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Aquarium would still work for hams! MWG did that, they painted them or something to look less plasticy.
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Feb 20, 2017 08:45
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Southern Heel posted:Overall, enjoyable in retrospect but while playing I felt a little like a meat grinder. 1+ for eastern front realism.
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Feb 20, 2017 10:34
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JcDent posted:Aquarium would still work for hams! Yeah, you really want to give aquarium plastics at least a quick paint job or at least a wash to get rid of the plastic colour.
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Feb 20, 2017 10:36
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DJ Dizzy posted:1+ for eastern front realism. I laughed  I posted the same questions on the 2FL forums and essentially got the answer - don't play the patrol scenario, use smoke, use CoC dice to end turn/revive leaders/clear said smoke. I think I need to play a few examples to get the team/squad pin/shock mechanic embedded though, because some it doesn't make sense, i.e.:- If shock/pins/breaking only applies at a team level, why is there a "section breaks" bit in the Force Morale table? Is it a cumulative effect (i.e. when the second team breaks, that triggers a 'section breaks' roll also?). I could also foresee it being a combination: shock goes per team, but if in coherency then pinning/breaking applies to the whole section. - If a leader is in coherency with both teams in his section and one of them breaks, does he rout with them or can he elect to be attached to the non-breaking team?
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Feb 20, 2017 11:31
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While I'm still waking up, I also got a sense your board was pretty cramped. Getting machineguns in defensible terrain real close to your opponent's pretty nasty.
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Feb 20, 2017 11:35
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Southern Heel posted:So, I just played a little demo game of CoC with two full opposed forces. I played the patrol mission, that is, very low amounts of support and simply whittling down your opponent. I appreciate this made it quite static, but it was really quite a slog: COC is designed to be played on a 6'x4' table, we play on a 4x4 table and it requires some concessions like removing a couple of jump off points. You hit the nail on the head - With minimal terrain and little or no support, the game will turn into a grind. You need to restrict firing lanes with your terrain. We play with hedges providing light cover, and blocking line of sight to troopers, unless they're right next to the hedge - in which case they see over and can be seen. Tall objects like the turret of a tank can see over the hedges. Heavy hedges, like Bocage, completely block LOS. COC is very terrain dependent. I find that games are much more enjoyable if sight lines are broken and restricted - Break up the map into lots of fields bordered by hedges. Remember, this is a game that is going for realism, which means that in wide open fields, entrenched machine guns are god. Our first few games tended to degenerate into grindy shootouts, but once we added more terrain, and learned how powerful close combat, covering fire, grenades, and moving jump off points were, they got a lot more interesting. Re: Cover - Light cover is anything which blocks visibility but provides no physical protection, hard cover is anything which provides physical protection. This means that basically the only things which provide hard cover are rocks, stone or concrete buildings, and fortifications. Hedges, tall grass, wooden buildings, trees - Anything which you can hide behind - Is light cover. Hard cover is so powerful that you need to think about where you put it - We had a couple of games completely dominated by a two-storey stone building with a clear field of fire to most the table.
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Feb 20, 2017 11:40
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Southern Heel posted:I laughed If teams of a section are close enough they recieve shock and break together. But if they separate they share it. This means that in some situations you should keep track of each teams shock separately, but most of the time you don't need to bother.
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Feb 20, 2017 11:41
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Both excellent points, thank you.
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Feb 20, 2017 11:53
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Dreamforge is having a big sale today, for those of us to whom they ship.
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Feb 20, 2017 11:59
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I came back to some of my senses and I'll probably buy the Russians off some German site in a few months.
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Feb 20, 2017 12:24
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I'm tempted to buy these plastic Americans (I assume also WGF), since they're the only major player for whom I don't have a force. Are they good, or are they lovely, older WGF quality?
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Feb 20, 2017 13:26
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^^^^ The 15mm ones? You won't be sorry you got them. lilljonas posted:I want to say that I now need to write a set of scenarios recreating TMNT 3, but that would also mean that I'd needed to rewatch the movie. I'd also be perfectly happy playing the new Nickelodeon version of the setting too. It's rather close in theme to the comics.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:31
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No, 28mm, the best scale for heroes.
