No exit strategy? Check out free stuff!

Well, OK, this bit is not yet ready but will be soon and will also be free! First scenario draft map for Brutal Simplicity 1940. Possibly "Not like a Stonne-Wall!". Based on OHW 18 but is being modified somewhat.

The real free stuff below illustrates that there is no such thing as a wargames industry, just wargamers who like wargames and are happy to give stuff away to cheer people up. The evidence is as follows:

1. Free C3i mag (#25) including Battle for Moscow game by Frank Chadwick! If you don't have this it is well worth it.

2. Free Yaah! mag (#8) including Race to the Sea 1914 game. Announced by Flying Pig but not as yet available from Wargames Vault.

3. Free Nordic Weasel game: Five Men at Kursk, be quick it ends today (US time). Nice game!!

4. Free Instant Thunder: An air game which looks like a simpler version of Wing Leader! The virtues of this game have been extolled by Kaptain Kobbold so look out for it here.

If the pressures of the day are causing stress and consternation, take some pleasure if you can from the following:

Bob Cordery has published this picture (and others) of his Portable Wargame as implemented by other people. This is a brilliant 54mm adaptation by Mike Lewis. Lovely, reminds me of Clive Lane's 20mm hex grid game.

Peter has started a new North Africa campaign which looks fantastic!

Disgruntled Fusilier is busy adapting Neil Thomas' Introduction to Wargaming WWII rules in an interesting manner.

And finally, PSC's Battlegroup Northag has hit the glossies this month so expect more action shortly (it was due to be released at Salute but this is now postponed so at some stage soon).

None of this makes up for Boris telling us that our loved ones are going to die but you have to take comfort where you can. Good luck to all!

Brutal simplicity

Bonjour, the above pic is a clue to current lines of thinking. France 1940 in fact.

I have been going round in circles with some ideas about bringing Simplicity in Practice into the 20th century. Unfortunately, I started at the very difficult end (Cold War). Not that I have given up on that subject area. In fact I intend to return to it shortly using a bigger map and more units than in the OHW scenarios I have been using for Simplicity.

Dropping down the complexity levels I have arrived in 1940 France. Interesting tanks (Char B1 bis in fact), great texture and difference between units (French Colonials, Foreign Legion etc) and opposing sides that have individual characteristics which lend themselves to some game type exaggeration.

Starting design parameters:

• Interactive player phases during each game turn with a really simple initiative mechanism
• Actions driven by initiative rating
• Units have one action per turn
• Combat is addressed by one die roll
• Scenarios taken from OHW using six by six hex maps
• Forces limited to six units per side
• Must be capable of being played with counters as well as on a table with models

To ensure this is really brutally simple we will be using crude measures for combat statistics:

• Armour rating based on hull front max: 30mm or less = 0, 31-59 = 1, 60 and over = 2
• Speed rating: 14 hp/mt or less = 1, 15 hp/mt and above = 2
• Combat numbers to be based on maximum penetration at 400m for hard targets

Lots to do but I'm hoping it will give a good game with some historical flavour.

Out now!

Well, it is out at last and very pleased I am with the final product. If you are not familiar with Yaah! it is an 80 page magazine with a game in it. The production is very art magazine (think Wallpaper). Nice texture and layout. Plenty of articles on board wargames by some reputable authors (John D Burtt and Arrigo Velicogna to name but two). 

I'm also very pleased with the final version of the game. Very nice components and excellent genuine 1" counters.......

More at BGG and Flying Pig Games. You can get the analogue version from Flying PIg (and probably Second Chance Games) for $40 and from Wargames Vault for a remarkable £11.53. If anyone is worried about the print and lay option, it is very doable and all of the design and play testing was done using pnp materials. 

My grateful thanks to the guys at the Pig for such a great presentation: Mark Walker, publisher, Art Bennett, developer, and Ilya Kudriashov, art. A pleasure working with them.

I have noticed that I missed blogging for a whole month. Like many others I blame the flu and Brexit. Hopefully things will settle down shortly.

Happy Holidays!

Work in progress.....

Tanks, small maps, possibly OHW rules and a campaign? Nuff said at this stage, early days but it probably involves Russians and stuff.

Bookses....

Due to confluence of birthday and Christmas I have some books, hurrah!

Interesting translation from the Swedish, not yet certain how useful this is...

Lots of numbers in this one which will be useful, the main argument presented by the author is open to discussion though.

Game ideas in this one....

This one is a long felt want, great book following up the author's long ago Miniature Wargames articles which I still consider excellent references.

Plea for help!

I have developed a very strange (but perfectly legal!) interest in the US Army's weighted unit indices/weighted unit values methodology. I am, unfortunately, unable to find the declassified WEI/WUV I, II and II methodologies. Does anyone have access to these? They must be around somewhere. Please leave a comment if you have any info. Many thanks. 

Best Christmas read......

Norm has done an excellent job on his annual update, a nice read on Christmas Day or, of course, any other time!

Best wishes to everyone, hopefully 2020 will be a great year for all of us!

Long Road....Short Wait

I'm very excited to see how this new game from Flying Pig is coming on. A development from their Platoon Commander series, The Long Road is full on WW3 1985 style with a large number of linked scenarios. Due spring next year and definitely on my present list (I'll invent an extra birthday at the right moment!).

Research or drinking beer?

