Gangsters! 28mm Skirmish Game

For last night's game I decided to debut the Citadel Gangsters I'd painted a few weeks ago. I'd finally sourced and repainted some excellent Lledo "Days Gone" cars to go with them (one seen at left above) and this was the last element remaining before we could have a game...

Rules used were found in a back issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy magazine and based on Warhammer Historical's "Legends of the Old West". I wanted a multi-player game so I came up with a simple scenario set in the seedy dockyards of the Big City. The Italian Mob and a Scottish gang known as the "Sean McSeans" are bitter rivals in the illegal liquor trade. Unbeknownst to each other, each gang receives a tip... there is a cargo truck full of illegal whiskey at the pier. Unfortunately, the truck has broken down, and each gang sends a "delegation" to secure the goods and wait for a commandeered tow vehicle to come pick up the truck. However, the local police precinct is also in on the secret, and a crack unit led by the Commissioner and a Special Agent is also on the way to secure the booty...

 

 Conscript Mike appears unimpressed with his lot as Police commandant...

For the first game, Conscript Mike played the cops, and Dave V. and Brian played the gangsters. We used the WSS rules as written for the first game...

... and they proved somewhat unsatisfactory. What happened was that Brian ran his gang in a very "meta" fashion and sat back, waiting for the other two antagonist gangs to destroy each other. Long-time Conscripts will recognize this as Conscript Sean's favorite tactic for multiplayer games - a tactic which was as successful as it was infuriating ;-)

Therefore Brian's gang became known as the "Sean McSeans".

Here they are, advancing en bloc...

Hiding behind some barrels...

The main problem with the rules, however, had to do with the effect of shooting. Or rather, the lack of effect. Most of the figures had a "Shooting" value of 5+ on a d6, with a few at 4+. When combined with the copious cover provided on the table and the short ranges of the weapons (typically 12"), this resulted in shooting having little effect. Bizarrely for a game so evocative of wild gunfights, "gats" and "Chicago typewriters", the antagonists had to close to knife range in order to effectively engage their rivals. The mental image of gangsters throwing aside their Tommy-guns and pulling out brass knuckles to decide things was jarring, to say the least.

"Don't bother with the guns; let's wade in with nightsticks!!"

The Sean McSeans camped on the objective

Settling things the Chicago Old Testament way

Brian won the first game after Dave V. and Mike's gangs basically stabbed each other to death. However, that game didn't take long, and we identified the problems with the rules, so we decided to play again with a quick fix - shooting values improved by one pip across the board and gun ranges standardized to 12" (24" for the cop rifle).

Brian turned over the McSeans to me for the second game, Mike kept the cops (unwillingly) and Dave played his Italians again. The second game was much improved. Close range firefights abounded and the atmosphere was most evocative of the era. In the picture above, my gang and Dave's get to grips at short range with a gun battle over some crates (literally) - the objective is the green truck at upper left. After a turn of that there were 4 dead gangsters and an impromptu truce called in order to address the coppers... Dave had to go home a bit after that so I took over his gang too. The uncomfortable possibility of me having to fight myself was avoided when the remnants of my own gang failed its bottle check and fled the table, leaving a couple of Italian die-hards to sweat the heat. The forces of law and order prevailed at last as the Italians turned tail.  

The second game was really fun and tense, I think the slight rule mod made a big improvement. Goes to show that when it comes to game design it can be the smallest things (like one pip!) that make the biggest difference.

Bolt Action Rules - First Game

For our Wednesday game last week we played the new Bolt Action 28mm WWII rules from Warlord Games. Since I'm planning to run a demo of the rules at an upcoming local show, Warlord kindly sent me an advance copy of the rules in Word format. This version, while final, lacks the flavour text and illustrations that will be in the commercial hardcopy version, so I recommend picking up the book when you can :-)

The Word version was perfectly serviceable for our group's game and I found the rules well-written and sensibly laid out. Concepts are borrowed from other rulesets but we found BA to be quite elegant and easy to pick up with a few fresh ideas of its own. Standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were...