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Feb 20, 2017 17:00
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zokie posted:If teams of a section are close enough they recieve shock and break together. But if they separate they share it. This means that in some situations you should keep track of each teams shock separately, but most of the time you don't need to bother. Example: Consider an American infantry squad comprised of an 8-man rifle team, a 3-man BAR team, and a corporal (JL). Say that these guys have taken some fire, and now the rifle team is reduced to 6 guys and is carrying 2 points of Shock, and the BAR team is reduced to 2 guys and is carrying 4 points of Shock. Say you're going to activate this unit and move 2D6" and that your resulting roll is a 7. The rifle team can move 5", but the BAR team can only move 3". When firing, the rifle team is going to put out 6 - 1 = 5 dice, whereas the BAR team is going to put out 3 + 1 - 2 = 2 dice. If the squad fires all together, that's 7 dice total. As long as these two teams are together, they consider their pinning threshold based on the TOTAL amount of Shock versus the TOTAL number of men; 6 Shock < 8 men (9 with the JL), so they're good to go. But if the JL decides he needs the BAR to set up a base of fire while the rifle team maneuvers, let's say he spends one CI to have the BAR team lay down covering fire, then spends his other CI to have the rifle team move, and further that this movement means they end up more than 4" apart. Now they count the effects of their Shock separately. With only 2 Shock on 6 guys, the rifle team is fine. We'll say the player is smart enough to keep the JL with the BAR team, so now they're 3 guys carrying 4 Shock. What this means is that as soon as the rifle team leaves the neighborhood, the BAR team is pinned. Suddenly, they don't feel as safe without their buddies nearby. Had the player foolishly sent the JL with the rifle team, as soon as they were more than 4" apart the 2-man BAR team would have broken (Shock >= 2x number of men), immediately retiring 2D6+6". That's not "I suddenly don't feel so safe anymore," that's "gently caress it, those assholes are on their own. We're outta here!" This is why it's important to split your hits between the teams affected before rolling for the effects of those hits. If I shoot at a British squad comprised of a Bren team and a rifle team and generate 7 hits, that's 4 hits on one team and 3 on the other. if those troops are in the open, the firing player gets to decide which takes the extra hit; if they're in cover, the owning player decides. Only once the hits are allocated do you roll for effect (kills or Shock). So the British player could get lucky and have all of the kills end up on the rifle team and have the Bren team emerge relatively unscathed. FWIW, this is why the British special rule for Bren guns is so nasty - the shooting player gets to focus the fire on a team of his choice rather than split them up. Southern Heel posted:Terrain - I realise that I need to have multiple firing lanes, alleys, roads, hedges and so on - once both sides hunkered down in buildings across the street from each other, it was pretty much the same thing over and over again until one side crumpled - especially with no armor to break a stalemate. I think I also used too small a table - almost everything was around everything else. Southern Heel posted:Command Dice - I found precious little reason to end a turn - squads only started to rout when they were almost done. Does ending a turn guarantee you the next phase in the new turn if via Command Dice as well as triple 6's? Infact, the only thing I used was the interrupt, in order to absolutely positively kill a unit with multiple turns of firing. Defensively, you end a Turn once you've gotten a unit's Shock below its pinning threshold. Ending a Turn is the only way to un-pin a unit. Southern Heel posted:After playing, I realised that since leaders are so resilient, it doesn't make sense for them to count towards pin or rout counts - they are taken along for the ride either way, and can only be killed with the very specific - "if you roll under number of troops killed on a D6, then roll a 1" - is that correct? Also, they can be killed if they get wounded multiple times and their CIs are reduced to 0. I've had this happen a couple of times. I've actually found that being a Leader in CoC is pretty goddamned dangerous! I had one game where 3 out of 4 German Leaders were either wounded or killed. The next game in the campaign was brutal from a command-and-control perspective. Southern Heel posted:Shock - The rulebook states: Southern Heel posted:Pinning - It seems very important to ensure that pin and rout statuses are noted, as with the frequency at which shock is applied and removed it's more of a tipping point, even if that shock is immediately removed, right? So if a 5-man unit has 7 points of Shock, it is "Pinned." If a Leader rallies that team down to 4 Shock, they're still Pinned, and will remain so until the end of the Turn. If a 5-man unit has 11 points of Shock, they are Broken (and Pinned), but remain on the table. If a Leader manages to rally them down to only 8 Shock before Turn End, then they're still Pinned, but they don't rout. Southern Heel posted:Cover - in this scenario where there was a killing ground between two areas of cover - there really was nothing else to do but shoot each other, right? I thought about grenades but they were always too far out. Should I assume that hedges and walls block LoS? Or just provide light/hard cover? The former would make sense from stopping MGs from dominating but then maybe light cover would only be provided by things like woodland and high fields? Tactical initiative is also huge, and the game represents this in the "multiple phases" mechanic. You know before you spend your Command Dice who is getting the next Phase, so you can use that to your advantage; if you're going to get two phases in a row, maybe you can bound forward into a position to really threaten your enemy, or overwhelm a single point of their defense, or whatever. This is extremely important for troops armed with SMGs, as they will be death in close assault. It sounds like you're on the right track, though! Keep experimenting with it - the best way to figure it out is by doing it!
