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EdsTeioh posted:Actual game content so I don't start a US political state derail: Ok, so for example I'm looking at the WWIII American book on FoW digital (which should be free). On pages 22-23 there's the American Force organization chart. Some of these divisions are colored in, some are grey. Am I picking from THIS chart? Like I pick one of these, let's say M1 Abrams Armored Combat Team. Then I go to page 28 to build up THAT team, right? How many of these do you have to take? Are the grey boxes "support" and I can take 1 or more of these? I get how to build up individual teams; it's just the overall force chart that's got me confused. Okay, yeah, looking at that American Force organization chart I can see how it is a little confusing in that book. These "divisions" are meaningless in game terms; They are just fluff to show the organization of the various divisions present in the American sector at the time of TY's WW3 starting. It's honestly really, really bad design by BF to include superfluous fluff elements on a chart where every other element on the chart has actual game-rule relevance, but, eh. The dark green boxes under the various divisions on pg 22-23 are the different Formations you can take; There is no hard limit on how many formations you can take of each type, but in practice you wont have points for more than 1-3. Most list even only have one formation, although some nations (like the US) can have lots of small ones. The light gray boxes are the support units; These are limited by the "slots" for each unit. For instance, in the bottom left of pg 22, you have two "slots" which can either be filled with a M109 Field Artillery Battery or a Marine 109 Artillery Battery. This means you can take a total of no more than two M109 Artillery units, and either one can be taken in Army or Marine flavours. So you pick one of these formations to add to your force, and you go to the page that outlines that formation. Let's pick a M1A1 Abrams Armored Combat team, and jump to page 26. This chart outlines what units are mandatory in that formation, and which are optional - The mandatory units are in black - A M1A1 Abrams Armored Company Team HQ, and two M1A1 Abrams Tank Platoon. The gray-boxed units are optional, but if taken, are a part of that formation and not a support unit. Note that you can take no more instances of each optional unit than there are boxes on the chart; For instance, there is only one M901 ITV Anti-Tank Platoon box in this formation, so this formation can include 0-1 of that unit. Now, because the M1A1 Abrams Tank Platoons are black-boxed (mandatory) in this formation - This means that you can take one M1A1 Abrams Tank Platoon as a support unit. This applies to all units that are black-boxed in any formation. So... You must take 1+ formation(s). The formations available are the ones in green boxes on the force org chart on pg 22-23. Each formation must include all of the units in black boxes on the formation's force organization chart, but can include the gray-boxed ones. Support units are not part of any formation and are optional. You can take as many instances of each support unit as are on the force org chart on pg 22-23, as well as 1 of any black-boxed unit from any formation.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:52
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Got it; thanks very much! Now I just need to get some helicopters. And dudes. And more tanks. And basically everything. EDIT: Pattons suck right? Like I'm never going to use the ones from the WWIII starter? EdsTeioh fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 18:58
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I think the fear that T-55s would crush everything never really beared out; slow firing and tripping over yourself is a killer. T-72Ms are the cheap spam option of choice, and elite tanks really struggle with them but midline stuff and good-enough things like the Leo 1 work nicely against them. FA 18 at 8 points was a bit harsh for the M1, but it shares the issue of feeling just a bit overcosted with the soviet T-72; generally, the IPM1 and T-64 are considered to be pretty viable, I think. Funnily enough, Leopard 2s and the Germans in general are, I think, seen as one of the weaker lists, due to the fact everything is very pricey and the Leo 2 feels a bit fragile these days for the cost. No argument on the zergling soviets though, it remains a weakness of their design. At least there's an elite T-80 company, and the T-80 itself, coming out soon.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:06
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EdsTeioh posted:EDIT: Pattons suck right? Like I'm never going to use the ones from the WWIII starter? M-60s are in a good place. They aren't as good (edit: protected) as an Abrams, but they're significantly cheaper. Er, no, that is, they're crap, send them to me. Cessna fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 20:19
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EdsTeioh posted:EDIT: Pattons suck right? Like I'm never going to use the ones from the WWIII starter? They are okay. You get the same firepower as a baseline M1 Abrams, with less armor and slightly less firepower on the move. The armor isn't good enough to do much against good AT weapons, but will protect them from lovely ATGMs and T-55s. They are pretty cost-effective, considering you get a platoon of five for almost the same points as even a single M1A1 Abrams. Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 20:22
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Guys here are apparently converting them to bridgelayers.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:48
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Geisladisk posted:They are okay. You get the same firepower as a baseline M1 Abrams, with less armor and slightly less firepower on the move. The armor isn't good enough to do much against good AT weapons, but will protect them from lovely ATGMs and T-55s. They are pretty cost-effective, considering you get a platoon of five for almost the same points as even a single M1A1 Abrams. They're about half the cost, actually, so it's not quite that cheap, and also you described the marine M60A1. The M60A3 the army gets has worse base stats but gets to keep RoF 2 on the move, which I personally feel is just a no-brainer choice, sadly. The only reason to take the marine ones is they're in-formation with the excellent rifle platoons. EdsTeioh posted:Guys here are apparently converting them to bridgelayers. I know so many people who want bridgelayers and other engineering vehicles in TY and I can never understand why; it's just such a bad system for it. Instead of going to the effort of making a mission where they're relevant why not just find a system with the crunch to do that?
