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JcDent posted:Well, I guess it's a better way to assuage your European Man's guilt than just painting them pink. Painting them Pink is unsatisfactory.  I'm doing 1/48 vehisles so no hollywood tiget but Sgt Rock is getting added to my US para's for sure.
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Apr 3, 2018 17:51
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Phi230 posted:Play chain of command instead
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Apr 3, 2018 18:00
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I'll need to ask around if anyone around here plays CoC.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:11
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You can play CoC and BA with the same models so there's no harm in getting the CoC rules for cheap
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Apr 3, 2018 18:17
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chutche2 posted:Hey, I was looking at soviet bolt action army book to plan out my purchases, was thinking if something like this: I'm guessing by the panzerfausts that this would be a late war list? In that case your anti-tank rifles are going to have a hard time penetrating anything - even early war they aren't particularly great. Instead of the BT7 I'd field a T34. For 70 pts more you can have a tank that stands a chance of surviving a couple turns, can take out enemy tanks, and packs an extra MG. Gyro Zeppeli posted:I really want to play USSR in Bolt Action, but they're by far the most expensive army, right? Nah. Forty Soviet infantry for $30 - actually on sale with 33% off atm so more like $20+shipping or thirty Soviet infantry for $26 & goes on half price sale regularly. The best thing about historicals is that rulesets are not mutually exclusive. You can play one ruleset one day and the other another. Bolt Action is the more polished ruleset of the two in that you could play pickup games with strangers with no real difficulty. Chain of Command, from my limited experience, has more interesting mechanics and a better campaign system but requires some houseruling to get running and cooperation on who-fields-what in order to have fair games.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:36
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I feel like it's a generic reinforced platoon list more than anything specific.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:41
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Class Warcraft posted:I'm guessing by the panzerfausts that this would be a late war list? In that case your anti-tank rifles are going to have a hard time penetrating anything - even early war they aren't particularly great. Instead of the BT7 I'd field a T34. For 70 pts more you can have a tank that stands a chance of surviving a couple turns, can take out enemy tanks, and packs an extra MG. PSC's 28mm box is just shy £20 and contains 57 dudes, too. Only reason I don't have it is I'm unsure how cleanly it matches up to Dreamforge/WGF, and it looks like it does judging from the above.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:48
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JcDent posted:I feel like it's a generic reinforced platoon list more than anything specific. Yeah that's just the generic platoon from the front of the book. I've heard atrs are good for popping trucks/armored cars and making pins as well as harassing guns. Honestly I like early war soviets but you can't have any vets. Btw what benefit do coax mgs have over shooting HE at stuff? chutche2 fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 19:46
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You can do both at the same time?
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Apr 3, 2018 19:59
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JcDent posted:You can do both at the same time? I was reading over the rules and I'm pretty sure it says you can either fire the main gun or the coax I'll check when I get home "A co-axial can be fired instead of the vehicle's main weapon, but not at the same time - the player must choose either to fire the main gun or its co-axial MMG." chutche2 fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 20:03
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Class Warcraft posted:The best thing about historicals is that rulesets are not mutually exclusive. You can play one ruleset one day and the other another. Bolt Action is the more polished ruleset of the two in that you could play pickup games with strangers with no real difficulty. Chain of Command, from my limited experience, has more interesting mechanics and a better campaign system but requires some houseruling to get running and cooperation on who-fields-what in order to have fair games. Yeah, you can absolutely use the same minis for both, and the two games offer different things. Bolt Action is more focused on providing the ability to do competitive gaming with a historical feel; units have points values, games are played at some agreed-upon points level, and you can mix and match your units as you see fit. It does produce some pretty ahistorical oddities, though, and you end up with poo poo like, "I'm going to take an elite Volksgrenadier squad with Stg44's, a regular Fallshirmjager squad with two MG42s, a couple of Heer Panzerschreck teams, and, I don't have very many points left, so...um...a Panzer 38(t)." That's not likely a formation that fought together anywhere in the war. Oh, yeah, and your opponent is playing the Japanese. That said, the activation mechanic mixes up the IGOUGO turn order a little bit. You're still guaranteed to be able to activate all of your units, but it's your choice as to which order you're going to activate them once one of your activation dice is drawn. So you can have a run of several units getting to activate before