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I'll go down for a Division command or Engineer command if the division commands are already all taken.
Saros fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 16:22
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| # ? May 14, 2024 00:08 |
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 TOP SECRET INFORMATION BEGINS HERESo, you're here, you've committed to playing. What you need to do now is decide which level of command suits you best. Corps Command This is a Corps-level game, and so the High Chief Poobah is the Corps Commander. The Corps Commander has overall responsibility for the direction of the battle, devises the strategy for fighting it, gives orders for its implementation to the Divisional Commanders, and provides oversight to ensure that they are co-operating effectively. There is only one corps commander on the board at a time. Division Command At the intermediate level of command we find Divisional Commanders. Divisional Commanders are responsible for taking the strategic direction set for them by the Corps Commander, and turning it into sets of more specific actions which are then carried out by their Brigade Commanders. This is, counter-intuitively, probably a good role for someone who wants to play the game, but who either is worried that they don't fully understand the rules, or simply doesn't care to digest them properly (which is fair enough, I can barely stand the things and I wrote them). There will be at least two division commands available, and probably many more. Brigade Command And then, at the sharp end, there are a large number of Brigade Commanders (the last game required about 13 or so, this one may well need more, and it really is a case of "the more, the merrier"). Brigade Commanders have all the fun of pushing chits around the board and personally leading offensives, but this comes at the cost of having a lesser input into strategy, and you don't get to give orders to other players, you only take them. For this round, I'm also adding a couple of special additional roles; they can be given to a player as their sole duty, or doubled with a player already in the game. Artillery Command Artillery in this round will function as autonomous brigades (more on what that means later) under the control of Division Commanders. Artillery Commanders will be responsible for moving and emplacing your artillery, and will also plan how you will use indirect fire. Yes, unlike the last round, your guns will be able to use indirect fire! There will be at least one Artillery Commander per division; and if you can't find anyone to fill the role, or don't want to make it a separate role, Division Commanders may act as their own Artillery Commander. Engineer Command Again, engineers in this round will function as autonomous brigades under the control of the Corps Commander. Engineer commanders will be responsible for digging trenches, laying out barbed wire, building and destroying bridges, and all manner of other fun things. There will be at least one Engineer Commander, or the Corps Commander may choose to act as their own Engineer Commander. The non-playing advisor (Staff Officer) Finally, you are more than welcome to restrict yourself to one thread, and offer your advice and suggestions without commanding any men, in which case you are a staff officer. PS: I strongly advise that while hats may be thrown into the ring with abandon, nobody should get too attached to any particular role until tomorrow, Tuesday; let's give the Americans a chance to wake up and sign up as well. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 16:24
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American here, just confirming my desire for a division command since I waffled a little last post.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:29
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I'm going to stick mit der Kaiser. dem Kaiser? High school was a while ago... Anyway, here. I started dabbling with something that might keep me busy, so stash me as a staff officer for now and if I end up with enough free time I'll jump in if the chance presents itself.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:42
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This ought to be interesting with indirect fire, ranges are HUGE compared to direct fire.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:47
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Last time we could have used somebody on the staff tasked with checking for conflicts in commands, invalid orders, crossing paths, two brigades trying to occupy the same place etc. So if anybody would like to serve as a staff officer, it would be very welcome.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:53
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Artillery please Also happy to serve as a division/brigade/staff officer on the side, I just like the big guns. sniper4625 fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 17:00
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I ain't leaving my krauts, but I have to stick with staff officer for the time being.
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Mar 6, 2017 18:24
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Coming back in whatever capacity is available. EDIT: Cryo has dibs, but if he doesn't want it I'd happily take the role of Corps Commander. Failing that, artillery command or a division HQ. The Sandman fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 18:43
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Hey Trin just to make sure I'm reading the map right, the light green area with weird edges that includes Bois de Coq is a depression, not a hill?
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Mar 6, 2017 18:50
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As a sort of tip for making future maps, bevels do more to make these maps harder to read than to present information. A linear color gradient with an equally spaced distribution of untextured elevation layers and solid, single color lines for borders between layers would be easier to read. There's a reason real maps do not use any embellishments.