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Sep 11, 2020 20:55
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spectralent posted:They're about half the cost, actually, so it's not quite that cheap, and also you described the marine M60A1. The M60A3 the army gets has worse base stats but gets to keep RoF 2 on the move, which I personally feel is just a no-brainer choice, sadly. The only reason to take the marine ones is they're in-formation with the excellent rifle platoons. The new M1A1HC Abrams weighs in at an extremely chunky 18 points per model, while a platoon of 5 M60A1 Pattons is 20, and a platoon of 4 M60A3s is 16. I personally do not really see a reason to take the M1 Abrams (the 105mm one), ever. You get the same firepower as a Leopard 1 or M60, and the survivability isn't improved nearly enough to justify the price tag.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:01
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spectralent posted:
That's the culture here
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Sep 11, 2020 21:06
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Geisladisk posted:The new M1A1HC Abrams weighs in at an extremely chunky 18 points per model, while a platoon of 5 M60A1 Pattons is 20, and a platoon of 4 M60A3s is 16. Oh, sure, I misread the initial post, sorry. The IPM1 is the usual sweet spot I see people going for; FA 19 means you're well protected from AT 20 and 21, especially at long range against kinetic, and remember that to an Abram's 2+ Remount and the new "remount first" rules, bails essentially don't exist. The gun at AT 20 is a little better than most 105mm guns, and will work okay against soviet T-72s and T-64s, and dunk hard on anything more fragile, and you have to consider that it's with stabiliser; you always hold the threat of jumping 18" into a flank in your pocket. There's some justified concern if the M1A1 is enough of a boost to really make it worth the extreme increase in cost; I think it probably is as a support option to infantry or recce but I feel like if it's your main gunline you're going to be very fragile and have a lot of swingy games. The big game changer is that T-80s will be around soon, and you need the 120mm* to hurt them from the front. *or TOW-2 or ADATS or etc etc, even most 120mms aren't going to have a great time with FA 20 at range.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:16
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Yeah, I'm not convinced that M1A1s will be worth it. The biggest threat to NATO armor by far is Hinds and SU-25s, and those can just always hit your side. They kill M1A1s just as easily as they kill M1s and M60s. As a Soviet player I'm salivating at the prospect of taking out 18 point tanks with my Hinds. M1A1s are also not a great counter to T-80s, as they will seriously outnumber the M1A1s, and the M1A1s can't consistently hurt them, especially at range. I think T-80s will be pretty sweet as a late-game win condition; Keep them hidden for the early game while the rest of your stuff kills the high AT stuff that can deal with them, and then use them to sweep up.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:00
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Geisladisk posted:Yeah, I'm not convinced that M1A1s will be worth it. The biggest threat to NATO armor by far is Hinds and SU-25s, and those can just always hit your side. They kill M1A1s just as easily as they kill M1s and M60s. As a Soviet player I'm salivating at the prospect of taking out 18 point tanks with my Hinds. quote:M1A1s are also not a great counter to T-80s, as they will seriously outnumber the M1A1s, and the M1A1s can't consistently hurt them, especially at range. I dunno, I think you're going to be seeing between 7-10 T-80s, and you can get three M1A1s in as a reasonable reserve. That's six credible shots on a T-80 which isn't nothing, though I still feel it has the issue of being a real grab-bag of traits; the M1's big advantage is being the cheapest thing with armour and advanced stabiliser, which makes it a good brawler that can survive to close range then start scooting around for flank shots. Really, I think the thing the US was really crying out for was 3+ Skill. Perversely, it got it, but only on units that can't take M1s...
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Sep 11, 2020 22:07
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How important is infantry overall? I don't see nearly as many options for it as in FoW (I get the change in warfare and all that), but as I recall, dudes could be dead hard holding objectives in FoW.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:09
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Infantry is very important, particularly when holding objectives as you said. Almost all otherwise pure tank lists will still bring at least a platoon of infantry to sit on an objective. TY infantry also has a huge leg up on FOW infantry, in that they are all packing RPGs that can put the hurt on tanks. Soviet infantry can also be terrifying on the attack - Huge, huge units of infantry just plodding up the table, supported by a swarm of BMPs firing off ATGMs everywhere like a firework show gone terrifyingly wrong. Particularly scary if there are lots of buildings on the table and they can keep a significant number of models in cover as they advance.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:24
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Crucially, however, don't try and assault with them. You want to do a horseshoe shape around the enemy infantry unit which maximises your AK shots on them since those have 5+ firepower and infantry will die to enough firepower checks, which AKs can do. In an actual assault they're appallingly bad and will routinely die en masse having failed to have moved more than a stand or two off the board.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:36
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Good to know; I really don't like the FoW assault rules anyway. Probably gonna go ahead and pick up the big American starter set this weekend and hopefully get a little game in. Thanks for the info!