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Feb 20, 2017 19:41
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^ so does everyone get smoke grenades? There's some explicit writing around the Panzerknacker team but I wonder if that's just because they don't need a CI order to throw them? Anyway, it really is quite fun! EDIT: just ordered 50 micro dice to use as shock counters, because gently caress if each team needs one and there are four teams per platoon, plus shock on any support teams and/or tanks - that's a poo poo load of counters and the piddly 10 or whatever that comes from the 2FL 'bundle' isn't going to cut it. I played another little solo game (where you play along the long edge of the board, with the attacker's goal to capture a JOP in the defender's endzone) this time however with alot more support - the Sdkfz 251 on the german side, and a KV-1 and T-70 on the Russian (defender) side. The dynamic of tanks, AT really helped it not bog down. Having said that, I didn't learn my lesson and placed some buildings opposite each other on a road which both armies managed to bunker up in. When the Wehrmacht managed to get a panzerschreck team into hard cover on that crossroads, it was basically invincible since there was a rifle squad in the same cover to split the already difficult to achieve hits with, and could shoot the soviet tanks with impunity (that, and some jammy dice rolling). EDIT2: I did read that as a blast-back weapon it's not feasible to shoot the Panzerschrek in a building, but I considered these concrete ruins - i.e. hard cover, confined space. I think maybe I need to be more specific about LoS because generic 360' was a bit OP in retrospect. Taking advice from here, I used a CoC dice to end a turn at exactly the right moment for the Wehrmacht to capture a pair of jumping off points, and that as well as some dangerous over-extension which saw Soviet scouts mowed down by deploying MG42 teams, the Red Army crumpled despite a great first few phases and having those heavy tanks on the board from the beginning. Am I correct in understanding that tanks with junior leaders in them can only be activated on three, and the "radio command" rule where a senior leader can activate tanks in his platoon only applies to specific armoured platoon lists? Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 21:16
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Colonial Air Force posted:No, 28mm, the best scale for heroes. The bodies are good but the heads have a real lack of variety IMHO and that really smooth looking sameness you get with CAD designed plastic faces. Fortunately they fit in pretty well with most of the companies making 28mm WW2 heads (westwind does good ones IMHO) so it's not a hard problem to solve. I know I keep pimping those World of Tanks paper tanks, but I just want to say that if you're interested in Bolt Action or CoC, you can get a box of Germans and a box of Americans for 30 bucks, print out two tanks and have a pretty decent set of stuff to intro either of those games.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:56
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Are the short weapon ranges a big issue in Team Yankee? Or does it play ok in effect? The scale looks kind of funky.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:14
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Dandywalken posted:Are the short weapon ranges a big issue in Team Yankee? Or does it play ok in effect? The scale looks kind of funky. No it works great
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Feb 20, 2017 22:27
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15mm minis are quite small
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Feb 20, 2017 22:28
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Playing Flames of War I've often felt that my infantry ranges were way too small. 8" is just too short when the bases are like 1.5" wide.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:35
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Dandywalken posted:Are the short weapon ranges a big issue in Team Yankee? Or does it play ok in effect? The scale looks kind of funky. It is kinda funky and cohesion also serves to make the board generally look weird but as a game it plays okay. It's not going to scratch any grog itching, though.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:24
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Southern Heel posted:^ so does everyone get smoke grenades? There's some explicit writing around the Panzerknacker team but I wonder if that's just because they don't need a CI order to throw them? Southern Heel posted:Am I correct in understanding that tanks with junior leaders in them can only be activated on three, and the "radio command" rule where a senior leader can activate tanks in his platoon only applies to specific armoured platoon lists?