Conscripts Bill, Frederick, Brian and Dave V. came out for the game. For our battle I laid out a 6'x4' table of typical French countryside. A small cottage and barn, some fields and stone walls and hedges, woods and hills. We were playing a late-war battle between Canadians and Germans, at the 1300 point level. (BA provides a points-based army list document for each of the major combatants of the period - British/Commonwealth, American, Russian and German). The scenario I chose was "Envelopment" - with equal points, the attacker scores VPs for each unit in the defender's deployment zone or exited from the table at the end of the game. The defender scores VPs for destroying attacking units. The Canadians were defending - you can see a Canadian Sherman and Sherman Firefly, along with a Universal carrier, deployed at left above.

Canadian infantry and a Sherman on the Allied right flank.

View from the German lines.

Troops are classified as "Inexperienced", "Regular", or "Veteran", with a corresponding Morale rating of 8, 9 or 10, respectively. "Morale" equates to "leadership" in the Warhammer paradigm, with checks taken on 2d6 and a "pass" being a roll equal to or lower than the Morale value. Each Pin on a unit adds one pip to the roll (making it harder to pass) and the presence of an officer subtracts. At 1300 points, the Canadians deployed an HQ section, three 10-man infantry sections, an MG section with Carrier, a PIAT team, two Shermans and a Sherman Firefly, all Regular. The Germans got three 9-man sections each with a Sdkfz. 251, an HQ group, a Panzerschreck team and a Hetzer, all classed as Veterans.

Here's the Hetzer entering play. In BA, play proceeds as a result of a random draw. Each side is assigned a dice colour (in our case red for Germans and green for Canadians) and one die is placed in the cup for each unit on that side. In our game this meant 9 red dice and 10 green ones. A die is drawn at random from the cup and that side activates one unit by placing the die next to it. There are six "orders" or actions that a unit can take - Fire, Advance, Run, Ambush, Rally or Down - and each corresponds to a die face, in that order. In the above picture the Hetzer has been activated with an "Advance" order which means it can move and fire.

Most of the provided scenarios even out the disparity between attacker and defender with even points by allowing a "preparatory bombardment" that hits every defending unit on the table. The effect is usually to place one or more Pin markers on the unit but sometimes the bombardment results in actual casualties. The Pin markers make it more difficult for units to fulfill their orders - each marker on a unit subtracts one pip from the target Morale roll, and in order to do anything a unit with Pins must first pass this Morale check. If the test is passed one Pin is removed and the unit resolves its action. If it's failed, the unit goes "Down" and takes no further action that turn. 

The Firefly failed its Morale check to fire at the approaching Germans and goes Down instead... which for a vehicle means reversing away from the nearest visible enemy. I like this mechanic as it seems realistic... I imagine that the Firefly crew imagined the woods to be crawling with Panzerfaust-toting SS maniacs and decided that discretion was the better part of valour!

In the meantime, Dave V. raced two of the Hanomags up the flank. The scenario awarded the Germans VPs for exiting the table and after some initial confusion the Germans gunned it...

One of the Hanomags is destroyed as the Panzerschreck team at the edge of the field tries to cover the advance. Passengers in destroyed vehicles are not automatically killed, but the consequences of this happening in our game tended to be not very severe. Would like the thoughts of others on that, but my sense is that it would be pretty disconcerting to be riding in a 251 as it is destroyed by AT fire.

Sherman on "Fire" orders aims at a German Hanomag. Shooting is pretty straightforward in BA - everyone needs a 3+ to hit, modified by range and cover. A damage roll is made for each hit - target number depending on the target. A Regular infantryman is killed on a damage roll of 4+ but it takes a 5+ to kill a Veteran. Armoured vehicles have damage rolls of 7+ and higher - meaning that small arms can never kill an AFV, to do that you need an AT weapon that has a damage roll modifier, sometimes adding 5 or more to your damage roll. A roll equal to the target number is a "glance", a roll exceeding it is a penetrating hit. A roll is made on a results table to determine the damage, and it tends to be deadly... vehicles that are hit and damaged will be on fire or destroyed over half the time.
 