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Sep 11, 2020 22:54
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Der Shovel posted:Trip report: Warlord are replacing the bent cruiser hulls free of charge. Hell yeah, a good ending. Hopefully the next batch aren't as awful.
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Sep 11, 2020 23:14
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spectralent posted:I know so many people who want bridgelayers and other engineering vehicles in TY and I can never understand why; it's just such a bad system for it. Instead of going to the effort of making a mission where they're relevant why not just find a system with the crunch to do that?
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Sep 11, 2020 23:54
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More and more Saga minis getting painted over here too... I'm up to a warlord and 8 hirdmen. Just need to paint up my 16 bondi and I'll have a solid 4 point army. Threw together a quick crop field with modular fences today too 
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Sep 12, 2020 02:13
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I love that style of field for terrain. It's particularly great for 15mm and 6mm stuff, because it really nicely abstracts cover that infantry can benefit from, but vehicles can't, and gives you terrain that infantry can easily navigate while vehicles can bog down in. Made a huge difference to my FoW games when I started using a half dozen or so of them.
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Sep 12, 2020 02:36
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NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:More and more Saga minis getting painted over here too... I'm up to a warlord and 8 hirdmen. Just need to paint up my 16 bondi and I'll have a solid 4 point army. Looking good! It's a great feeling having an entire painted army. 
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Sep 12, 2020 09:15
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 test scheme on the M1. Probably too dark, but whatevs. EdsTeioh fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Sep 12, 2020 |
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Sep 12, 2020 16:36
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Springfield Fatts posted:Hell yeah, a good ending. Hopefully the next batch aren't as awful. Here's hoping! According to the customer service rep their internal quality control allows for up to 1mm of lift at either end, and this was way way way more than that. 1mm would probably be easily fixable with the old "tape and piece of metal" method. I gotta be honest though, I'm starting to have my doubts on Warlord's quality control. My copy of Blood Red Skies didn't contain miniature planes, it contained miniature blender whisks, or so you would believe because all the wings on the planes were in nice curves. And some of the flying stand peg holes weren't properly formed which was a problem since they were not circular pegs, but triangular. For reasons. Of course they also replaced those so fair enough, but you'd think at some point it would be more economical to switch to hard plastic than replace endless amounts of rubbish resins and soft plastics, especially since they already do hard plastics for their Bolt Action stuff. EdsTeioh posted:
Looks fine, IMO. I know I'm guilty of this too because I spend hours researching the exact shade of SCC15 or whatever, but it's a fool's game trying to nail down exact tones for a variety of reasons. And still I keep doing it 
Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 09:49
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Der Shovel posted:
Shhhh it’s all games workshop paint
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Sep 13, 2020 14:19
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Der Shovel posted:Looks fine, IMO. I know I'm guilty of this too because I spend hours researching the exact shade of SCC15 or whatever, but it's a fool's game trying to nail down exact tones for a variety of reasons. And still I keep doing it It's also a pointless struggle IMO because gaming miniatures need to be exaggerated in color otherwise they just look like tan and green blobs on a tan and green mat. The hyper realistic scale modelers look good either in a vacuum or a carefully composed diorama. It would look weird as poo poo seeing 15 photo-realistically painted and weathered tanks moving around the board next to some MDF terrain or a hill made of foam.
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Sep 13, 2020 16:55
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Just another excuse for "tabletop quality" in stead of spending a couple of hours on a stand of 6mm romans
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Sep 13, 2020 17:18
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I eagerly await the day when 2mm becomes the gaming standard
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Sep 13, 2020 17:44
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I eagerly await the day when 2mm becomes the gaming standard http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=487837 So good.
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Sep 13, 2020 20:33
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Converting Panzer IV F2s to H in 15mm scale with spare plastic card suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. But saving $100 on models and the feeling accomplishment something painstaking (if meaningless) is pretty rad.