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Feb 21, 2017 03:49
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spectralent posted:It is kinda funky and cohesion also serves to make the board generally look weird but as a game it plays okay. It's not going to scratch any grog itching, though. Then you can move to Cold War Commander, which has some weird loving design decisions (either you wipe a tank/infantry stand in a turn, or it "heals" back to 100% the next turn), but grogs seem to swear by it. After that, you can abandon all sanity and play FFOT3 while using 1:1 representation rules. You can relax with a bit of AK-47 Republic, because gently caress rulebooks that are clear and make sense.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:07
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You can play Force on Force too, if you have something handy to mark casualties on bases or just uses bases to represent single dudes.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:19
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With wound markers, it would be a bit like playing FoW Vietnam
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Feb 21, 2017 08:02
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^ One of the reasons I decided to go for Germans and Soviets is that it's pretty much the bad-guy vs bad-guy scenario - there's no cheering that the plucky brits just got mowed down by SS MG42s in ambush. I had a really dark thought about using FoF rules for the Warsaw Uprising - but honestly that is bringing up some really quick icky feelings, especially because I've read a good deal about both sides.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:14
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Flames of War 4 looks dreadful. No more infantry. BUY MORE TANKS.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:24
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tomdidiot posted:BUY MORE TANKS. My name is lilljonas and I approve this message. 
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Feb 21, 2017 10:31
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tomdidiot posted:Flames of War 4 looks dreadful. No more infantry. BUY MORE TANKS. Please explain Southern Heel posted:^ One of the reasons I decided to go for Germans and Soviets is that it's pretty much the bad-guy vs bad-guy scenario - there's no cheering that the plucky brits just got mowed down by SS MG42s in ambush. I had a really dark thought about using FoF rules for the Warsaw Uprising - but honestly that is bringing up some really quick icky feelings, especially because I've read a good deal about both sides. While FoF isn't for WWII, I guess it could work. For Warsaw, put the SS under AI control. If it seems like they're lead by a psychopatic maniac, good.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:37
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tomdidiot posted:BUY MORE TANKS. Having an excuse to paint tanks was like half the reason I got into historicals in the first place Anyway, me and my buds are playing the first game of my COC campaign later tonight, finally. I'll be playing the Soviets. Can I get some feedback on the German attrition mechanics? The idea is that the Germans are stronger initially, but in the last few games they should be unable to field a full force and be made to compromise. I'm worried this is either way too easy for the Germans or way too hard. They have a better platoon, having two MGs per squad, I've made their support options cheaper, they're defending in every scenario, and they have the same amount of support points as the Soviets (usually). However, they only have 50 men, with each man "killed" in COC terms having a 1/2 or 1/3 chance of being permanently gone (depending on whether they Germans win or lose). They also have a limited pool of vehicles (1 Tiger, 2 StuGs, 3x Hanomags) and AT guns (4x PaK 38s), with the AT guns being lost when deployed, unless they win the game (you can't run away dragging a cannon). The Soviets have limitless reinforcements, but if they take 25 casualties or more in one game (each tank counts as 10 guys), the campaign time advances an extra step to represent waiting for reinforcements. The Soviets have 6 rounds to win, so this is significant. Thoughts? Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Y5AKm4E6t92Mm8ZJPLceERpdA-8phFLkWkcogVUqM8/edit?usp=sharing
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Feb 21, 2017 12:46
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Reading the scenario it looks exhaustively written and well thought out. As a reader, I would feel better about having the campaign-specific rules - I think maybe the campaign rules separated into a little table would help, i.e. (my interpretation is thus)The bridge at Schreiberbach posted:The campaign map consists of three locations: Operation Winter Storm from 2FL contains rules for Night fighting which could be used in games 3 and 6?
