"That giant Market Garden game" Topic

TMPers…there surely must be someone among us who has the rules that were developed for the 70-foot-plus Market Garden game of a decade or so past?

Saw it several times. Killer set-up, but no idea about the rules!

Home rules. Oddball might know. It was in 2004 IIRC

Edit: IIRC the Battlegroup Boston folks ran the game

In 1985 (more than one decade back there) was the first mega Market Garden game. The map was only 36-40 feet long but ran non-stop for 70 hours.
panzer-war.com/page10.html

Edit: IIRC the Battlegroup Boston folks ran the game

I thought the OP was talking about the 70ft Arnhem game that was shown at Salute a few years ago?

We did a 40 foot Arnhem game (twice!) using Megablitz, does that count? I also did a figures based version of Victory Games 'Hells Highway' which didn't require quite so much real-estate.

There was a huge 10mm Arnhem game at Triples a few year doing the GBWW2 scenario from 'Drop Zone'.

One of the now departed TMP regulars also ran Arnhem in 54mm using iirc Crossfire (which may have been the Salute one).

The OP has posted about this before, I think he means the Boston one.

There are however plenty of options for running a full Arnhem campaign, some of them (like the GBWW2/Dropzone option) don't even require any thought, just run the scenario from the book.

As I recall you really don't need all that board length. You need a small section for the infantry battle around the bridge and you need an area where you keep rotating in new terrain boards as XXX Corps fights its way along the road in a very narrow front.

Most of the board length remains idle or for displaying XXX Corps tank models. So 4 players are all that are needed. More just sit around or get in each others way.

It may have been in one or two back issues of Wargames Illustrated as I recall seeing all of the pretty pictures plus the rules if I'm not mistaken. From what I recall they were pretty simple, but effective for that size game. I've been looking for them as well as my group would like to do a massive, multi-table East Front game and they would work well to get it done in a day.

I have indeed asked about this before, but it did n't get me very far so I thought I'd try again.

Major B….It was the Boston (I think) one that we had in mind – scenery by a Mr. Baber and rules by (I think) a Mr. Scott. We intend to run a similar game as a club project and it'd be a great help to see what someone else has done in the past.

Aegiscg47…The Salute game with the 54mm kit was Crossfire with alternative rules for armour – we'd very much like those amendments too – but they were n't in the WI article. We (self and SWMBO) now own a lot of John Lander's collection…though if anyone reading this has some more of it that they'd like to part with we'd be interested in getting more, especially infantry and buildings…most especially buildings.

Mobius, you're kind of correct. What I have in mind will involve at least 4 players and 2 (possibly 3) umpires/managers and we won't need 70 foot – more like 40. When the time comes we can cheerfully add more players and we can even offer accommodation if anyone wants to join us, but we are a long, long way from ..well….anywhere really.

Wow! Somebody remembers Victory Games! I still play "Ambush!" and have often thought about doing a 1/72 miniatures version.

"Wow! Somebody remembers Victory Games! I still play "Ambush!" and have often thought about doing a 1/72 miniatures version."

VG did some great games, I also enjoyed 'Ambush' a lot. Of the operational games Hells Highway was my favourite, we played that to death, although the setup and strategy for the standard setup campaign game did become a little sterotyped after a while ('Festung Grave').

The Salute 54mm 70footer was my game, assisted by 13 players from the Huntingdon club and Martin, rumours of my TMP demise are exagerated!

We used Crossfire rules, with armour tweaks, as mentioned by Mr Ugly(!) the tweaks were very simple, as I had to keep the behemoth flowing all day. Is this the forum for them? not wishing to 'jack the thread' (sorry, have NWA on the stereo!) they were as follows; as per Crossfire;

All Armour gets a number of 'actions' per iniative, this depends on their weight/speed/effectiveness, usually, only 1 main gun shot per iniative, but, if armed with, f'instance, 20mm, could be more. an action is as per crossfire, move straight, turn up to 90' rotate turret, shoot, etc. with a +1 if on a road the entire initiative. As an example, Shermans get 2actions, Cromwells 3, Tigers 1, you can increase/decrease this according to your own needs/research/bias(!)

To keep things simple, and you may want to change this, all tank main guns hit AP on a 4+ with +1s to hit given to a few exceptional cases (PAK43, Veteran crews) short barrelled, 5+ You could, just say, 3+ to hit for all long barrelled, ie Panther, Firefly, PAK43, 4+ for 'normal lenghth' ie Sherman, PZIV, Cromwell, and 5+ for short barrelled, ie PZIV short etc.