It is remarkable how in-depth research can appear to the uninitiated as sitting about drinking beer. Indeed, I have been researching very hard and am busy digging up some interesting modern tactical stuff. 

One great source is CALL (Centre for Army Lessons Learned). The 17-02 Newsletter (December 2016) is called "Decisive Action Training Environment at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Vol. XIV: Company-level Combined Arms Maneuver". At JRTC (Combat Training Center, Louisiana) the OPFOR is provided by 1st Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment who rough up in fine style all units put through the training routine. The hard lessons learned are fairly brutal as shown in this example:

How Can I Best Plan Where to Employ My Weapon Systems? ....an infantry company was tasked with establishing a blocking position on a high-speed avenue of approach near Hilltop 95. The company commander was able to position key weapon systems far enough away from the blocking obstacle that they could be effective against the planned targets. One critical deduction missed was that these weapon systems had no line of sight due to vegetation. The enemy was able to move through the blocking position’s dead space and destroy the company.

Other lessons that are really interesting are:

Companies do not identify the ammunition consumption rate required to attain the doctrinal level of effect for a given task for a given time period (they don't brass up the target enough to suppress it effectively).

Platoons and squads do not forecast the impact of moving the ammunition to succeed in achieving the specified task ("ammunition weighs more in person than it does on paper" as it cogently explains).

And the real gold dust for all wargame designers is a table entitled: Analog tool for commander’s reference in determining munitions requirements for a given task (i.e., enemy suppression). Basically this shows realistic ranges and fire suppression rates (effective range with a 50% probability of a hit):

• small arms 200m against troops
• .50 cal HMG 800m vs vehicles
• 40mm GL 400m vs troops/vehicles
• AT4 300m vs vehicles 

The only weapons with a long reach deployed by infantry themselves are 60mm mortars and Javelin missiles.

Numbers, numbers and even more numbers...

Bang on gunner! I reckon 47.5% chance of a hit after mods for stabilisation!

I have been enjoying posts by top boffin Phil Dutre on his blog Wargame Mechanics. Not being a prof, and having missed negative binomial distribution in school (I forgot my PE kit, honest), I have to take the posts very slowly. Nevertheless, there is some great stuff here.

One of the issues with many relatively simple mechanics is figuring out the parameters, what sort of results spread do I really want? This is the case for any rules where there is a roll to hit and the target is destroyed after an appropriate number of hits. Phil examines this issue in detail in his July post "1 hit for 10 damage, or 10 hits for 1 damage each?".

I strongly recommend you read his post, which has graphs and lots of squiggly equations. However, I have simplified the core of his presentation down to this:

1. What is the hit probability? You are shooting at a target and you hit on a score of 4, 5 or 6 on one d6. This gives 3 possible successes from 6 possible outcomes so 50% probability. 

Note that if this was a d8 and the same hit number is used (4 or more) the probability of success is 62.5% (5 successful possible outcomes out of 8 possible outcomes). There is great potential for using different types of dice.

2. How many hits can the target can take before destruction? Let's say 4 points of damage.

3. How much damage is caused by one hit? Keep it simple and say one point of damage per hit.

So how do we calculate the number of shots that are required to kill the target?

Shots to kill = target damage points/(hit probability x damage per hit)

In this scenario the shots to kill = 4/(3/6 x 1)

Therefore shots to kill = 4/0.5 = 8

This is easy peasie and you can set up an excel spreadsheet to work out the range of results with different parameters. 

The more tricky issues to consider are the likely number of units shooting at the same target in one turn, the number of units and the number of turns in the game. This allows you to consider what sort of attrition rates you need to have a decent and exciting game in a useful number of turns.

Lessons here are don't forget your kit when doing posh maths, don't drink beer and do hard sums and sometimes doing some proper maths rather than endless play testing will help with design decisions. I have, of course, learnt none of these but am continuing to aim to be a better person!

Edit: Many thanks to everyone for helping me with my maths homework. Hopefully this is now correct!

Does size really matter....?

Well, it obviously depends on how you are measuring it. Anyway, lets get back to toy soldiers!

My pondering is around the question of how big is 10mm? I have done a survey on how these miniatures are described:

• Victrix Games: 12mm or 1/144 (new WW2 range)
• Plastic Soldier Co: 10mm or 1/144 (new NORTHAG range)
• Pendraken: 10mm or 1/150
• Cold War 84: 10mm or 1/144
• Minifigs: 10/12mm or N gauge

The Pendraken size description is interesting because their figures are 10mm but their vehicles are deliberately 1/150 for a good fit with other ranges. Also interesting is that Irregular's Bush Wars 10mm troops are made deliberately bigger to fit with other manufacturers 12mm ranges.

As to what these descriptions really mean remains to be seen (in the flesh as it were). However, the maths seem to me to be this:

1/144 ~ 13mm

1/150 ~ 12mm

1/160 ~ 11mm

1/200 ~ 9mm

In my view, the older you get the less size matters. As a youngster I found it impossible to use 1/300 and 1/285 troops together. Nowadays I couldn't even see them, let alone the difference. I suspect that the various scale descriptions will be pretty meaningless until we see the actual products and test what fits best together.

As you can see from the picture above, the NORTHAG idea has strongly resonated with me. I have been revisiting many old war games including Mech War, NATO Divisional Commander (oh yes!) and several other games from the real Cold War. 

Lots of ideas cooking once "Battle of Hue!" finally launches.