"IABSM v3 vs v2" Topic

I was comparing v2 and v3 of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum, and I am struck by how different they are… People have said that v3 gives a "smoother" game, but I can't help feel that IABSM lost some of the texture and attitude along the way… the stuff that, over a decade ago, got me hooked in the first place!

Some big changes that are a big deal for me:

• Big Men dice are gone… in v2, you could make a Big Man have a d4-2, a dAv (which are missing now entirely), a d6+3 or anyhing you'd like to make the scenario you had in mind. It felt like a lot more variables than Grade I-IV. A dAv bloke was steady but uncreative, a d6 chap took more risks (which sometimes paid off and sometimes didn't), a 1d4-1 was a mess on the battlefield and a 1d6+2 was "Satan incarnate" when bossing around his men! Plus, with the variability of a die roll, Big Men didn't always perform the way you wanted them too… it was a random factor, not a fixed resource of Command Initiative points.

• Moreover, the advice now seems to be that every platoon leader is a Big Man. In v2, anybody could be or not be a Big Man… I've had scenarios where a platoon only had a squad leader Big Man… the platoon leader was too wimpy to even represent on the battlefield: he basically faded into the background as his men largely ignored him and left him to his own devices. As a result, the squad leader could only command a single squad (his own), but he did so with valour and had them spearpoint the attack! Now, every platoon (even support platoons) will generally have a big man in charge. For the most part, being a Big Man in v2 wasn't a right that automatically came with your rank and position… it was something that marked you out as special and heroic beyond the normal men in your company. That is much more interesting in terms of scenario design.

• Moreover, the dynamic between Officers and NCOs was reversed in v3. In v2, an NCO that gets singled out as a Big Man is a requisite bad ass—he worked his way through hard experience to be a leader of men, whereas an officer just went to officer training and was probably a social promotion. As a result, NCO Big Men are MORE effective than Officer Big Men in v2. The classic case was a platoon sergeant who was more competent than his commanding officer! For some unexplained reason, this funny and thematic stereotype was completely reversed in v3, so officers tend to be Grade III or IV and NCOs tend to be Grade I or II.

• Then there were a host of other, smaller changes… tank guns got more punchy (which is fine, I suppose), light mortars lost their deviation roll to abstraction (seems minor, but I miss rolling for deviation) and so on.

All in all, v3 seems to be more tailored to club pickup games (with preformatted army lists and generic "ready right out of the can" scenarios like "flank attack" and "meeting engagment"). Umpiring and solo play is mentioned, but doesn't receive the amount of guidance and advice that it did in v2. IABSM v2 encouraged rulings and not rules, which definitely took some time getting to grips with, but when it finally clicked, the openness and flexibility is a very powerful and liberating tool for scenario design. You can still do that with v3, of course, but if I started with v3 then I don't think I would ever know that!

These days, it's very difficult to find a game of v2. I suspect 99% of the community has moved on to v3 or other games. I guess that is only going to get harder over time, but I for one miss v2!

Thanks for this. Nice cogent analysis. As with GW rules for instance…you stick with the version you like….but….have to put up with the lack of support for that version.

Thanks Dave, and I want to make clear that I don't mean to slag off on TFL. I remain a Lardies fan and will continue to support their games. With a little work, the new v3 supplements are indeed backwards-compatible and will continue to provide material for my v2 library. Now actually finding someone to play the old game is another issue entirely… I feel a bit like the last man on Earth to be bumping around with v2!

Achtung

You raise some very interesting points. When we published IABSM v1 and v2 we had tremendous resistance to the idea that a set of rules relied on the gamer to make certain key decisions, such as "is that a good shot or and okay shot". The reason we wrote the rules like that in the first place was not that we were mad (or on mind-bending drugs as someone suggested on TMP) but that we were taking a lead from the kriegsspiel rules of von Reisswitz. We liked that approach, you clearly like that approach (albeit after taking some time to get to grips with it), we still think that approach is valid, but to be honest that reflects the views of a small minority in the hobby. Undoubtedly IABSM v3 was a response to what gamers were asking us to produce. So an Okay shot became a shot at a target in light cover and so on. Less judgement required and more solid rules that people could hang their hat on.

Was that an improvement over v2? Well, a,lot more people played it and enjoyed it. It certainly was successful in making it more accessible and allowing the majority of gamers to remain in their comfort zone rather than asking them to take a leap into a world of judgemental decision making.

Personally, when I play I tend to still make those judgement calls that v1 and v2 wanted, but then I am comfortable with that.

Rich

Rich, that's a fair and good answer I think. And there is really nothing stopping someone from using legacy rules and ideas to play the current edition, of course!

