Comstar posted:

They're...really long though. With a lot of pictures. I don't want to overwhelm the thread. If no one minds (check the blog to see the length of it) and someone else asks for it, I'll post it here.

Tias posted:

So with my multitudes of army mans coming in and shaping up on the painting table, I might well get to play some Bolt Action in the near future. I can't find an OP write-up in this thread about it, so apart from practicing with my local grogs (which is restricted a lot because of a new infection flare-up here), where can I get some input on understanding the ruleset? The rulebook is, uh, unwieldy, and the erratas are larger than the book now.

Class Warcraft posted:

JcDent posted:

I wonder if it looks better or worse than trying to do it on TTS.

JcDent posted:

So about equal, huh?

Class Warcraft posted:

I've been thinking a lot lately about campaign systems and ways to give wargaming battles more context. Looking through my collection of campaign rules that I've gathered I've noticed they tend to fall into two categories: ultra-detailed campaign systems that are almost a wargame of their own on top of the tabletop wargame, and minimalist systems that are really just a way to string together a handful of battles.

What I haven't seen a lot of is more of a middle-ground where there are some interesting choices to make (but doesn't get bogged down in too much fiddly paperwork) and a reasonable campaign length.



Anyway, I thought I'd ask the thread:

1) What campaign systems have you tried and liked?

2) If you were going to participate in a wargaming campaign what would be the most important aspects to you? (Overall length of the campaign, decision-making, amount of detail, etc.)

lilljonas posted:

As a Lardies player, it's really funny how Chain of Command is made to faithfully recreate tense WW2 tactics, while Sharp Practice is made to faithfully recreate tense Napoleonics tactics as depicted by two boys playing with their Airfix figures on their bedroom floor, going *pew pew pew!* as victory hangs in the balance with both armies' generals in a sabre duel at the top of a bell tower over the hand of the mayor's daughter.

I think Bolt Action has more in common with Sharp Practice in that way.

E: with this post I don't mean it as a negative thing, sometimes you want the faithful recreation, sometimes you want to just go *pew pew pew* and have fun. After all, I like both CoC and SP2.

Ensign Expendable posted:

From what little I know about the historicals community, nerfing a German tank in any way is marketing suicide.

moths posted:

There's nothing fun about not getting to use your toys, but the Tiger's temperamentally is as much part of it as its armor thickness or other attributes.

I mean, half of these games include rules for fictions like the Sherman's self-immolation or a Soviet comissars' morale-boosting fratricide. It's downright suspicious when an unreliable resource-pit like the Tiger or the Me262 shows up in-game and performs incongruously flawless. There's messaging there, intentionally or not, and I consider that a valid concern.

moths posted:

Comissars killing people happened on-par with other officers and NCOs executing "cowards." A lot of Soviet myths come from debriefed nazis echoing propaganda and our own cold war propaganda.

The Soviet penal units were particularly horrible, but so were everyone else's. A lot of what happened there has been applied to the rest of the red army. So that's where your "one man gets the rifle, one man gets the ammo" and trigger happy comissar tales originated.

Wet stowage of ammo largely fixed the Sherman's issue. They didn't burn any more or less than any other tank after that.

Ensign Expendable posted:

The Panzer IV had ammo stuffed into every crevice, stored vertically in unarmoured bins. A penetration of the fighting compartment was pretty much a guaranteed ammunition fire. This was never resolved, but for some reason only the Sherman gets a special rule.

Russians/Shermans get a negative thing while the Germans who had the exact same negative thing in greater measure do not.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Meanwhile cities like Kölln and Berlin were littered with the lynched and rotting corpses of old men and children who deserted

Cessna posted:

Link,
Link, also try Steven R. Welch, '"Harsh but Just"? German Military Justice in the Second World War: A Comparative Study of the Court Martialling of German and US Deserters', German History, vol. 17 (1999), no. 3, pp. 369-399.

tl;dr - The commonly accepted figure is 15,000 tried and executed for desertion. Given the state of Nazi record keeping and conditions of 1945, it may well have been a much higher number.

Cessna posted:

I don't know of a monograph offhand.

For a good book on the disastrously awful condition of the German military in 1945 I'll suggest Hitler's Volkssturm: The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany, 1944-1945 by Yelton. ($40 on Amazon)

moths posted:

At least 15,000 German soldiers were executed for desertion alone, and up to 50,000 were killed for often minor acts of insubordination. An unknown number were summarily executed, often in the moment, by their officers or comrades when they refused to follow commands.

But sure, the Soviets get the bang morale reroll.

Efb; There's a book cited in the linked article.

Comstar posted:

So I just become a victim of the algorithm. My wargame blog has been blocked/soon to be deleted because it was reported for violating PHISHING policy. The link i go to then tells me:

My blog was killed by robots.


