rating and he could only penetrate a 4, then there was no need to shoot or only take a track shot. The movement speeds were also grouped in classes which made movement calculations faster. Another advantage to the classifications, is that it makes conversions to hex map systems very easy. We had a set of rules for post WW2 but never got them into the advanced, revision, level play testing. |
goragrad | 21 Feb 2016 6:03 p.m. PST |
Detail. Never saw the rulebooks for Tractics sold separately – always as a boxed set with all of the charts – $10.00 USD for mine. Didn't know anyone actually sold the components individually. Paid $10. USD)) for D&D as well. Angriff and Warriors of Mars were $5.00 USD for single books, so Tractics and D&D were quite reasonable. |
dragon6 | 21 Feb 2016 9:06 p.m. PST |
As the others say, they came in box with all three books and a wad of charts for $10. USD At least mine did I liked Angriff better, WRG 1925 – 50 was OK |
Weasel | 21 Feb 2016 10:32 p.m. PST |
For old schooling historicals, those WRG 25-50 and whatever the years were for the cold war one was pretty clever. Not painfully convoluted (though the writing is pretty hazy) and they made it easy to stat up your own units. |
Martin Rapier | 22 Feb 2016 4:52 a.m. PST |
And, somewhat hilariously given the OP, I ended up playing 'Tobruk'using WRG 1925-50 instead of the game rules. I just couldn't get enthused about 40 seperate to-hit, hit location and damage rolls for a single round of Bofors fire. |
Marc33594 | 22 Feb 2016 6:59 a.m. PST |
Using Garth's numbers than the $10 USD for the boxed set is about equal to $45 USD now which, given the amount of material, would still be considered a bargain. And I am with many of the others here. As far as playability there are many more rule sets, such as Angriff already mentioned, available at the same time as these. Many of us did use them, however, for a source of data. |
M C MonkeyDew | 22 Feb 2016 8:09 a.m. PST |
Loved Angriff. Many fun games with that one. |
john lacour | 22 Feb 2016 12:24 p.m. PST |
No one got through a game of battleground? We played it weekly for years and as i'm just now getting into 20mm(we played 15mm before)i was going to replay it. That or that battlegroup series. |
Who asked this joker | 22 Feb 2016 12:38 p.m. PST |
Tractics for me. We played with Aifix figures and Rocco Tanks back in the late 70s. We pretty much put everything on the table. I will say, because of the large amount of detail especially in the modifiers, the game works better with smaller amounts of troops. A platoon or two per side and a couple of tanks really…unless you want to be there all day and possibly the next. |
(Leftee) | 24 Feb 2016 10:53 p.m. PST |
Liked E8 Battleground a lot. Found it's sort of progeny 'Arc of Fire' easier and just as realistic/fun. Only thing missing in Arc of Fire were the cool grenade templates/mishaps. Easy Eight had great scenarios online- particularly the Bulge series, and in supplements until they got silly when they released figures. |
Tiberius | 26 Feb 2016 5:42 p.m. PST |
I saw Tractics being played about 14 months ago when I called in to the local club. brought back memories but I prefer Rapid Fire now I have been playing the old WRG 25-50 rules with my cousin for the last 12 months, again, enjoyable to play but I still prefer rapid fire |
Force 10 | 27 Feb 2016 11:33 a.m. PST |
Battleground WW2 was the first mini's ruleset I ever owned. Had loads of fun with it and played many games with my son as he grew up. He is graduating from high school this spring, so am very glad that I have those many memories of playing the game with him. I recently dug the ruleset out again and we played BGWW2 with the Easy Company scenario in one of the skirmish campaign books. I have found that this ruleset is the King of rules when it comes to small extremely detailed engagements. Bigger games not so much. |
stephen m | 01 Mar 2023 6:19 p.m. PST |
Got my copy of Tractics back in the early '70s along with very early micro armour. Still have them, tigers and Crusaders. My price sticker fell off decades ago. Played many games but never infantry. The rules definitely treated infantry as painful second class forces. Of course for a teen back then armour was the only thing, especially western desert. Wolfhag, your Treadheads rules definitely have the Tractics feel to them. Dug them out a few years back and realized how poor the infantry rules were so looking again. |
Wolfhag | 02 Mar 2023 7:34 a.m. PST |
stephen m, I think the Tractics "feel" comes from the hit location and damage rules which are somewhat similar. I'm using four hit location aspects with the armor values already figured with the compound angles so players do not have to look them up. Armor values are in 5mm increments with modifiers for brittle and cast armor already factored in on the unit data card. Also, on some hit locations, there is a chance of a ricochet with the target player rolling. I think my gunfire rules are simpler too. I also added an "APCR Shatter" rule so APCR rounds are not always a Silver Bullet. IIRC Tractics is turn-based with initiative rules. Mine is Time Competitive (individual unit OODA Loop Timing) with the units that are fastest and/or have a tactical advantage executing their orders first. With this system, I don't need any special rules for opportunity fire. I'm not familiar with their infantry rules, mine are still WIP but will use the same system as the vehicles. I'll be posting a sample of the data cards soon. Wolfhag |
donlowry | 02 Mar 2023 9:34 a.m. PST |
As for the price of Tractics, it was a nightmare to print. The problem wasn't the booklets, it was all those separate sheets of statistics. It was impossible to keep all the different colors of paper in supply at the same time, and, of course, if I ran out of one, that killed the whole thing until I could get some. |
Wolfhag | 15 Mar 2023 7:14 p.m. PST |
donlowry, It's still an impressive and admirable effort. Wolfhag |