In that spirit, let me lavish praise on another idea from v2: the morale test. This one is probably never used as often as it deserves, but I find the morale test rules brilliant. When a group of soldiers hunker down from enemy fire, that's perfectly expected and is nicely handled by the wounds and casualties system. But when soldiers actually get up and do something that is completely contrary to their training and orders, that is a situation that calls for very open-ended, flexible rules like the morale test system. I've had morale test failures that resulted in a squad going berserk on an enemy, losing their bottle and dashing for the rear, surrendering with arms up, getting their orders confused, going into shellshock, mistaking friendlies for enemies, turning on their commanding officer and everything else under the sun.

I really love how it demonstrates that morale break conditions are not universal, but particular to the specific situation and troops involved. A tank overrun attempt on Soviet infantry in 1941? The poor Frontovik's have probably never seen a motor vehicle before, let alone a tank! Definite morale test for untested troops from rural provinces. A tank overrun attempt on a German Grenadier unit in 1945? Old hat, nothing to see here! Stick a bomb under his tracks and jump in a nearby foxhole to get ready for the next one. When you get hit by a 155mm HE shell, when the house you are in is on fire or completely leveled… it forces you to think: have these troops been through something like this ever before? And from that you can figure out if a test would be right, what modifiers would be appropriate, and what could happen if the test fails? Tells a story every time and makes the battle feel more "real" and less generic. Terrific!

My rule of thumb for when to implement a morale test is this: when something happens in the game that catches everyone by surprise and makes the group stop and say "wow… that's actually a pretty messed up situation…" That tends to be a good sign for the umpire to jump in and say "morale test!" Tends to only happen maybe once or twice a game, but when it does, it *makes* the story of the battle for years to come.

V3 is a much nicer looking product. V2 and V1 had pretty low production value, but they were a good game. I think V2 was a lot better product then V1 simply because it was easier to use.

I did like the old "Big Man" rules. I think that part lost a bit in the new game. Still, overall I like the V3 a lot.

Blimey,I had forgotten that the morale test even existed. I've just had to pick up an old copy and re-read it. Some of this stuff is nearly 20 years old now!

That rule (to me at least) typifies what IABSM was about in early editions: A guide to krigesspieling WWII at company level. Nothing was nailed down, everything was a guide to allow the umpire to make his own decisions based on very specific individual situations.

We wrote the rules like that as we were aiming at two markets. Firstly the military where we expected the person running the game to be a Major using it to train subalterns and drawing on his experience to judge situations. So you'd get a situation where the umpire explained his decision making process to his charges so as to make the game a learning experience. Secondly was the academic who was using wargaming to further his studies. So, h reads about an action and then games it to try to better understand what went on. Basically, that was me; that's what I use wargames for.

We were rather surprised when we found that the rules were being picked up by recreational gamers although we were not surprised when many of those were disconcerted by the demands that the rules placed on them as umpire. Indeed, for the first several years when people asked to order the rules I would send them an email explaining that these were not a typical wargame and explaining how they were different.

Indeed, reflecting on this now, I can see precisely why v3 was so different to the original as we attempted to produce a set of wargame rules rather than a guide to running a kriegsspiel.

To a degree one could suggest that we sold out on our original principles. However, I would suggest that this was never our intention. We simply wanted to make things easier for a "normal" wargamer to pick up and run with by using terms which were more familiar and providing rules which were more within their comfort zone.

This discussion comes at an interesting time as IABSM (in any edition) is just about to go out of print for the first time since we first published which, we think, was 2000. It's about to become an historical piece rather than a live rule set on our portfolio.

Cheers

Rich

Rich, I know personally speaking that I'd love to get another print run of v2… much to my consternation, I never was able to get my hands on a real physical copy! That is a terribly interesting story and makes a ton of sense out of the evolution of IABSM. I really, really hope there is a place for Kriegsspiel-like wargames on the market in the future… IABSM v2 was the first and only thing that ever really made me interested in historical wargaming. Now I have TW&T, IABSM, Triumph of the Will… you see where I am going with this! Big, commercial rulesets just have no appeal to me… It's safe to say, without TFL, I'm basically not a historical wargamer at all!