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Mar 6, 2017 19:29
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If you intend to play for the Entente, and you are still reading, then you are a horrible cheaty cheat and none of us want anything to do with you. ORDERS From: Generaloberst Kuno Augustus Friedrich Karl Detlev Graf von Moltke, Second Army To: Generalleutnant [TO BE DECIDED], IV Corps General, You are aware of what is at stake. The British Expeditionary Force is racing towards Effyaders with all speed. Due to several aggravating reasons of geography, they will likely reach it first. Remove them.  Here are your orders. 1). Secure intact the bridges allowing us to operate west of La Dand. 2). Move west, destroying any enemy forces encountered en route. 3). Capture and hold Effyaders. 4). If it proves impossible to hold that objective, then you are ordered to establish yourself as far west as possible and dig in so that we may be able to give battle again, in a few months' time, from the most favourable position possible. YOUR FORCES Your forces will enter the map via the grey-marked deployment zone. The 18th Cavalry Division will be available to you from the outset. We expect the 72nd Infantry Division to arrive within 36 hours. Further reinforcements will be fed into the battle as they arrive. As we advance, we will be able to increase the size of our deployment zone. INTELLIGENCE Intelligence gained from the Battle of Mons leads us to believe that, like the French, the BEF has only one machine-gun company per brigade. However, unlike the French, and ourselves, their brigades usually consist of more than three battalions, and their men are long-service professionals. A British cavalry brigade is roughly equivalent in strength to the brigade that General Mon Pere so unwisely led against us at Saint Croissant. This is the critical moment. If we win this battle, we drive a deep and permanent cleavage between the perfidious English and their French...associates. We may even drive them from the mainland of Europe before they have a chance to deploy the "New Armies" of which their newspapers speak so highly. Signed, Kuno von Moltke, Generaloberst (Rules-focused post to follow. Beware of prior knowledge if you happen to own a rulebook!)
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Mar 6, 2017 20:01
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Shotgun the cavalry division! Sabre time!
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Mar 6, 2017 20:04
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72nd Inf for me.
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Mar 6, 2017 20:05
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I will gladly continue my service to to the Fatherland in what ever capacity I am needed.
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Mar 6, 2017 20:11
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I don't want to be tied to my computer by a command, but I could act as an adjutant, making sure orders are given, billets filled, and questions answered, so I won't spoil myself for the moment. I've done that before a couple of times. If it doesn't appear you need me I may eventually retire to the peanut gallery.
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Mar 6, 2017 21:56
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Our current OOB\Command structure Crazycryodude is corps commander by popular acclaim, assuming he wants it and we have 4 brigade commanders awaiting information about what brigades are available. So I think most brigade commanders may end up with 2 brigades? Possibly 1 of cavalry and then one of infantry when the cavalry one is inevitably expended Oh, and I'm volunteering for duty as a brigade commander.
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Mar 6, 2017 22:24
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Engineer and arty commander sound like really fun jobs. Looking forward to seeing what those are all about.
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Mar 6, 2017 22:30
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I'll happily lead my merry brigade of Krauts to Or really anything below the Division level. Capfalcon fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 22:46
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I would like to volunteer as a Staff Officer so i can offer advice or whatever from the safety of an armchair at HQ
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Mar 6, 2017 23:08
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morning, and by morning i mean...noon. brigade me if the people who didn't have a chance before have enough places, either infantry or cav
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Mar 6, 2017 23:38
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Trin Tragula posted:From: Generaloberst Kuno Augustus Friedrich Karl Detlev Graf von Moltke, Second Army
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Mar 6, 2017 23:41
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ALL THE CRUNCH Right then. Last post was the fluff. Here's some crunchy rules to get your teeth into. TIME OF DAY Daytime updates will be 8 turns in duration. Nighttime updates will be 16 turns. Each turn represents, as before, half an hour of real time. The battle begins with Turn 1 at 8am, full daylight. Twilight is at 7pm, nightfall at 8pm, pre-dawn at 7am. Where possible, please refer to turn numbers, not time of day. ARRIVAL OF YOUR FORCES Two cavalry brigades enter the map on Turn 1, one more on Turn 10, and one more on Turn 20. The infantry will not begin arriving until the second day of battle. NEW RULES: Brigades An Autonomous Brigade has no brigade command chit, and is not subject to the restrictions on Battle Order/Marching Order or Attack/Defend stance. However, to change orders, they must be near an existing HQ chit. A brigade with a company within 8" of a HQ changes orders on the turn the order change succeeds; within 16", after a one-turn delay; within 24", a two-turn delay, and so on. Autonomous Brigades have their own individual sets of Standing Orders - look out for those in a few days, once you get to the point of giving brigade orders. Artillery and Engineering Brigades Artillery and Engineers will, when they arrive, be organised into their own Autonomous Brigades, not attached to existing infantry brigades as in the previous round. (See below for details