your opponent can make a response, which is fun. But the weapon ranges are farcical and some of the game's mechanics are largely designed to get you to buy more models (e.g. transports and artillery, which rarely actually saw combat at as close quarters as the game assumes). It uses some of the typical wargamey stuff like standard deployment zones, etc. In some sense this is good because Bolt Action will feel very familiar to people coming to it from other tabletop games. Given the number of designers who came to Warlord from GW, they don't call it "World War 40K" for nothing. But unlike its progenitor (which even in its 8th Edition is still a dumpster fire), Bolt Action is by and large very clearly and tightly written. The production values are great and there's not a lot of ambiguity. Chain of Command, on the other hand, throws a ton of the "standard" wargame ideas out the window from the word "go." First and foremost, there are no fixed deployment zones; instead, the location of the "Jump-Off Points" from which your units will deploy are determined by playing a mini-game up-front called the "Patrol Phase." This simple change is absolutely loving magical - gone is the idea that you'll spend half of the game maneuvering troops from your board edge onto the field to get close enough to come to grips with the enemy. If both players are super aggressive about placing their JOPs, your units can deploy within 12" of each other (less if you're playing elites). From this alone, Chain of Command tends to drop you into the action. This effect is even more pronounced when you realize that almost every weapon (aside from pistols and SMGs) has a range of "can I see it?" That's right, your troops can shoot all the way across the board with their basic weapons (usually a rifle). The unit activation mechanic is also very novel. Rather than allowing you to activate each of your units once per turn, you have a set of "Command Dice" that randomly generate a pool of available activation resources every time it's your phase. So you might really want to activate that squad caught out in the open, but get an unlucky Command Dice roll and be unable to get them moving (or have to do something crazy like run your platoon sergeant out there to scream at them and get their asses in gear, risking a valuable senior leader to enemy fire). Even the phase order is governed by the Command Dice, so there's no guarantee that you opponent will go next - you might get to go again immediately after finishing your phase. It's really clever. It's also cool in that it supports solo games really well, because you can't know what your "opponent" is going to be able to do next. In terms of the "army lists," Chain of Command is a platoon level game. Your force isn't some hodge-podge of whatever fits into the agreed-upon points cap. Rather, it is a platoon. And more specifially, it is a platoon of a particular nationality in a particular place and time. Are you playing an American Infantry Platoon prior to the invasion of Italy? If so, your platoon consists of a Lieutenant, a Platoon Sergeant, three 12-man squads (each comprised of an NCO, a 3-man BAR team, and an 8-man rifle team), and a 3-man 60mm mortar team. That's it. August '43 or later (all the way to the end of the war), you swap out the 60mm mortar team for a 2-man Bazooka team. If you're playing Airborne rangers, your platoon will be organized differently. Playing a large, standard German Heer platoon at the beginning of Barbarossa looks a lot different than an SS Panzergrenadier platoon by the time of the Normandy invasion (by which time many of these divisions were scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of manpower). In addition to your core platoon, you'll have some level of "supports," which are things like entrenchments, minefields, engineering teams, AT guns, tanks, or maybe an extra squad on loan from another platoon in the company. These too are specific to a place and time, so you don't have to worry about your Italian Tankettes getting hammered all the way across Egypt/Libya by a bunch of British Cromwells (Matilda IIs are scary enough as-is). As a result, the engagements in CoC are much more tied to a particular historical context than in Bolt Action. Where CoC comes up short is in the clarity of its rules. The term "unit" is used interchangeably for both teams and sections (squads), and there are some rules interactions that are not very clearly spelled out. The FAQ is also demonstrably wrong in places, and Rich (the designer) doesn't always do a good job of keeping his latest rules interpretations adequately publicized (leaving some stuff in Facebook posts, FFS). The TooFatLardies crew are very much of the "games played over a pint of beer" school of wargaming, where any minor rules ambiguity can be amiably settled by gentlemen in the interest of having an enjoyable game - a system designed for tight tournament play this is not. Most of these ambiguities and rule interpretations are for relatively uncommon stuff, but it can be a little annoying to have to put work into interpreting a rule set for which you paid money. The saving grace here is that the CoC forum community is extremely helpful. I've played both games, and TBH I wasn't super impressed with Bolt Action. That said, Warlord is my go-to spot for buying poo poo for Chain of Command, because they've got some really nice kits. But as someone who enjoys the historical aspect of historical games, the mix-and-match points system just left me cold. But Chain of Command lit my brain on fire - I've never played a game that is so good on so many levels. I wish the rules would get a but of a revision/clean-up, but those complaints are very minor in comparison to the incredibly clever core mechanics of the system. tl;dr - play Bolt Action to ease people into historical wargaming. Once you have some experience with the period, give Chain of Command a try.
