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INinja132
Aug 7, 2015

This weekend was a two-day "Weekender" at my local club and I was invited to join a game of Battlegroup, which I'd heard of but never played. There were four of us in total, I believe the other 3 had played before albeit not for a while. The scenario was set in Konigsberg in late 1944 and took about a day and a half to complete. We were playing in 1/72 rather than the recommended 15mm, with some nice miniatures from PSC and others.
Overall I wasn't really that impressed with the ruleset. I haven't played many WW2 sets (only CoC and old Flames of War about 15-20 years ago) but this is probably the one that I enjoyed the least. To me it felt very old-school, with a glacial pace and with absolutely zero design risks or interesting mechanics. Compared to something like a Sam Mustafa game (I haven't played Rommel but am more keen to try it now) it felt stuck in the last century.

Positives
- In Battlegroup you have to roll to acquire the target every time you fire which I quite like. It adds a nice element of friction and goes some way to representing the reality that just seeing the enemy is a huge part of the issue on the battlefield. This roll does feel a bit half-arsed though, with basically no change to difficulty based on the spotter rather than the target. For example it's just as hard for a 10 person infantry squad 5 metres away to see a tank as it is for an armoured vehicle on the other side of the table.

- Every time a unit is destroyed that side draws a Battle Token (I think they're called). The main purpose of this is to track your losses (most of the tokens have a number on them which represents a drop in morale) but some tokens have special effects instead, like air strikes or running out of ammunition. They add a bit of additional uncertainty and drama to the game.

- Tracking ammunition for vehicles is quite nice and not really something that common in rulesets, and wasn't as fiddly as I thought it might be. The abstraction for it was very odd though, as the number of shots allowed was all over the place for different vehicles (see below).

Aaaaaand, that's about it for positives really. As I said, I wasn't really feeling these rules and the more we played the less I found to like.

Negatives

- The Wehrabooism is real with this rule set. A couple of examples:
- MG42s receive more dice than .50cals (there is no difference in power of MGs in the game other than how many dice they roll).
- None of the German vehicles we were playing with (including Panthers and Tiger Is) had any negative rules. In addition the Tigers were basically invulnerable (even though I'm fairly sure the ground scale puts everything within about 1km) and for some reason carried twice as much ammunition as T-34/85s. No penalties for being unreliable, having poor optics, being incredibly slow/heavy, etc. Admittedly they didn't have any positive rules either (versus the T-34s which were better able to manage rough terrain) but it still seemed a bit bought into the propaganda.

- There are lots of dice rolls in this game. Lots and lots and lots of single dice rolls for every event, repeated for many hours. Lots of dice rolls isn't necessarily a problem but this seemed to take things a bit far. To fire on an enemy vehicle requires:
1. Acquisition Roll to spot the enemy
2. Roll to hit the Enemy based on range
3. Roll to see the effect of the hit if scored
And potentially another roll if the effect roll fails (at which point the enemy rolls for morale, which can lead to another roll if they get a 6 to see if they can have a special action out of sequence). This may not sound too terrible but every unit can fire twice a turn if they remain stationary, so with ~10 vehicles a side (plus infantry teams) it can take a fair while of just rolling dice over and over to get a result. I think they could have easily merged several rolls together and in the process also smoothed out some of the abstractions (per below).

- Basically no interaction for the passive player. Theoretically it's possible to put a unit on Ambush and react when the other side does something, but in reality this order was barely used as it was usually better to either move and fire or fire twice on your own turn. Considering so many rulesets now don't even really have a passive player as sides switch back and forth regularly, it was very odd to be back in the 1990s.

- It takes forever. We were playing quite a large game (~10-15 vehicles a side with a company of infantry each) although we were making use of a reinforcement rule so most of it wasn't on the table at once. Even so, after a day and a half we got through maybe 10 turns or so? Not helped by every vehicle having its own stat block which needs checking every time it's hit (or hits an enemy), except its weapons are kept on a completely different page of the rulebook. Thankfully the guys running the game had collated them all onto a cheat sheet for most vehicles, but for the ones they hadn't there was a lot of time flipping around the book.

- The abstractions are inconsistent(/weird). Ammo is the most obvious one, because it clearly doesn't track the number of rounds, which suggests maybe it's tracking "engagements"? But then when you hit something you only roll once for penetration and effect, which doesn't work if it's meant to represent a salvo of shots. It also leads to some odd situations where vehicles like assault guns have basically no ammo, the Wespe for example had 2 shots in total, often requiring a 6 to hit.