on what they can do.) They cannot rout after failing a morale check, but they can be forced to retreat suppressed. Cavalry Brigades Your Cavalry Brigades have 9 Cavalry companies, a Brigade Commander, 3 horse-drawn machine guns, and 1 arse hortillery. Infantry Brigades Your infantry brigades now have two integral mortars instead of one. NEW RULES: Fatigue The fatigue day begins and ends at 0800. Any brigade which has one of its companies either open fire or is fired on gains a point of fatigue the next time 0800 rolls around; a brigade can only gain or lose one point of fatigue per day. A brigade loses a point of fatigue if it neither opens fire nor is fired on during a fatigue day. A brigade with 2 or more points of fatigue is easier to hit, and is less likely to hit the enemy. Fatigue rules do not apply to Autonomous Brigades. NEW RULES: Terrain There are five new types of terrain introduced in this round; water, bridges, fords, the depression, and the sunken road. Water Water is impassable at all times to all units. A chit may only cross water at a designated crossing point. Bridges Companies may cross a bridge without a movement penalty, but must do so in single file. Bridges may be built or demolished by Engineers (see below), and may not be damaged in any other way. If a bridge is demolished while a company is on the bridge, that company is killed. Fords Companies may cross a ford which is also part of a road without penalty, but must do so in single file. If the ford is not part of a road, the company stops immediately on reaching the edge of the ford and loses the rest of its movement for that turn; it may proceed across the ford on the following turn. Fords may not be demolished, but they can be blocked. The depression On the left of the map is a large depression, the Saucisson Vallee. The depression has a 4" zone around it. All companies inside the depression are invisible to companies outside the depression. All companies outside the depression are invisible to companies inside the depression. A company inside the 4" zone spots into the depression, and can be spotted by companies inside the depression, at normal unmodified range. The sunken road On the right of the map is the Chemin Creux, a sunken road. A company located on the Chemin Creux has spotting and protective cover. If an Entrenchment is dug inside the Chemin Creux, it gives additional protection, and blocks other units from moving along the road at their usual movement rate. NEW RULES: Indirect Fire Right, here's a big one. Let's do the exception first: arse hortillery and mortars may not use indirect fire under any circumstances. For everyone else. All artillery pieces are organised into Autonomous Brigades. Your artillery may still use direct fire according to the rules, and is still subject to the rules about limbering and unlimbering. However, it may also use indirect fire when directed to do so. Indirect fire range is currently 40". All guns in a brigade must fire at once, and target an area equivalent to the number of chits in the brigade. (So, a brigade with one gun targets a 50px single-chit sized square; a brigade with four guns can arrange four 50px target squares however it likes; a brigade with eight guns can arrange eight squares, and so on.) Friendly fire is possible when using Indirect Fire. If units from opposing sides are within 2" of the target, I will determine who, if anyone, gets hit by the fire. Guns using Indirect Fire must still have 2" of clearance in order to fire over the head of friendly units. Ordered Fire An artillery brigade may use Ordered Fire on any turn when it is unlimbered. The relevant Artillery Commander selects a point to be targeted (subject to a Change of Orders roll if required) and the turn on which the guns should fire, and as long as the orders get through, the guns will open fire on that point. Supporting Fire An artillery brigade may be set to Supporting Fire by its commander. When another brigade spots the enemy, they will send a message to the artillery, and the artillery may then target and use Indirect Fire against the enemy companies. This is subject to the same 8"/16"/24" (and etc.) time lag as for a Change of Orders. The closer you put your guns to the infantry, the quicker they respond, but the more likely they are to be overrun by an enemy breakthrough... Limited Ammunition Owing to the difficulty of supply, the shortfall in munitions manufacture, and the prolific use of shells already in the war, your artillery brigades are limited to no more than 24 indirect fire missions per day. There is, at present, no limit on the number of Direct Fire missions you may use. Your ammunition comes up at 0800 each day. Standing Orders Artillery brigades will have their own set of Standing Orders, which I'll figure out before you start giving brigade-level orders. ALTERED RULES: Engineers and Entrenching The soil on this map is much less favourable to digging than on the previous map. Therefore, it now takes 10 turns for a brigade to self-entrench, 8 turns for an Engineer to dig a trench, 6 turns for the Engineer to put up (or remove) 3" of barbed wire, and 4 turns to build or clear a Roadblock. It takes 12 turns to wire a bridge for demolition and 14 turns to build a temporary bridge. Engineers are organised into an Autonomous Brigade; you will see mounted engineers, who move about the map as cavalry, as well as foot engineers. They now carry 9" of wire (their total carrying capacity) onto the field with them, may still requisition wire from Farms, and receive 3" of extra wire from the rear at 0800 each day. Two mounted engineers will enter the field on Turn 12. ALTERED RULES: Hill Spotting The only high ground on the map is in the far east; units on the high ground have a spotting range of 24", as long as they are within unmodified spotting range of the edge of the hill. That's all for now. I'm sure there's other things that should go here, but I can't think of them just at the moment. Questions welcome. Remember to post in here and not hide in Roll20. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 00:11
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Do you mean the only high ground is in the far EAST, or am I reading the map wrong? Also, 24 indirect fire missions - are they counted per gun or per turn? e.g. if we have a battery of 4 gun chits set up and they all perform indirect fire on turn X, does that use 1 or 4 missions worth of ammo?