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Sep 14, 2020 01:54
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Springfield Fatts posted:It's also a pointless struggle IMO because gaming miniatures need to be exaggerated in color otherwise they just look like tan and green blobs on a tan and green mat. The hyper realistic scale modelers look good either in a vacuum or a carefully composed diorama. It would look weird as poo poo seeing 15 photo-realistically painted and weathered tanks moving around the board next to some MDF terrain or a hill made of foam. Here's an old pic of me in front of my AAV.  That vehicle is painted in "Tropical Verdant." Here's what Tropical Verdant is supposed to look like, going by FS numbers:  Is it close? Kinda. Is it a perfect match? Nope, not even close. Paints fade in the sun, get patched and repainted, you name it. Don't waste your time trying to get exact matches. Go for what looks right to you.
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Sep 14, 2020 03:38
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And I'm going to suggest that for wargaming miniatures you'll get more use out of painting instead of photographs or strictly realistic illustrations. The idea is that you're looking to emphasize certain elements that will stand out on the tabletop, so why not let another artist do the heavy lifting of deciding how best to depict something. Especially at smaller scales you'll want to ignore details that won't be visible, so if you find a good painting of a, say, Napoleonic battalion in action, any detail left out of the painting is a candidate for being left off the miniatures. At higher standards of painting you want more detail, but if I'm throwing down a 6mm Napoleonic division, I'm probably not painting the facings unless I'm showing off. But if an artist's rendition of the battle does show the facing colors, then I should seriously consider finding a way of depicting them while economizing on army painting time.
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Sep 14, 2020 04:03
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Cessna posted:Here's an old pic of me in front of my AAV. They still look the same 20 some odd years later. A little more rust and a few more breakdowns but they are still running.
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Sep 14, 2020 04:50
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quote:This is a convention game, so everything is designed to work in synch. The gaming surface is plexiglas, and the players will have little croupiers sticks to scoot the figures around with.
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Sep 14, 2020 06:53
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mllaneza posted:And I'm going to suggest that for wargaming miniatures you'll get more use out of painting instead of photographs or strictly realistic illustrations.
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Sep 14, 2020 09:11
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Cessna posted:Is it close? Kinda. Is it a perfect match? Nope, not even close. Paints fade in the sun, get patched and repainted, you name it. Yeah, that's the thing. Even beyond the wear and tear on paints, it's one thing for the Ordnance Department to say that Tanks Shall Be Painted In This Pantone Tone Colour, but then you get to the front and turns out they haven't received that paint in months, and even the shipments they did get weren't really 100% the intended tone because wartime, so they're making do with what they have. Or maybe the crews realized that the intended tones don't actually work super well in the real world scenarios they're encountering, and they're trying to adapt and used some self-invented camo patterns instead. And also it's certainly true that very small things and very big things don't look remotely the same if you paint them with the same techniques and same colour tones. But even knowing all of that, I will still drive myself crazy trying to figure out how to try to duplicate the exact colours used by British vehicles in Africa or whatever. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 09:22
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Der Shovel posted:But even knowing all of that, I will still drive myself crazy trying to figure out how to try to duplicate the exact colours used by British vehicles in Africa or whatever. I read in some first hand account that much of the German uniforms and their gear had turned more or less bone white when the last formations surrendered in Tunisia, due to the sun. Also that new recruits would bathe their caps in bleach to not stand out as being straight out of boot camp. After that I worried slightly less about perfect colour matching.
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Sep 14, 2020 09:34
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That reminds me of a guy who was doing a Finnish army for Bolt Action and was super worried about getting the uniform colours exactly right. I explained that we're a poor nation and went into World War II so poorly equipped that many soldiers had only parts of their uniforms assigned to them and often wore their own trousers or boots. And even those who did get uniforms might get brand new ones, or some surplus stuff that had sat in a warehouse for god knows how many years and had only a passing resemblance to how it was SUPPOSED to look.
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Sep 14, 2020 10:21
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 Is it time for wehrmacht-jacket-rainbow.jpg? I Think it's time for wehrmacht-jacket-rainbow.jpg. This picture beautifully illustrates what happens to standardized equipment when it is manufactured at different factories with different methods, sometimes with resource shortages that require improvisation, and then used in the field, subject to different amounts of wear and tear, sun fading, dirt, etc. Don't fret getting the Correct Green For German Tanks In Spring 1942 (or Correct Green for US Tanks in Europe in 1985) because although such a thing might exist on paper, that is the only place it exists.
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Sep 14, 2020 11:49
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All good points, thanks guys! Ended up picking up US starter over the weekend. Got a couple of HMMVs and the Apaches put together; these are actually pretty fun and quick models to build. Definitely a nice change of pace from GW and the normal fine scale models that I usually build. So more questions: are the Bradley scouts and the Bradley transports the same model? They seem to have different unit cards as the scouts don’t have a passenger capacity but are they physically the same models?
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Sep 14, 2020 13:01
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As far as I understand they are externally identical, except that the recon ones use the cabin for more ammo and communication equipment instead of guys.
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Sep 14, 2020 14:45
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