Per above this was a greater problem for the T-34/85s which quickly found themselves running out of ammo, due to some spurious reasoning in the rules apparently that Russian ammunition was of inferior quality so they had to fire more of it to compensate. And I'm sure by late 1944 the German stuff was super abundant and really brilliant...

Ammunitions is also pointedly not tracked for any kind of infantry or anti-tank gun, which means your Panzerschrek or bazooka teams can merrily pop away for an entire game where your armoured vehicles might only get a couple of shots away. They must have big pockets I guess...
Ranges also seem odd although this is true of a lot of WW2 games and was probably exacerbated by using 1/72 (i.e. 20mm) instead of 15mm. Even so it felt like armour differences should have been basically a non-factor beyond "light", "medium" or "heavy", rather than every tank having different ratings. I'm pretty sure that by this point in the war it didn't matter what you were sat in if someone hit you within a couple of hundred metres.

Infantry also seemed very strange in this game. Because of how the to-hit procedure worked they were essentially invulnerable to tank main armaments, but were incredibly vulnerable to enemy infantry. Infantry firepower in general seemed very overtuned, with a squad capable of more or less destroying an entire enemy squad in a single turn (factoring in that they can fire twice). This is potentially fine if the time-scale is 30 minutes per turn or something, but that doesn't seem to hold up with the way vehicles are represented.

Units being able to move twice if they want also means units can absolutely fly across the board if they want. On the first turn of the game a platoon of T-34s moved across 3/4s of the width of the table (about 3 feet)!

- It's just sort of boring? Bit of a rubbish criticism obviously but it felt like we didn't have too many interesting decisions to make. This might be scenario specific (not sure what the guy was thinking really, the Germans had more points than the Russians and were defending in a German-friendly ruleset, the outcome was pretty inevitable) so I'm willing to concede in a different game it might have been more interesting. I don't know what the "hook" is supposed to be though that means I would play that rather than one of the many other rulesets out there; it didn't seem particularly realistic, or dramatic or revolutionary.

So yeah, overall not a great experience. The company was good and we made it through the weekend with only one major argument (about how mortars work, as is traditional in WW2 games) but I won't be rushing out to buy my own copy of the game. Not least because by the sounds of things they've gone a bit GW and made it so you have to buy a million books to get all of the stats you actually need, even though they're often the same in different books.

Apologies for a bit of a long, ranty post. Does anyone else have any experience with Battlegroup? Anything I'm missing that means I should give it another shot?

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spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops
That's kind of a shame to hear - I haven't actually played battlegroup myself but I've heard it well-spoken-of. It's meant to have a "phases" element where troops come on in play and the strength of forces escalates over time - how did that play out?

Also, segue from that: are Moderns under historical wargames or are they meant to go into indie wargames?

Guest2553
Aug 3, 2012


That's close to my take on it, though much more eloquently put. I played it once years ago and found the rules quite laborious, a 1/72 scale sub-platoon action (2 squads, a couple heavy weapons and a tank) was too long to finish in an evening. The scenario and armies were all owned by one grog that was showing a couple of us the ropes, which didn't help, but the volume of tables and dice seemed to slow things down way more than necessary. It wasn't not fun and there are a couple takeaways i like to use in homebrew solo stuff, but wouldn't go out of my way to play it again

Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Oct 17, 2023

Arven
Sep 23, 2007
This is probably a long shot, but if anyone is in the central Pennsylvania region and is looking for someone to play literally any historical game system with, PM me.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
Basic google searches tells me the typical loadout for a t34/85 was 55 rounds (or 65) (or 77?)

Whereas the Tiger I has about 95.


:shrug: what numbers were in the game? Or how is it represented?

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

In the game (Fall of the Reich) the T-34/85 has Ammo = 6, Tiger I has Ammo = 9.

So, 10 shots rounded down, I guess.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
Maybe if you played the superior board game you wouldn't have to worry about ammunition [Exception: Special Ammo or Low Ammo rules]

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
:smuggo:

INinja132
Aug 7, 2015

spectralent posted:

That's kind of a shame to hear - I haven't actually played battlegroup myself but I've heard it well-spoken-of. It's meant to have a "phases" element where troops come on in play and the strength of forces escalates over time - how did that play out?

