Glossy and Colourful...



Force on Force Rulebook


Was away all last week at a conference but managed to visit a very good book shop and get hold of a copy of 'Force on Force' and the 'Cold War Gone Hot' and 'Bush War supplements.

I didn't know much about the rules and I usually resist the temptation to splash out on glossy, colourful copies of rules - I'm much more a monochrome Cold War 83 or DBR kind of chap. However, I've wanted a copy of this set for a while though as what I little I did know appealed to me greatly i.e. the emphasis is on the men not the weapons.

So there is an intriguing method of reflecting troop quality using different types of die (D8, D10, D12 etc) - not too sure about this - and no weapons tables for infantry weapons - like this idea.

Since the accent is on infantry combat that means no tables or a very minimal one for a few vehicles. The idea of different quality troops firing at different 'optimum ranges', whilst all weapons can fire across the table (line of sight restrictions notwithstanding), is really good. Shades of Phil Barker's 'Inferior' shot firing 100 paces whilst "Ordinary' and 'Superior' blast away at 200 paces.

The game is designed to be played around scenarios which means more work than a pick up and play set of rules but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And anyway the supplements provide plenty of suggestions in that department.



Davai! Davai!

 The Cold War Gone Hot supplement has been extensively reviewed in far more detail than I will here. It's unusual in that it covers a hypothetical war - but one which looked very likely for all that. I remember that by the mid eighties, with SS20s and Cruise Missiles being deployed in Europe and Reagan and Thatcher in office and CND out on the streets, the prospect of a conflgration in Europe seemed all too real.

The scenarios are in three groups. The first is the Cold War heating up as the West feared it may, with a massive Soviet led invasion of Western Europe and thousands of T-72s trundling across the north German plain towards the Rhine. The second is more realistic given what we now know, with NATO taking on a Warsaw Pact that is more of a military version of a Potemkin village. The third is a bit silly even for the nerd that I fear I may be - it's Hollywood's version of the war between the West and the Soviet bloc. Mid -western college boys resisting a Soviet occupation of the USA... 

There are handy ORBATs, some interesting scenario ideas that could be easily tweaked to be fought by different forces than the predominantly US versus Soviets ones that are listed and a few additional rules to go with these.



'We had joy we had fun, killing floppies in the sun'


The Bush Wars supplement is a useful addition to my library of African War rules and scenarios. If I'm going to get serious about playing these rules I'll have to consider re-basing my Cuban, Angolan and South African armies as the rules are designed for individual figures. That said, it wouldn't be too hard to amend the rules to play with my figures as they are based now, with three figures to a base for SLRs, Assault Rifles, LMGs etc and two for RPGs, HMGs etc

Again, there are plenty of good scenario ideas which can be easily tweaked to be played out between different forces.

The politics of the war(s) being played out is more evident in this book than in the main rule book or Cold War Gone Hot. The reality is that there is even less of a consensus in the West about African wars of de-colonisation and the Border War than about the current war in Afghanistan and the war that never happened in 1980s Europe.

I'm sure I'll buy a load of dice and give these rules a go. It's only a question of time.

Like Cold War 83, the basic rules would work equally well for any 20th century conflict with a little adpatation - how about the Russian Civil War?

Work to Rule: Cold War 83

I've been trying out a variation of these rules for the lst three games in War for Slow Readers.

The variation has largely been prompted by the fact that my figures are not individually based, rather they are 3 or 2 figures to a base as I originally based them up for AK47 Reloaded. The few games I played with the latter rule set were good fun but I’ve not enjoyed them as much as the three games I’ve played using Cold War 83.

Why is this? I like the ‘Bottle’ mechanism that Cold War 83 uses to model training, experience and morale and how this is used to influence the chances of troops’ success or failure at just about anything they try and do. To my mind this far better than separating out factors like morale and subjecting troops to ‘morale checks’ as part of the turn sequence. The CW83 turn sequence is stripped down to alternating unit activation, after an initial die roll for initiative, within which individual stands of figures (in my games) or vehicles, attempt movement actions and/or combat actions. These can be attempted in any sequence, for example a fireteam may fire as a combat action and then move or vice versa, or all the fireteams in a unit may fire before they move or some may fire and some move in any order the player chooses.  You can keep things simple and confine movement actions to crawl, run and walk and combat actions to ranged firing and close combat or you can add as much complexity as you like – figures can attempt to jump, climb, hide, observe, set or defuse a demolition charge, radio for artillery or air support, or just about anything else you can think of.

I’ve adapted the rules to include command and control and to average out a fireteam’s weapons factor if the figures are armed with more than one type of weapon (e.g. two SLRs and an LMG per stand) then they still only perform one combat action.

One potential problem is the requirement to  keep track of Bottle as it changes, usually downwards, during the game. Also stands come suppressed as a result of mortar or artillery fire and er…suppressive fire from machine guns. With a couple of dozen bases per side this can still get complicated. I’ve resolved this by:

a)      Giving all stands in a unit the same Bottle with the exception of the leader’s stand which has the rear base edge painted to signify his exalted status.  This means that until contact you simply have to remember that  9 Platoon has a Bottle of 8

b)      Placing small dice next to the stand to show its Bottle once this changes from the value it begins the game with.

c)       Putting very small rubber band (I found these at Early War Miniatures) around the base of a suppressed stand.

I don't feel the need to make any cahnges to allow Crossfire' style reactive fire. I think the the alternating unit activation and the requirement that initiative passes to th eopposing player when a unit suffers Bottle failures to the tune of one third of the number of figures it has means there is scope for reaction and overwatch.

I played another game last weekend so look out for an AAR soon.

Rules of Engagement

I'll be using Peter Pig's AK47 Reloaded Rules for this project.

I've been playing an adapted version of these rules set during during the Russian Civil War for a year or so now . They're fun and fast play and sufficiently realistic for my tastes. I like the way the emphasis is on training and morale and not on technology.

I'll produce adapted army lists for the protagonists in the War for Slow Readers and will write scenarios and victory conditions for my games as well as using the scenario generator in the rules.

I also intend to play some small games with using 300 point armies as per the suggestions in the published rules so that a) I familiarise myself with the rules and b) I get playing, and posting AARs, as soon as possible.