The main change is in Armour, the penetration plus diceroll has to BEAT not EQUAL the armour stat, if it equals it, the tank is SHOCKED, and has to make a morale roll, as per infantry from suppressed, this way, you can have crew quality as a factor, in their ability to rally up. IF that tank gets hit again, and it equals the armour again, that tank has to withdraw, in a straight line, til something stops it, (terrain, etc) you could use this for the first equal, if you like, with the tank withdrawing, then having to rally up? just a thought………

This kept the action flowing, but made the armour more integral, rather than 'tacked on'

Oh, as an aside, I had a very funny exchange with a punter at Salute, which went, (I swear) like this…….

Punter; (looking at the entire game) 'Thats a 50 footer'
Me; '70, all half a ton of her'
(with apologies to Messers Shaw, and Dreyfuss) hahahaha!

Apologies if l droned on, hope you enjoying the kit, Ugly!

John

I played in one at Fall In (or Cold Wars) using Flames of War rules…

I played in the game and had a bit of input in the development, such as it was. What exactly would you like to know?
The rules were pretty much straight Crossfire, with a few small tweaks – mostly to the armoured and artillery rules-
Force levels were bathtubbed obviously and considerable liberties taken in the OB in order to accommodate a few higher level assets to add flavour.
On the whole a stand represented a platoon rather than a section.
The main armour tweaks were pretty simple.
No individual differences in hit roles for AT weapons, so all ATGs hit on a 3+, all long tank guns hit on a 4+ and short barreled guns hit on a 5+
The penetration and armour factors were left pretty much as is, the crucial difference being than in order to penetrate the roll had to exceed the armour rather than equal it.
Vehicles and AFVs were given an "action point rating" for each initiative, this was commonly 2 for most tanks with a few being given 1 and a few 3. These allowed a vehicle to perform that many actions per initiative rather than just 1. An action was (IIRC) pivot up to 90 and move straight, turn turret up to 90 and fire, only 1 terrain feature could be entered per iniative. All vehicles got 1 extra action if they spent the entire initiative on a road.
When "big" artillery (25pdrs, 105's) fired by btty it targeted an entire terrain feature -rather than just a single stand.
There were added a few dedicated infantry AT teams at btn lvl which were a small 2 man team armed only with PIAT, Pzrsrk or bazooka. These could fire once per initiative but did not lose you the initiative if they missed. Other infantry AT weapons were dished out to sections as per the main rules and fired normally.
Thats about it from what I recall.
Yes, of course you can do XXX corps on a rolling table but that sort of ignores what 2 US and 1 British Parachute divisions are getting up to in the meantime.

Ninja'd by Lander!
(who is like a Ninja…only chubbier…and on the internet)

There was an article that detailed the setup and the rules that they used, in a copy of MWAN. I used the rules with kids which worked quite well. I wish that I could remember what MWAN it was in.

John & Christot…many thanks!

I think every year at CRISIS Antwerp there is a beautiful one( not 40ft!), which makes sense considering our proximity to it.

Hi Daler. We're in Shetland, so it's not exactly close for us. We do intend to join in Ludwig's game at Eindhoven in April though – are you going to that?

I certainly plan to. I live in Eindhoven!

If you can find one the Rapid Fire Campaign Guide "Operation Market Garden September 1944" is a very good source.

The campaign is broken down to run on various tables. You can set them all up at once and run a big game or you can run individual segments as a complete game. You can also do it incrementally. The tables vary in size but are made up of 5 X 8 tables either singles or combined into larger areas.

Marc- we've got the RF book; it's been very useful.
Daler – see you there maybe…were n't you going to come to our game in January? Or was it the one last August?

I think every year at CRISIS Antwerp there is a beautiful one( not 40ft!), which makes sense considering our proximity to it.

20mm? RF? Last year?
Could be mine

The rules used for the Martin Baberand Sam Scott Operation Market Garden mega game is in MWAN 128. Rules have a neat close combat resolution using playing cards. Overall rules are quick, concise and will get the job done. Good luck.

Takeda…I owe you a pint. Email me and I'll send you one of my (very boring) books if you like.
MWAN 128; where can I find it?

Takeda – found it! I owe you a pint.

Great! Good luck, I think they will do the trick. That gane was a sight to behold. I back tracked my email and a member by the name of ashauace69 contacted me about a file. I will have to check around to see if I have on file at home, work, or printed out. But MWAN 128 should do well to get it playing.