Also, segue from that: are Moderns under historical wargames or are they meant to go into indie wargames?

In the game we played, we started with no elements on the board and rolled at the start of each turn (separately) for how much stuff arrived. It worked fine I guess, although there was no restriction on what came on when, so turn 1 we put two Tigers into play which made things a bit tricky. Sounds like it could be more interesting with proper restrictions though

quote:

In the game (Fall of the Reich) the T-34/85 has Ammo = 6, Tiger I has Ammo = 9.

So, 10 shots rounded down, I guess.

Alright, sounds like I can retract that criticism then I guess, seems like they just take typical ammo load and divide by 10 (which seems an arbitrary number, are they meant to be firing 10 rounds per engagement or something?) Still stand by the fact it makes the game weird though where vehicles are running out of ammo all over the place if they attempt to engage anything at "long" range.

quote:

Maybe if you played the superior board game you wouldn't have to worry about ammunition [Exception: Special Ammo or Low Ammo rules]
Is this an Advanced Squad Leader reference or is there actually a Battlegroup board game? If the former I already do play ASL although I'm currently without a partner unfortunately!

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

INinja132 posted:

In the game we played, we started with no elements on the board and rolled at the start of each turn (separately) for how much stuff arrived. It worked fine I guess, although there was no restriction on what came on when, so turn 1 we put two Tigers into play which made things a bit tricky. Sounds like it could be more interesting with proper restrictions though

AFAIK, the system is meant to be that you have forward scout elements come on first, then the spearhead units, then finally heavy and sluggish stuff, so like, scout cars and one tank turn 1, light tanks and some medium armour turn 2, turn 3 everything. Again, not played it myself so that's just based on other people explaining it to me.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

spectralent posted:

That's kind of a shame to hear - I haven't actually played battlegroup myself but I've heard it well-spoken-of. It's meant to have a "phases" element where troops come on in play and the strength of forces escalates over time - how did that play out?

Also, segue from that: are Moderns under historical wargames or are they meant to go into indie wargames?

We've talked about Moderns in here aplenty. They're historicals for all intents and purposes anyway.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady
I played it when it was Kampfgruppe and GW published it, and it was "fine". There were some glaring holes in the rules that got fixed with Battlegroup. That said, your experience seems to be talking about an entirely different game to mine. I think your group totally misunderstood how shooting works, or I am just not remembering it at all right. Also you played a rather huge game. Two vehicles a side supporting a platoon was more than enough when I played it.

Comrade Merf
Jun 2, 2011

Arquinsiel posted:

I played it when it was Kampfgruppe and GW published it, and it was "fine". There were some glaring holes in the rules that got fixed with Battlegroup. That said, your experience seems to be talking about an entirely different game to mine. I think your group totally misunderstood how shooting works, or I am just not remembering it at all right. Also you played a rather huge game. Two vehicles a side supporting a platoon was more than enough when I played it.

Yeah I had a buddy run me through a game a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it, I think what happened was blowing the game up beyond its scope so all the mates at the club could play and that always exponentially increases play and idle time even for the systems designed around club meet ups.

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009

spectralent posted:

AFAIK, the system is meant to be that you have forward scout elements come on first, then the spearhead units, then finally heavy and sluggish stuff, so like, scout cars and one tank turn 1, light tanks and some medium armour turn 2, turn 3 everything. Again, not played it myself so that's just based on other people explaining it to me.

I wonder if that's what inspired a similar system in Conquest: last argument of kings

INinja132
Aug 7, 2015

Arquinsiel posted:

That said, your experience seems to be talking about an entirely different game to mine. I think your group totally misunderstood how shooting works, or I am just not remembering it at all right. Also you played a rather huge game. Two vehicles a side supporting a platoon was more than enough when I played it.

Yes I think the game scale did get a bit out of hand. The guy running it off-handedly remarked at one point that the standard points is 35 or something and in this game both sides were up in the high 70s/low 80s so that likely didn't help!