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Mar 7, 2017 00:18
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Are those cavalry brigade MGs equivalent to the horticultural MGs from previous game?
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Mar 7, 2017 00:22
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^^^ just added "horse-drawn" to the relevant place ^^^Crazycryodude posted:Do you mean the only high ground is in the far EAST, or am I reading the map wrong? ugggghhhhh, fixed quote:Also, 24 indirect fire missions - are they counted per gun or per turn? e.g. if we have a battery of 4 gun chits set up and they all perform indirect fire on turn X, does that use 1 or 4 missions worth of ammo? Per brigade, per turn. A 4-gun brigade and an 8-gun brigade both use indirect fire, they both use 1 mission. I will be keeping tight control over how artillery brigades are organised to stop it getting too complicated to track.
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Mar 7, 2017 00:22
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Hello I am volunteering for the Vaterland and was told to post in here. Probably a scrub position because it is late and I did not read the rules yet.
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Mar 7, 2017 00:23
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Fathis Munk posted:Hello I am volunteering for the Vaterland and was told to post in here. You're on the brigadier list, we haven't really got into assigning brigades yet. we've got 9 potential brigadiers atm, so you should be able to get on the field fairly early in the piece.
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Mar 7, 2017 00:28
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 I'll try to know the rules by then 
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Mar 7, 2017 00:30
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Arriving for duty, sir!! If at all possible I would like to request a Cavalry Brigade please. Thank you. Also I know we haven't started talking map strats yet but one I was thinking about, though I have no evidence or proof, is that considering the number of forests scattered along the map the Entente may have small number of troops located inside them? As a sort of ambush and delay response while the BEF advance from the West so if these troops do exist they would likely be French. I mean I have no proof of this but considering the trickery of the last battle it could be possible. Another point is maybe they won't all come from the direct west side of the map? Just some thoughts. koolkevz666 fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 00:40
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Out of curiosity, does the adding indirect fire correspond to a particular technological innovation that took place around this time?
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Mar 7, 2017 01:01
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Not really, I just wanted to throw some different possibilities at you.
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Mar 7, 2017 01:17
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Who thinks there are Brits hiding in Chemin Creux?
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Mar 7, 2017 02:01
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I'll sign up for the German side, ideally controlling Artillery or Engineers. Those seem to best combine the 2 qualities of a) getting to move dudes around the map and b) getting to blame other people whenever something goes wrong. "Help my dudes are getting shot, who was supposed to be watching the frontlines?!" 
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Mar 7, 2017 02:29
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Well, let's have a look at our situation:Trin Tragula posted:
This has a lot of parallels to the Battle of the Yser, although the BEF wasn't involved in that and here they are. We are near the channels ports, flat land, lots of bridges with the potential to be demolished and canals. The Germans there were trying to advance fast enough to attack the Belgians before they had time to dig in, some bridges got demolished and eventually a large area of lowlands was flooded, delaying the germans enough for the front lines to settle in place. So I think the idea here is to keep up the momentum of the advance as much as possible to try and take ground before reinforcements make it impossible to do so. Getting to the far town is probably almost impossible, but if we play well perhaps we can get a far bridge or two. So I think there will probably be delaying forces before we encounter the main forces later in the scenario. The crossing of the la Dand bridges might or might not be defended by small forces. I agree that Chemin Creux is a logical place for their first line of resistance, so we should be prepared to attack it quickly and hard, but lets make sure it's done intelligently so that we don't waste all the troops for nothing. I think the town of Stethoscope should be bypassed completely and left to follow up troops. The key here is to not let them delay us from getting further into the map, because the moment we hit a large entrenched force, that's probably as far as we can go on the map. We're also going to need an excellent standard of orders, because a. We are doing things in groups of 8 turns, and b. we are probably going to have units operating a long way from the chain of command, especially if we are initially successful. Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 02:42
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(Oops, quoted instead of edited)
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Mar 7, 2017 02:59
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i'd like to join as a staff officer. i've gotta go right now but i'll check back in later, can somebody post an ultra-convenient link to the roll20 while i'm gone? danke. tschüß~
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Mar 7, 2017 03:15
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https://app.roll20.net/join/1997552/GbgsBw It's also on page 1 just below Trin's posts so you can find it later 
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Mar 7, 2017 03:37
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I'll join again as a staff officer.
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Mar 7, 2017 03:38
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| # ? May 14, 2024 00:08 |
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I was going to join the Entente but I read the wrong thread. That said, I'd love to have a Division command if another one shows up, that sounds like a great deal of fun. In the meantime, making sure every brigade has a commander is more important. Running horsies around finding machine gun emplacements to get shot at by sounds rather exciting, so put me down for that if there's some going around - infantry would be good too. If a command isn't available for me, I'm sure I can find something useful to do in the staff room until reinforcements turn up.
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Mar 7, 2017 04:01
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