So...seeing as Google is going to kill my blog for being a human, whats a good platform to have a new blog on? One that does not require any HTML knowledge and I can have blackjack and hookers and not have my memories deleted by a Necron . Maybe one that can import my old posts too.

LatwPIAT posted:

Beauties? Beauties? Two separate volumes are labeled “Volume 3”. That’s obscene.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Those are volumes, can you even read??

lilljonas posted:

When a triology has four books, your editor got creative.

zokie posted:

I feel like the point of doing all that research is also so you can make an informed decision about how to paint your little mans.

Imagine how embarrassing it is to use Russians equipped with British Brown Bess muskets when playing before the Russians had access to those if you do it by mistake?? We have a club member who will never stop hearing about Bessgate.

Using British tanks painted in Caunter camouflage for the battle of Gazala because it is the coolest thing ever, but you know it’s wrong because you bought all of those spiral bound books on British tank camouflage with handmade paint swatches from the author that still accepts payment by mailing cash in an envelope. That’s just a choice to be respected!

Cessna posted:

It's a great if you're into reading and remembering rules. I suppose it's an impressive simulation of wargaming.

It has very little to do with WWII infantry combat, but its an impressive achievement in gaming.

alg posted:

This is a really good summary of why ASL isn't a historical simulation

https://thetacticalpainter.blogspot.com/2020/07/farewell-advanced-squad-leader.html

quote:

“The frictions of war – chance, bad weather, mistakes and ill fortune – are the only certainties of combat, along with death, injury and destruction........war is a random and bloody business, where the weird geometry of chance has its play and its frictions and human fallibility and fragility abound. Combat is fast moving, confusing and often bewildering. There is no perfect science, only perfect intent that is unlikely to withstand first contact with the prevailing realities on the ground once battle is joined, and the enemy also gets a vote in the outcome."

Cessna posted:

Squad Leader pushed in the opposite direction. It was all about the FEEL of infantry combat. It was intended to give players the impression that they were making moves and decisions that a unit leader would make. Take a look at one of the maps:

If you enjoy it, great. Have fun. But if you think it is simulating anything beyond big broad stroke ideas like “having cover is better than not having cover,” you’re mistaken.

Cessna posted:

The problem here is that ASL makes things that were crucial decisions for a unit leader and turns them over to dice rolls and random chance. I realize that real combat is very much driven by chance and happenings outside of a unit commander's control, and his ability to react to it is what makes the difference between his and his men's living or dying. But ASL is a GAME, and way, way too much of it is left to chance - including far too many things that should not be.

For example, ASL models ammo usage in a random manner - which is, pardon my language, bullshit. The example counter in the upper right has a “Low Ammo Breakdown” number:


A better version of what you posted.

A die roll is not a good simulation of anything except a die roll; using total randomization as a representation of the things a commander/player can control is sloppy game design. It leads to two very bad effects: it heavily and unjustly penalizes a player who has bad luck for things a real commander would know about and control, and it takes the "flow" of the game out of the hands of the players and gives it to the dice.

Say you're a tank platoon commander and you start a battle (scenario) with tanks that are have a limited supply of ammunition.

First and foremost, only you should know the state of your ammo but your enemy should not. In ASL both players can figure the rough odds of any unit running out of ammo. But in reality there's no way an enemy can look into your tanks and check your ammo. In ASL, if your tank runs out of ammo, both you and your opponent know it instantly. Real combat doesn't work like that. A real tank is going to try very hard to look like it's in fighting shape - it might withdraw when it's low or out of ammo, but then again it could withdraw anyway; an enemy won't KNOW it is pulling back because it's out of shells. And it might just save one last main-gun round for a "surprise" for the enemy. There’s no little flag that pops up announcing “hey, this tank is empty!”

Second, a real platoon leader is going make a decision beforehand to divide up your ammo where it is needed. If you've got a tank that you know is going to be in the thick of things - seizing an objective, springing an ambush - you are drat well going to make sure that tank does not run out of shells after the first shot. You're going to make your tankers portion out their ammo accordingly. ASL just doesn't deal with this. If your most important tank rolls badly on its first shot, it's empty, too bad.

Equally, tanks that have very limited ammo capacity can - if the dice favor them - shoot indefinitely. An SU-152 carried at most 20 rounds of Main Gun ammo; in ASL it can shoot until it misses a roll. That's just as silly.

Now, again, ASL is trying to convey a “feel.” “My tanks have limited ammo.” That’s great, especially as they do so without a lot of record keeping. But again, the problem is that the implications here (you know instantly when an enemy tank runs out of ammo) aren’t realistic at all. And this sort of thing carries through seemingly everywhere in the design, but it tries to pass itself off as realistic.

That's a real problem with ASL. It's an ornate mess - built on an abstract, slipshod system – trying to look like it’s realistic.

Cessna posted:

I’m not saying Tobruk is an “accurate simulation.”