I'd be interested to know if we were doing shooting wrong. I haven't read the rules myself, I was just doing what I was told, but the process for each shot was:

1. Acquire the target (usually a 2+ for Obscured Vehicle Firing)
2. Guess the range band of the target (it seems wild to me that this is true if it's correct
3. Compare the range band to the shot type to get a to-hit number (with modifiers usually in the 5/6+ range)
4. Cross reference the penetration value of the weapon and armour of the target to get a "to-kill" number for a 2D6 roll
5. Equal roll = pinned, under = morale check, over = kill

The Infantry shooting rules appeared to be a bit different and I'm pretty sure we must have been playing wrong because there was no reason to ever use the suppression fire as normal shooting was so powerful. Without a copy of the rules though I can't check obviously.

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

INinja132 posted:

Alright, sounds like I can retract that criticism then I guess, seems like they just take typical ammo load and divide by 10 (which seems an arbitrary number, are they meant to be firing 10 rounds per engagement or something?) Still stand by the fact it makes the game weird though where vehicles are running out of ammo all over the place if they attempt to engage anything at "long" range.

It's a poor system. In game that T-34/85 only has six shots. Charge it with a horde of Pz-IIs and it can take out six tanks at most, even if they move across open ground. In reality tanks in good positions firing at tanks going across open ground can do a lot more damage; look at the Israeli Centurions in Valley of Tears (1973) for an example. (Source.) A well emplaced tank can take out dozens of poorly handled adversaries, especially if they're in open terrain at long range; by breaking down ammo like this the game inaccurately rewards poorly handled armies.

I've played the game (mostly the Kursk book, using repurposed FoW minis) and found that it was - okay? It's not BAD, but there's nothing really exceptional about it that makes me want to play it again. I'm still looking for my favorite WWII GPW/Russian Front minis game. I've played a lot of them, but none have really excelled to me so far.

Cessna fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Oct 18, 2023

hot cocoa on the couch
Dec 8, 2009

ive been meaning to take a break from my other projects and do some stuff for nimitz. daunted by the prospect of printing a bunch of boats and painting and basing them, i've opted to pick up the topside miniatures guadalcanal sheets and am gonna print them today. looking forward to giving nimitz a go on the tabletop

Comrade Merf
Jun 2, 2011
Anyone have any experience with Sharp Practice in 10 or 15mm? Any model range suggestions for those scales in either physical or STLs?

Southern Heel
Jul 2, 2004

Comrade Merf posted:

Anyone have any experience with Sharp Practice in 10 or 15mm? Any model range suggestions for those scales in either physical or STLs?

Henry Turner is the usual recommendation for historical STLs and Count Thrashula is doing them in 15mm.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




hot cocoa on the couch posted:

ive been meaning to take a break from my other projects and do some stuff for nimitz. daunted by the prospect of printing a bunch of boats and painting and basing them, i've opted to pick up the topside miniatures guadalcanal sheets and am gonna print them today. looking forward to giving nimitz a go on the tabletop

I'm keenly interested in that AAR.

Major Isoor
Mar 23, 2011

mllaneza posted:

I'm keenly interested in that AAR.

As am I! Sounds cool, TBQH

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

INinja132 posted:


The Infantry shooting rules appeared to be a bit different and I'm pretty sure we must have been playing wrong because there was no reason to ever use the suppression fire as normal shooting was so powerful. Without a copy of the rules though I can't check obviously.
From what I remember I mostly used infantry fire, and there was no reason not to use suppression fire since the odfs of that doing damage were almost as high as the odds of regular fire, and it generated token pulls faster.

Springfield Fatts
May 24, 2010
Pillbug

Comrade Merf posted:

Anyone have any experience with Sharp Practice in 10 or 15mm? Any model range suggestions for those scales in either physical or STLs?

As much as I like Henry's stuff it's too statically posed for individual figures for something like Sharpe Practice. If I only needed like 25 guys I would do AB Figures or Old Glory.

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!
If I did Sharp Practice in 10mm I'd probably splash for using four (or even six?) minis to count as a single mini, and get some proper looking ranks.

Slyphic
Oct 12, 2021

All we do is walk around believing birds!

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

ive been meaning to take a break from my other projects and do some stuff for nimitz. daunted by the prospect of printing a bunch of boats and painting and basing them, i've opted to pick up the topside miniatures guadalcanal sheets and am gonna print them today. looking forward to giving nimitz a go on the tabletop
Very excited to see that report. If you're doing 2400th scale, hull, deck, wash, drybrush is about all that you can really pick out. And for basing, clear acrylic looks great and you can slap a nice label on it.