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Feb 21, 2017 15:36
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Finished some duders yesterday:
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Feb 22, 2017 00:52
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Good work dude, looking sharp.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:00
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Those look great!
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Feb 22, 2017 01:03
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They do look excellent - first or last?
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Feb 22, 2017 08:46
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 Played the first game of our campaign, on some unfinished carboard roads. This is looking up the map from the Soviet side. The Soviets have to move one team to the enemy table edge to win. Germans deployed a section in the fields to the left, another on the road in the middle with their Hanomag, and their third in the woods to the right. The Soviet squad on the left flank got promptly pinned by fire from two squads of Panzergrenadiers and a Hanomag (yup, those are shock tokens you see). My plan was to overwhelm the Germans in the woods to the right - I brazenly assaulted right into them with my first section, who were wiped out to a man while inflicting only 3 casualties. Unperturbed, I assaulted my second squad into them - Only to roll triple 1s on the movement roll. The second squad presumably didn't want to share their comrade's fate, and wisely dragged their feet a bit. The next phase I tried to assault again, hoping that the Germans had been softened a bit by the sacrifice of the first one (and some light shelling by the T-34). Nope. Second squad also wiped out to a man, inflicting only a handful of casualties. 20 Soviet men killed in the blink of an eye to take a lovely patch of forest.  My T-34 rolled up, took a shoot, got hit by a lurking PaK38, got immobilized, and the crew promptly freaked out and bailed. Final tally: 28 Soviet casualties - Only 2 troopers and my Senior Leader survived. Oh, and they lost the game, which means they need to assault this same map again. 12 German casualties, which translates to 4 dead Germans in our campaign. 4 down, 46 to go! It's not looking great for the Soviets so far. I fear I may have made it a little too easy for the Germans. Those Panzergrenadier platoons with six MG42s are nuts. Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 09:40
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Sounds like you need to read some Red Army training manuals, I'm sure they had some special tactics for this. It's not like they just ran their men into... oh. I have question about the Soviet KV-1 - the CoC rulebook suggests a three man crew (driver, gunner, machinegunner) for spending CI when the tank JL activates. However, the KV-1 has a crew of 5, with at least two MGs - I guess in terms of activation the JL will still only get two CI's, but I'm going to work under the assumption that the rear gunner is just an extra body, rather than the MGs be in mutually exclusive usage? Secondly, my Hanomag has a pintle mounted MG - if I'm carrying a section in transport they can obviously use this - but what about the transported men? I'm going to work under the assumption they can only shoot on a 1D6" movement by the Hanomag, but can they bring their MG42 to bear in addition to the pintle mount?
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Feb 22, 2017 09:57
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The rear turret MG in the KV-1 was fired by the commander, there wasn't a separate rear gunner. I don't think the COC rules cover the commander firing weapons by himself. I'd just treat it as costing a separate activation to fire.
Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 10:00
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I love Coc
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Feb 22, 2017 10:47
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Southern Heel posted:They do look excellent - first or last? Thanks! Just adding a few more bodies to round out some squads.
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Feb 22, 2017 14:34
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