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Apr 3, 2018 20:35
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I would concur with a lot of the above. Bolt Action has a big scene in a lot of places, but the miniatures and armies are the same for both. Play some Bolt Action at the club or LGS and invite someone back to your place for CoC.
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Apr 3, 2018 21:33
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Yeah, no reason not to play Bolt Action if it's played actively around you, then jump aboard and go at it. But if you are a group of regular players who don't mind tinkering a bit, CoC is a good game, and you'll learn more about history through it. At least WW2 platoon tactics. As for models, the answer is always: why not build all of it? But really, start out with some plastic infantry and maybe a cheap plastic tank or two, that'll get you started no matter which game or army you choose. In CoC every bloke with a rifle is worth the same, so you don't get absurdly massive Soviet forces. Their LMGs have a little bit less firepower than the MG34, so you'll end up with a few more troops or extra toys compared to a German platoon. But we're talking a handful, not something insane like twice the number of troops. We fought a lot of Eastern Front CoC last year, and even though we're currently doing a lot of Napoleonics, low murmours are spreading about THAT city... the city that broke both the 6th Army and countless gamers... Until then, you can find a bunch blurry images of painted Russians on our club website, because apparently our Soviet commanders get all excited when they make battle reports. :P https://krigetkommer.weebly.com/ww2-blogs.html lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 21:39
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Seeing how the Patrol Phase works is what sold me on CoC. It's simple, but it makes the game so much better than the typical "line up and fight" game. One of the other things that makes CoC is the community. They post free lists all the time on their forum, along with the points-calculator you can use to make your own lists. Also, the fans have adapted the game/provided lists for other eras besides WWII. There's a really cool Spanish Civil War writeup with a lot of info here. And I'm all about the Vietnam rules - I've wanted to do 28mm scale Vietnam for a while, and had never found the right game, but CoC looks perfect for it.
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Apr 3, 2018 21:52
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You can also play CoC in 15mm and wobble between it and Battlegroup. The ground scale is close to perfect for 15mm as well!
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Apr 3, 2018 22:20
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Thundercloud posted:I would concur with a lot of the above. Bolt Action has a big scene in a lot of places, but the miniatures and armies are the same for both. Play some Bolt Action at the club or LGS and invite someone back to your place for CoC. A night of romantic wargaming?
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Apr 3, 2018 22:46
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wargame and chill
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Apr 3, 2018 23:18
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Class Warcraft posted:wargame and chill One day there will be a dating site for me...
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Apr 3, 2018 23:28
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Chain of Command could be something amazing if some sharks gave it playtesting and then re-did the rules writing.
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Apr 3, 2018 23:45
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Even just a good copy-edit to tighten up some of the nomenclature would do quite a bit.
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Apr 4, 2018 03:34
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Yeah, it really could use a second edition with a good editor.
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Apr 4, 2018 06:07
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I really wanna see some other Devs apply it to other games, the initiative system is great.
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Apr 4, 2018 08:23
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Remember when 2nd edition of Bolt Action came out and they smugly put "STILL in first edition!" on the CoC website and everyone reacted with thislilljonas posted:Yeah, it really could use a second edition with a good editor.
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Apr 4, 2018 09:07
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So some years back I put together a bunch of 6mm stuff for exciting Cold War battles and played around with Cold War Commander a bit. I think I looked at A Fistful of Tows as well at the time, but I can't actually remember very well. Looking to get back into it and bring out my old forces, and wondering what the current hotness is for cold war(gaming) in 6mm with up to a couple of dozen armoured vehicles and supporting infantry on a side ? Are CWC and FFT3 still the go-to rulesets for this kind of thing? I have been entirely out of the wargaming loop for a while.
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Apr 4, 2018 17:41
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Danger - Octopus! posted:So some years back I put together a bunch of 6mm stuff for exciting Cold War battles and played around with Cold War Commander a bit. I think I looked at A Fistful of Tows as well at the time, but I can't actually remember very well. Yeah pretty much those 2. There's a new game coming this year called Battlegroup NORTHAG that has people excited
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Apr 4, 2018 17:52
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Danger - Octopus! posted:Looking to get back into it and bring out my old forces, and wondering what the current hotness is for cold war(gaming) in 6mm with up to a couple of dozen armoured vehicles and supporting infantry on a side ? Battlefront's Team Yankee has been adapted to 6mm by many - I'd saw it works better in 6mm scale as it reduces the ridiculously dense formations into something more visually believable. I'm not saying Team Yankee is good, but it is popular. ("current hotness")
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Apr 4, 2018 20:04
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Phi230 posted:Yeah pretty much those 2. There's a new game coming this year called Battlegroup NORTHAG that has people excited Cessna posted:Battlefront's Team Yankee has been adapted to 6mm by many - I'd saw it works better in 6mm scale as it reduces the ridiculously dense formations into something more visually believable. Thanks! Basically I'm planning to re-watch Deutschland '83, crank up some Nena tracks and then start getting excited about the Fulda Gap again.