I've similar plans of my own.

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops
Yeah, it might just be my particular scale of broke brains but I can't quite work my head around what smaller scale black powder games are meant to be, exactly. For post-machinegun stuff, small groups hitting objectives with a few items of support makes sense as a narrative event in my head. For pre-modern stuff, small armies might be fighting because, hey, no time to gather the troops for fending off a raid/it's almost winter, nobody's answering the call. But for eras where armies were tens of thousands of guys and they near exclusively fought in formations of like a thousand, shoulder to shoulder, what are the lines of twenty guys meant to be? It's clearly not skirmishers fighting ahead of the army because they form squares for some reason, and also because you can usually take separate "skirmishers".

hot cocoa on the couch
Dec 8, 2009

mllaneza posted:

I'm keenly interested in that AAR.

Major Isoor posted:

As am I! Sounds cool, TBQH

i'll probably be doing some solo play on saturday so i'll be posting about it this weekend no doubt. probably gonna start with a ijn vs usn battleship group fight to learn nimitz rules, will advance to halsey a little later

Slyphic posted:

Very excited to see that report. If you're doing 2400th scale, hull, deck, wash, drybrush is about all that you can really pick out. And for basing, clear acrylic looks great and you can slap a nice label on it.

I've similar plans of my own.

yeah that's what im thinking. i just have to select and buy the models, print them, procure bases (acrylic seems like a good bet, agreed), then do planes and such as well... starting with paper stuck to 3d printed bases is much easier. but if i find myself playing a fair bit i'll be upgrading to miniatures

SpaceViking
Sep 2, 2011

Who put the stars in the sky? Coyote will say he did it himself, and it is not a lie.
Continuing with my Victrix 12mm/O Group project.


https://imgur.com/a/Ng0mHeG

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

spectralent posted:

Yeah, it might just be my particular scale of broke brains but I can't quite work my head around what smaller scale black powder games are meant to be, exactly. For post-machinegun stuff, small groups hitting objectives with a few items of support makes sense as a narrative event in my head. For pre-modern stuff, small armies might be fighting because, hey, no time to gather the troops for fending off a raid/it's almost winter, nobody's answering the call. But for eras where armies were tens of thousands of guys and they near exclusively fought in formations of like a thousand, shoulder to shoulder, what are the lines of twenty guys meant to be? It's clearly not skirmishers fighting ahead of the army because they form squares for some reason, and also because you can usually take separate "skirmishers".

They're meant to recreate Sharpe, where the BBC didn't have the budget to recreate all of Waterloo.

Jenx
Oct 17, 2012

Behold the Bull of Heaven!

spectralent posted:

Yeah, it might just be my particular scale of broke brains but I can't quite work my head around what smaller scale black powder games are meant to be, exactly. For post-machinegun stuff, small groups hitting objectives with a few items of support makes sense as a narrative event in my head. For pre-modern stuff, small armies might be fighting because, hey, no time to gather the troops for fending off a raid/it's almost winter, nobody's answering the call. But for eras where armies were tens of thousands of guys and they near exclusively fought in formations of like a thousand, shoulder to shoulder, what are the lines of twenty guys meant to be? It's clearly not skirmishers fighting ahead of the army because they form squares for some reason, and also because you can usually take separate "skirmishers".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecUAFQH6AzM this is a good overview for an earlier period, but in general small skirmish engagements happened all the time, it's just not something you write big books about. Like 10 of your guys running into 12 of the enemy's guys while trying to get some stuff from a nearby village isn't really something that gets historians writing 1000+ page books about, but it still happened.

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

spectralent posted:

Yeah, it might just be my particular scale of broke brains but I can't quite work my head around what smaller scale black powder games are meant to be, exactly. For post-machinegun stuff, small groups hitting objectives with a few items of support makes sense as a narrative event in my head. For pre-modern stuff, small armies might be fighting because, hey, no time to gather the troops for fending off a raid/it's almost winter, nobody's answering the call. But for eras where armies were tens of thousands of guys and they near exclusively fought in formations of like a thousand, shoulder to shoulder, what are the lines of twenty guys meant to be? It's clearly not skirmishers fighting ahead of the army because they form squares for some reason, and also because you can usually take separate "skirmishers".

