"Wargaming with Weapons of Mass Destruction" Topic

How would you portray anything from nuclear weapons to chemical weapons to high yield conventional explosives in our miniaturrs games
We cannot just ignore these things as they either are or were in the tactical possibilities of many armies
I had to know about MOPP suits and such even though I served as a supply type

Dirtside II has rules for tactical nuclear strikes. I used one in a game once, my own force broke and ran from it.

TacNukes obliterate chunks of divisions and change the terrain. Get used to fatigued troops in HazMat/MOPP gear, sealed AFV's, little communication, so much so 2nd Lieutenants will decide the battle and haphazard air parity. Pretty much like WWI during a massive gas attack with modern weaponry. Three days to two weeks later 'ambient' nuke casualties deplete your formations. A pock-marked nuclear battlefield with isolated units. That's not including nerve gas and biowar effects.

WWIII is only funny once.

Theres also massed artillery and massed airstrikes without WMD
and then there is another area not much addressed in games battlefield atrocities, such as shooting of PoWs and civilians out of hand, a feature of the 100 years war through today
Yet the games rately address this all to real stuff

With Cold War era bombers soaring high above, OR, down in the weeds, to avoid enemy radar, fighters, SAMs, and AAA.

Liberal use of false targets by the attackers, and the defenders have to try to intercept and stop them.

Need to make some mushroom clouds, since the commercial one(s) available are shockingly high priced, to almost rival the horror of nuclear war.

WMD are weapons just like any other, they have their Pros and cons and are very politically charged. I have in the past played games involving them and found them either challenging or ridiculous, usually depending on the beliefs and knowledge of the scenario designer. Happily as I now concentrate on games set at battalion level or below They rarely apply.

Although I frequently roll out "The Sword of the Prophet" Scenario for AWC21. This has an attack jet loaded with a nuke, escorted by other attack jets and fighters being intercepted by enemy fighter. The defender doesn't know which jet has the "special munition". When we first played it, with other rules, in the 80's it was Iraqi jets intercepting Iranian Phantoms. Then it was Coalition jets facing Iraqis. we have also played it with Iranians v's US; a Pakistani raid v's Indians or Soviets or US fighters; Syrians v's Israelis and a friend pitted Syrians/Turks/Israelis in a confusing three way furball recently. All good clean fun.

Fatman

Mako11
Nah forget "Cold War era bombers soaring high above, OR, down in the weeds" barrel in at wave top to make Sevastopol glow in the dark with your trusty A-1 Spad launched from a carrier in the Med'! not saying it was a barking plan but one item issued to the pilot on take off was a packed lunch.

Fatman

Why?

Why what?

Saw a wargame at a convention where the GM placed a gas mask to the side of the game board at the midpoint between the sides. If troops got gassed the number of figures lost equaled the time it took the commander to put on the mask. Everyone got real touchy about the mask and anyone that wandered by and wanted to stop and fiddle with the gas mask got a quick "Put that down!" from the players.

I have played with WMD's. We did a Central America Soviet Proxie invades a US Ally game with persistent and non-persistent chemical and a very small nuke missile.

The Red Menace used all three and still lost due to better tactics on the part of the good guys.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

Used chem a fair bit especially in WW1 games, plus the odd nuke, as well as the obvious massed artillery barrages, heavy bomber strikes Tec.

Pretty standard fare for operational or grand tactical twentieth century games.

Main thing is to keep it simple and always disappoint the players as however a big a bang it is, there will usually be some survivors to frustrate their plans.

I've also used e.g. laser guided 2000 bombs in ultra modern tactical games, but such things are usually the game finale (found the right compound or whatever).

WMD come into play every time I eat a burrito for lunch when playing a multi game at the club, winner every time, a gas attack against my fellow players is as affective as winning tactically on the table, especially in Napoleonics :)

IIRC, the old Aerotech rules had rules for tacnukes. They started with "remove all terrain but hills within X of ground zero".

I remember a boardgame suggested the best way to simulate Tac Nukes was to soak the map in lighter fuel and set fire to it.

Wonder if 'Management' would like her best dining table turned in to a Tac Nuke simulation?

Fist Full of Tows has a rules for both tac nukes and chem/bio weapon use on the battlefield. The chem/bio rules are pretty resaonable, IMHO.

Given the training troops recieved in NBC warfare actual casulties from a chem attack would probably be fairly light, the main effect would be in the degredation of their fighting ability due to being in noddy suits and the various decontamination drills required.

"They started with "remove all terrain but hills within X of ground zero"."

In the nuke rules in Modern Spearhead you also get to remove the hills with groundbursts, as well as set all the woods and towns on fire within distance X.

It is very funny when the Russians manage to block their own advance with blazing towns ill paced nukes.

The 1956 British Army tactical wargame has rules for 'tactical' nukes up to 100kt(!). One of those would certainly spoil your day, although surprisingly ineffective against well entrenched forces (outside the 100% destruction zone) as are most forms of indirect fire.

" the main effect would be in the degredation of their fighting ability"

Yes. That is fairly easy to model and quite realistic.

The same sort of thing happened in WW1 once the right gear was issued, partly why they never bothered with gas in WW2.

Martin, that was my thinking exactly. Artillery units were often a target for gas attacks simply because the rate of fire dropped dramatically with the crews in respirators, easier to neutralise rather than destroy.

If playing with "armies" of 10 tanks etc then drop a nuke and it is endex!

However gas both persistent and non persistent can be modeled by casualties and degrading performance and morale. Mask in 9!!

Tally Ho!

Fist Full of Tows has a rules for both tac nukes and chem/bio weapon use on the battlefield. The chem/bio rules are pretty resaonable, IMHO.

Haven't used those parts myself, but they suggest that you can get most of the effect if you ignore all the actual rules for attacks with chemical & biological weapons, and just apply the listed penalties for fighting while wearing appropriate protective gear. This seems like a good abstraction to me, and the full rules are still there if you need them.

The nuke rules seem remarkably reasonable, scaling all the way down to itty bitty baby nukes that leave quarter-inch craters. Of course, I play Ogre, so my views on fun games with gratuitous tactical nuclear weapons aren't quite relevant to the Cold War.