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Apr 4, 2018 20:41
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Danger - Octopus! posted:Thanks! Basically I'm planning to re-watch Deutschland '83, crank up some Nena tracks and then start getting excited about the Fulda Gap again. I'm on a Cold War nostalgia kick myself. I like the Team Yankee models - who doesn't like little T-64s? - but the game itself is quite unimpressive. I'm hoping Battlegroup: NORTHAG is good. May I recommend the Netflix show Comrade Detective?
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Apr 4, 2018 21:00
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Cessna posted:I'm on a Cold War nostalgia kick myself. I like the Team Yankee models - who doesn't like little T-64s? - but the game itself is quite unimpressive. I'm hoping Battlegroup: NORTHAG is good. I love Comrade Detective. The scene where you see young Iosif in the USA is great. Essentially I just want to play through minor actions from Red Storm Rising, in all honesty.
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Apr 4, 2018 21:07
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 I'm just over halfway through painting up a force of Team Yankee Russians myself. There is quite a large active TY group here, the only historical group I know of. I've yet to actually play a game, but the rules seem decent if pretty simplistic. I'm also gonna try to introduce these guys to NORTHAG when it comes out, Battlegroup is absolutely fantastic, Battlegroup with modern armies can't be bad. The only thing that seriously grates me about TY is that there is no way to field a elite Warsaw Pact army. Even the best troops in Pact are only as good as the worst in NATO. Not terribly surprising considering who makes the game, and the novel it takes it's name from.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:38
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At present V4 and TY have the issue that assault is a totally pointless step. Defensive fire is trivial, maximising contacts is hard, and everything has so many dice it's easy to drive back. It's even worse in Vietnam where you're dependant on infantry assault to win things and it just never happens.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:41
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Geisladisk posted:
Time to crush the yankee Imperialists, Comrade? 
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Apr 4, 2018 22:49
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Basing vehicles?
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Apr 4, 2018 22:50
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Geisladisk posted:
Agreed on Battlegroup. I'm a big GPW/Eastern Front type, and BG: Kursk replaced Flames of War for me years ago. With FoW's switch to 4th Edition, I might not even buy their Eastern Front stuff when it comes out, which is saying a lot for me... And Team Yankee is summed up in one photo:  Those Hinds have no rotors because they can not legally be placed "in command" with the rotors on. Again, I like Battlefront's models. I like the fact that they've revived interest in Cold War wargaming. I really want to like TY. I just wish they wrote better rules. Also - WIP of my Soviets, I've made progress since this was taken: 
Cessna fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 23:31
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Phi230 posted:Basing vehicles?
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Apr 4, 2018 23:34
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Cessna posted:
Hah, it doesn't help that Hinds are huge. I'm working on one right now. It somehow doesn't feel intuitively right that a helicopter dwarfs a main battle tank, but there you go.  I definitely agree - I'm not a fan of the control range. 6" is way too small for 15mm. I don't even think that such a thing should exist for vehicles - It sort of makes sense for infantry, but for 80s MBTs it's silly. quote:Also - WIP of my Soviets, I've made progress since this was taken: Oh man you are braver than I am. I can't do batch painting like that. If I don't regularly get the satisfaction of finishing a thing I just give up.
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Apr 4, 2018 23:51
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Cessna posted:Those Hinds have no rotors because they can not legally be placed "in command" with the rotors on. Recently errata'd to allow hinds to have a broader command range! Then errata'd again when it was pointed out that their command range is now bigger, yes, but morale is a different thing that just shares a bubble with command range and that's still smaller. BF are not great at rules. (They also recently errata'd it so that helicopters trigger anti-air fire when landing, then less than a week later un-errata'd it so that it's impossible to target transport helicopters again  )
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Apr 5, 2018 00:05
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Why're those hinds so big? Because they're 'higher up'?
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Apr 5, 2018 02:24
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Aircraft are actually loving huge IRL. A modern fighter jet is pretty close in size to a WWII bomber, and waaaaaaay bigger than even the largest tanks.
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Apr 5, 2018 02:33
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as an example, an f22 raptor with its landing gear deployed is about twice as long and high as an m1 abrams with its barrel forward, and close to 4 times as wide
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Apr 5, 2018 03:15
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