At least for the Civil War, you're talking lines of a couple hundred after 1862. But there are well documented small battles across the Western and Eastern theater.
Sharp Practice is meant to re-create stories just like the Sharpe novels/movies though. Not giant battles. It is the only skirmish game that truly reflects Napoleonic drill, and it does it a lot better than some big battle games even.

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Cessna posted:

They're meant to recreate Sharpe, where the BBC didn't have the budget to recreate all of Waterloo.

I don't get why they couldn't just CGI the-

quote:

Original release 5 May 1993

oh right

EdsTeioh
Oct 23, 2004

PRAY FOR DEATH


That show is really good for the time and has aged pretty well. My wife got me a bunch of the dvds for my birthday a while back.

ANYWAY so after flirting with wanting to check out Flames of War for a while, a buddy of mine ended up dumping ALL of his minis and hobby stuff after his mother in law asking him "why he likes to play with toys so much" once she saw his hobby room. I ended up with, among other things, 2 Hit the Beach sets, an American Combat Command starter, a Cav Recon platoon, a 57mm platoon, and a platoon of Panthers. I think I'm totally good here as far as Americans go, but what's a good way to expand on the Germans? Tigers? 88s?

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

Jenx posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecUAFQH6AzM this is a good overview for an earlier period, but in general small skirmish engagements happened all the time, it's just not something you write big books about. Like 10 of your guys running into 12 of the enemy's guys while trying to get some stuff from a nearby village isn't really something that gets historians writing 1000+ page books about, but it still happened.

Sure, you get that sort of thing. But as spectralent points out in reality this sort of skirmish isn't a recreation of a big battle on a smaller scale with proportionate types of troops and formations. For example, a regiment of infantry form a square to defend against cavalry, but you wouldn't see a group of twenty guys in a square; it just doesn't work like that. Also, a force of skirmishers would be entirely of the same type; i.e., you'd run into a unit of all voltigeurs or all dragoons. You wouldn't have mini- combined arms battles with a group of line infantry supported by a dozen cavalrymen and a single canon.

This sort of odd miniaturization of army composition in skirmish games isn't limited to Napoleonics. Pretty much every Ancients skirmish game I can think of does this, to the point of forcing tabletop armies to be built at the same proportions as their larger army. So, a skirmish force of, say, Punic Wars Romans will have six Triarii, a dozen Principes, a dozen Hastati, and a dozen Velites, supported by a handful of cavalry. And somehow they end up fighting against a Carthaginian skirmish force of Citizen infantry, Iberian Scutarii, some Numidian cavalry, and (of course) a single elephant. (And, for extra silliness, if you try to take an army of i.e., "all Velites" you're penalized even though that would be a historically accurate army.)

It is utter nonsense, armies just do not work like that on that scale.

(This will not keep me from playing, of course.)

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

EdsTeioh posted:

That show is really good for the time and has aged pretty well. My wife got me a bunch of the dvds for my birthday a while back.

ANYWAY so after flirting with wanting to check out Flames of War for a while, a buddy of mine ended up dumping ALL of his minis and hobby stuff after his mother in law asking him "why he likes to play with toys so much" once she saw his hobby room. I ended up with, among other things, 2 Hit the Beach sets, an American Combat Command starter, a Cav Recon platoon, a 57mm platoon, and a platoon of Panthers. I think I'm totally good here as far as Americans go, but what's a good way to expand on the Germans? Tigers? 88s?

Panthers are already enough of a Big Tank for an army; if you've got them Tigers are redundant. I would suggest investing in some infantry.

ChubbyChecker
Mar 25, 2018

EdsTeioh posted:

That show is really good for the time and has aged pretty well. My wife got me a bunch of the dvds for my birthday a while back.

ANYWAY so after flirting with wanting to check out Flames of War for a while, a buddy of mine ended up dumping ALL of his minis and hobby stuff after his mother in law asking him "why he likes to play with toys so much" once she saw his hobby room. I ended up with, among other things, 2 Hit the Beach sets, an American Combat Command starter, a Cav Recon platoon, a 57mm platoon, and a platoon of Panthers. I think I'm totally good here as far as Americans go, but what's a good way to expand on the Germans? Tigers? 88s?

lmao at your buddy and grats on the free stuff


Cessna posted:

Sure, you get that sort of thing. But as spectralent points out in reality this sort of skirmish isn't a recreation of a big battle on a smaller scale with proportionate types of troops and formations. For example, a regiment of infantry form a square to defend against cavalry, but you wouldn't see a group of twenty guys in a square; it just doesn't work like that. Also, a force of skirmishers would be entirely of the same type; i.e., you'd run into a unit of all voltigeurs or all dragoons. You wouldn't have mini- combined arms battles with a group of line infantry supported by a dozen cavalrymen and a single canon.