Another little rule I really enjoy with v2 is the "+" designation. The idea of this rule was to mark out a unit that has exceptional firepower or grizzled experience, and allows such units to add +2 to every roll on the fire effect table. What it really allowed you to do, however, was to have a "half-step" troop quality between the usual 2, 3 or 4 dice, since a +2 modifier is roughly the same as half of 1d6 (the average roll on one die being 3.5). So you could have a scenario where a Volksgrenadier unit in the Ardennes is made up of low-quality, inexperienced troops (Initiative 2, mostly teenagers and old men), but is loaded to the gills with automatic weapons (giving them the "+" designation for +2 firepower). Thus they would roll 2d6+2 instead of their 2 initiative dice when firing at their US armoured infantry opponents (a considerable boost which at the same time does NOT let you forget the fact that they are still very poor-quality troops). Likewise, you could represent surprisingly well-equipped Volkssturm (2+), regular troops at the end of a long and hard-fought campaign (3+), very elite troops like commandos and rangers (4+) and so on.

Ultimately, the scale of 2, 3 or 4 initiative dice is pretty limited, and the + designation helps a LOT to expand out that scale and allow you to model all sorts of different scenarios. It effectively doubles the variety of units you can put into play from 3 to 6. It also lets you account for very slight differences, if you want to give one side an edge but not necessarily make the battle between an Initiative 3 force and an Initiative 4 force. For example, a fight between Gebirgsjägers (Initiative 3) and Soviet mechanized infantry (Initiative 3+) in late 1944 Budapest. The Soviet infantry are extremely experienced by now, but are not quite Initiative 4 (which I would save for certain Guard units).

Achtung, please send me an email. I have a copy of v2 that I will happily send you,

Rich

Achtung,
I hear you. That is what I always liked about TFL and Rich/Nick. " Play the period not the rules." If you think that is an easy shot okay, explain why and it is an easy shot.
It allows for thinking and interpretation. As Rich says, most players don't want that. They don't want to think and interpret the situation. " If a Tiger tank get -1 on roads it always gets -1 on roads." Hope you can find some like minded gamers. If not there is always solitaire.
Rich,
I agree you didn't sell out. You have given folks what they want. I am glad more people are being introduced to the spirit of Lard even if it isn't at high volume. People are free to still interpret your games; you have just spelled it out for those that want it spelled out.

Cheers

Joe

Rich, thank you! Just sent an email (hope I used the right one)!

Another little rule I love in v2 is the Guts Test. This is a test that allows a unit reduced to 0 actions to still have a small chance to act and do something, even though there may be only three or four men left in the squad. This is interesting because it means your opponent can never count a unit out. Even a heavily damaged team can lob an anti-tank weapon or fire upon advancing troops. Indeed, heavily damaged units are often in the best positions to wreak havoc, with enemy armour bearing down on them and enemy squads crossing open ground in close proximity. The Guts Test rule also encouraged a nice little bit of backwards logic… the worse trained the unit was, the higher the chance of passing a Guts Test! Thus, you'd get nice moments that defied stereotypes (like a Volkssturmmann or partisan surprising everyone and acting heroically, despite the grievous losses to his squad). This actually makes a lot of sense… less trained units are probably less combat experienced, less jaded and more prone to act in sudden bouts of desperation to unexpectedly impressive effect.

I'll admit that the Guts Test didn't really scale well with the supplements though. The v2 rulebook only accounted for 8-man squads, and thus the 10-man squads of the supplement books had the strange oversight that they would almost never pass a Guts Test. There are different ways to handle this… I would recommend a bonus of +1 if the squad still has 3 or more soldiers. There is lots of room for other modifiers, of course (like +1 for being fanatic or veteran), but I would be wary of throwing off the probability too much. The Guts Test should remain, in effect, a one or two in six chance for a group of three to five soldiers to do something unexpectedly heroic.

In general, I love redundant morale systems. Human psychology during something as intensely stressful as live combat is an extremely complex thing, and it really calls for more than a one-stop-shop solution with a single rule for testing morale. IABSM v2 has, in total, 9 different morale systems:

1) The wound penalty to pips (which is recoverable)
2) The casualty system for reducing dice (which is not recoverable)
3) The pinning and suppressed results from fire (which have dramatic, temporary effects)
4) The guts test (which is counted against total casualties, regardless of experience, and is unique in that it is a test to see if you do something, rather than to see if something happens to you)
5) The aforementioned morale test rules (which can be tweaked to handle a huge number of situations)
6) The tank bail out system (a result of cumulative damage)
7) The vehicle "retire away" from fire result (a result of an individual hit)
8) All the card-based morale effects (hesitant troops, rally etc.)
9) And the close combat throw back rules (which is technically a morale system too!)

I'm probably even missing one… Morale should be at the heart of any WW2 game, because it is the most important thing determining success or failure. Multiple, redundant systems for morale lets you think of the complicated impact of human psychology on the battlefield in a number of different ways, bringing out different aspects that are significant to the particular situation at hand.