The game itself was not particularly bloody, probably mostly due to the fact that the attackers were well mechanized. Here's what made it off the table for the Germans, giving them a clear victory despite their handicap in armour - one Hetzer vs. the three Shermans. A clear example of how keeping sight of the victory conditions can make up for a seeming disparity in forces.

I quite enjoyed playing with the Bolt Action rules as they are similar enough to our house rules and the Warhammer rules with which we are all familiar, yet they do add some interesting and flavourful new elements (like random activations and the order dice) as well. My only concern with them is that random activation element - for example, WW2 tactics specified a set-piece assault, with elements tasked to soften up a target while others advance by bounds and ultimately assault the suppressed target. This may not really work in BA just because of the random activation. We'll have to play more to determine is this is really a factor in need of addressing - I am planning to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Dieppe raid this week with a game, and I think we'll try the BA rules again. Stay tuned!

Tomorrow's War - Today's Headache

Cover of "Tomorrow's War" - new skirmish rules that are generating a ton of buzz

A couple months ago, TMP member "Osprey Joe" kindly offered to send us a review copy of Osprey's hot new SF skirmish ruleset, "Tomorrow's War".  As a Scotsman and a Winnipegger (our motto: "if it's free, it's for me") I could not help but take him up on this generous offer.  The book drop-shipped and arrived directly from Amazon, in good condition except for a razor-cut on the cover near the spine.  Not sure how that happened but it doesn't really affect the condition of the book.

Wanting to familiarize myself with the rules and host a game in a timely fashion, I read a bit of the book each night in bed before going to sleep.  Certainly a pleasant way to pass a few minutes at the end of the day - the book is beautifully designed, laid out and executed. The paper is glossy and heavy, the binding feels like quality, and the pictures are pretty. There is tons of background included, which some readers will enjoy, but to me is of marginal relevance as we use our own models and factions in our SF games.

Unfortunately the book worked rather better as a sleep aid than I had expected. As I said, I'm not too interested in the "TW Universe" (especially as there aren't model ranges specific to the factions) and I found the rules to be rather... dense as well.  And keep in mind I spend my days reading stuff like this. There are just a lot of fundamental rules points where questions still exist. For example: what happens when there are no active models in a unit (i.e. they are all "tipped over" potential casualties) and no First Aid check can be made at the start of the next turn?  Does the unit disappear, or just stay tipped over? (we think they remain on the table). Do "tipped over" models contribute to a unit's armour saving rolls when they are shot at? Can hits be allocated to wounded or tipped over models before active models? And my favourite, when reaction fire causes models in a moving unit to be tipped over, do these tipped over models "follow" the rest of the unit as they complete their movement? (Unbelievably to me, this basic question regarding a situation that will happen in virtually every game was answered on TMP by the designer with a "do it whichever way you like, in agreement with your opponent")

In any event, we were still eager to give the rules a go so we set up the "Rescue the Downed Pilot" scenario from page 96 of the rulebook.

An overhead view of the table - the USMC faction can be seen advancing through the open on the right side of the pitcure, while the DPRG squads wait in ambush

The game pitted three teams of d8-quality USMC rockstars (repped by Greg's IG Kasrkin Stormtroopers) against four teams of somewhat less rockstar-ish d6-quality DPRG (my Pig Iron Kolony militia), waiting in ambush.

The sturdy conscripts of Futurkom played the part of the DPRG in the game

The game started with USMC having the Initiative and needing to retrieve the pilot from the building near the centre of the table. I was thinking that the mission should be cake from the DPRG perspective as we were set up in ambush... however our effective "ambush range" was only 12 inches and the USMC retrieval lanes were mostly outside this zone of death.