This sort of odd miniaturization of army composition in skirmish games isn't limited to Napoleonics. Pretty much every Ancients skirmish game I can think of does this, to the point of forcing tabletop armies to be built at the same proportions as their larger army. So, a skirmish force of, say, Punic Wars Romans will have six Triarii, a dozen Principes, a dozen Hastati, and a dozen Velites, supported by a handful of cavalry. And somehow they end up fighting against a Carthaginian skirmish force of Citizen infantry, Iberian Scutarii, some Numidian cavalry, and (of course) a single elephant. (And, for extra silliness, if you try to take an army of i.e., "all Velites" you're penalized even though that would be a historically accurate army.)

It is utter nonsense, armies just do not work like that on that scale.

(This will not keep me from playing, of course.)

exactly

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Cessna posted:

Sure, you get that sort of thing. But as spectralent points out in reality this sort of skirmish isn't a recreation of a big battle on a smaller scale with proportionate types of troops and formations. For example, a regiment of infantry form a square to defend against cavalry, but you wouldn't see a group of twenty guys in a square; it just doesn't work like that. Also, a force of skirmishers would be entirely of the same type; i.e., you'd run into a unit of all voltigeurs or all dragoons. You wouldn't have mini- combined arms battles with a group of line infantry supported by a dozen cavalrymen and a single canon.

This sort of odd miniaturization of army composition in skirmish games isn't limited to Napoleonics. Pretty much every Ancients skirmish game I can think of does this, to the point of forcing tabletop armies to be built at the same proportions as their larger army. So, a skirmish force of, say, Punic Wars Romans will have six Triarii, a dozen Principes, a dozen Hastati, and a dozen Velites, supported by a handful of cavalry. And somehow they end up fighting against a Carthaginian skirmish force of Citizen infantry, Iberian Scutarii, some Numidian cavalry, and (of course) a single elephant. (And, for extra silliness, if you try to take an army of i.e., "all Velites" you're penalized even though that would be a historically accurate army.)

It is utter nonsense, armies just do not work like that on that scale.

Yeah, true, actually - I was thinking early modern is where the issue pops up but ancients has the exact same thing of "organised enough to not do stuff half-assed, no technological capacity to support the all-skirmish modern combat style". I don't know why it bugs me there, though - I realise generally medieval warfare would involve big armies but the fact it feels plausible that the local lord has gathered two dozen of his stoutest franks to rebel the pagan barbarian menacing his fief makes those skirmishes feel a bit more satisfying.

I probably just need to watch more sharpe.

quote:

(This will not keep me from playing, of course.)

Hear hear!

ChubbyChecker
Mar 25, 2018

spectralent posted:

Yeah, true, actually - I was thinking early modern is where the issue pops up but ancients has the exact same thing of "organised enough to not do stuff half-assed, no technological capacity to support the all-skirmish modern combat style". I don't know why it bugs me there, though - I realise generally medieval warfare would involve big armies but the fact it feels plausible that the local lord has gathered two dozen of his stoutest franks to rebel the pagan barbarian menacing his fief makes those skirmishes feel a bit more satisfying.

I probably just need to watch more sharpe.

Hear hear!

generally medieval era was not about big armies, but about skirmishes

EdsTeioh
Oct 23, 2004

PRAY FOR DEATH


ChubbyChecker posted:

lmao at your buddy and grats on the free stuff

exactly

I ended up giving him money; there was all that FoW stuff, a bunch of Necromunda with terrain and Forge World stuff, then a Proxxon foam cutter.

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Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Death is nothing compared to vindication.
Buglord

Southern Heel posted:

Henry Turner is the usual recommendation for historical STLs and Count Thrashula is doing them in 15mm.

The new stuff that Henry put out as part of his Waterloo kickstarter (he re-did the pre-Bardin uniforms so 1808-1812 French get updated sculpts) have much better poses



Still not as good as you get from standalone 28mm models, but better for sure.

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