Greg B's GW Kasrkin Models stood in for the USMC side in the scenario

The downed pilot - always a source of trouble for the REAL fighting troops...

However, as always, the best laid plans... etc. etc. As the USMC advanced towards their objective I succumbed to the temptation to get "trigger happy" and light up the attackers... which didn't go so well.
My d6 firepower rolls were no match for Greg's hot-rolling Reaction Fire with d8s.

The Futurkom grunts wait in ambush...

USMC troops wait on Overwatch in the woods

The game turned into a bit of a gong show as, turn by turn, my squads were whittled down by accurate USMC fire. Towards the end I tried to move some teams into the building with the pilot to induce some close combat with the USMC (faint hope I know) but the intrepid Kommers were lit up before they knew what had hit them.

The Futurkommers try and visit with the downed pilot...

What happens in "Tomorrow's War" when one side has a better troop quality...

It was all over by about Turn 6 as all of my troops were tipped over with no active models left to make First Aid checks.  I suppose technically we might have declared a "Thorpian Moral Victory" since the USMC couldn't have retrieved the pilot and made it back to their table edge by the end of turn 8... but it hardly seems like much of a "victory" when you have no models left to fight with.

We set up the models again and the DPRG tried a more patient tactic, which worked somewhat better at first, lighting up a USMC team advancing in the open, working some angles to try and cover the objective, and mostly JUST NOT MOVING. We didn't finish the second run through but I suspect it probably would have finished similarly to the first, albeit with more USMC casualties.

Summing up? Tomorrow's War has some great points - turn interruption and Reactions are very cool.  However it's easy to get mixed up as to who's got Initiative, who's reacted, and who can react, as well as the plethora of markers required to denote wound status and other things. The rulebook desperately needs some editing and organization. It's a beautiful book but some more attention to detail is warranted. For example, in the sample scenario we played, the terrain includes a stream and small lake. Referring to the "terrain effects" section in the book (also not easy to find), we see a statement to the effect that "the scenario will specify the game effects of the water feature on movement". Guess what?  It didn't, so we had to agree on that ourselves. Not a big deal in this case, but if the scenario was designed with a specific water effect in mind, it was a well-guarded secret. Likewise the maps for the scenarios - the text listed table sizes as anything from 3x3 to 6x4, but the maps all show 4x4 layouts!

These are minor niggles, of course, next to the Big Unanswered Questions in the rulebook (like "what happens to tipped over figures?") but it bespeaks what many have complained about of late - an emphasis on rulebook form over function.  There are a ton of beautiful looking rulebooks out nowadays and aesthetic appeal in game books is no longer the exclusive realm of Games Workshop. But I get the feeling with TW that more emphasis was placed on the physical product than on the guts of the thing - cogently laid out rules that are lucid and easy to find. The lack of a quick play sheet, for example, is inexcusable, especially when considering the number of pages devoted to background fluff. We'll certainly try TW again but we are increasingly skeptical of the "love bombs" (thanks Greg) for TW being dropped in carpet-fashion all over the web. Grade: B-.

Dallas

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Dallas has summed things up very well.  My two cents - the book looks great, but was written as though you already knew the rules.  At the end of the day, I think there is a great set of rules in there somewhere.  It was neat to play a game knowing, for instance, that you could cover the advance of your own troops, and it made you plot out different approach paths etc. 

But the rulebook itself is inexecusably baffling and incomplete - the lack of clear information on what happens to a casualty is the most galling example, but in general, the rules the read out like you should already just know them.  Do you still exchange fire when you are fired at while on the move? How many times can regular units react?  What is the difference between ambush and overwatch? The book implies the the answers are obvious. Sorry - they're not. 

I really want to play TW again - so at that basic level, I would say the rules are a success.  But to do that, we'll have to pile through all sorts of forums etc just to ascertain the basic mechanics of how the game is supposed to work.  I look forward to an edition of these rules that contains the rules.

Greg