Like was said above, every game makes compromises, and they often go in different directions. I mentioned Tobruk as a useful contemporary counter-example to Squad Leader – Tobruk tended towards making the game more “strictly math-y” while Squad Leader went more towards “holistic feel.” Either approach has advantages and disadvantages. ASL is not somehow superior here, it’s just using a different set of wonky assumptions.

I don’t think it’s really possible to accurately simulate the decisions a small unit leader like an infantry platoon commander makes in a tabletop wargame. There are just too many limitations, the environment is too different, etc. This doesn’t mean that tabletop games are bad, or that we shouldn’t have fun playing them, or that they’re a waste of time or anything like that. Lord knows I’ve spent way, way, way too many hours playing wargames. But recognize them for what they are – a game that broadly emulates some select and curated aspects of small unit warfare in WWII, no more.

I cited the example of a tank platoon commander deciding how to distribute ammo among the tanks in his platoon. That’s a platoon commander’s job at a very basic level – to say, for example, “we’re low on sabot [or whatever], so make sure A23 has at least 10 in the racks.” That’s the sort of thing that is NEVER left up to random chance. But in ASL it is ONLY handled through random chance.

Because, like I said, it takes “things that were crucial decisions for a unit leader and turns them over to dice rolls and random chance.” Distribution of ammo is just an example, and there are many, many more baked into the ASL rules at a foundational level.

And a tank platoon commander would be even more cognizant of where the few “special ammo” shells are distributed within his platoon.

For what it’s worth, I entirely agree that “fog of war” is a necessary part of any wargame that purports to be any sort of simulation. Personally, my solution to this is to play with a referee who limits the information that is available to each player. (I can tell of a really good Vietnam game I played once if you like.) (Often computers are used fill this role in sims, but that’s a different topic.)

I understand that it isn’t always possible to get a third player. But, that said, I think you get a far more interesting game with a referee than you do without.

No, I cited the SU-152 as an example of an AFV with very limited ammo capacity. If it can only carry 21 rounds total, is it realistic for it to fire more if it gets good dice rolls?

quote:

No, I cited the SU-152 as an example of an AFV with very limited ammo capacity. If it can only carry 21 rounds total, is it realistic for it to fire more if it gets good dice rolls?

Cessna posted:

That sort of decision-making lines up with the accounts of WWII carrier warfare I’ve read. In contrast, I’ve NEVER read of an infantry commander saying “don’t take cover in this house, boys, some of you may get killed but there’s a good chance that your Advancing Fire will be worthless!”

Cessna posted:

I'm arguing that a platoon commander who tells their soldiers to stay exposed to enemy fire and avoid available cover to get a slight hypothetical statistical advantage would be either relieved of command or shot from behind.

Major Isoor posted:

Speaking of all the uniform chat recently, can anyone say what colour(s) were worn by Italian tank crews in WW2, preferably in the Italian theatre? (Or at least not Africa. Since it's to go alongside my Alpini)
All I can find are pics of a tanker wearing a blue suit (no idea what period/theatre this is for, or even if it's for an Italian tanker) and references to tan uniforms in Africa, which aren't super helpful to me. I'm not overly concerned about 100% accuracy, but I figure I should probably try to be roughly in the ballpark, if I can help it!

Major Isoor posted:

Oh, thanks for the offer! If you don't mind me asking, what are the books called? I actually wouldn't mind checking em out myself sometime, if they're not super rare

Major Isoor posted:

Speaking of all the uniform chat recently, can anyone say what colour(s) were worn by Italian tank crews in WW2, preferably in the Italian theatre? (Or at least not Africa. Since it's to go alongside my Alpini)
All I can find are pics of a tanker wearing a blue suit (no idea what period/theatre this is for, or even if it's for an Italian tanker) and references to tan uniforms in Africa, which aren't super helpful to me. I'm not overly concerned about 100% accuracy, but I figure I should probably try to be roughly in the ballpark, if I can help it!

LatwPIAT posted:

It's a Semovente L40 di 47/32 with the 47 mm gun replaced by a machine gun and radios.

Major Isoor posted:

Ahhh, yes I see - the L40 Carro Commando is on EasyArmy as a separate vehicle, actually - odd that that's separate from the Semovente 47/32 entry, while the L6/40 CR is rolled into the standard L6/40 as an 'optional extra'. OK then, thanks for that guys! I guess I'll need to get a nice aerial hooked up, when I build one.

Also, I'm loving the emblem changes on those Panthers, Geisladisk!

StashAugustine posted:

Hey I wanna do an IL2- inspired paint job for a sci-fi mini, are there any good guides on how to do their camo patterns that don't involve an airbrush?

StashAugustine posted:

hey just wanted to say thanks for this post!

Ensign Expendable posted:

There were no "photo op only" slogans, if you had them, you're going into battle with them. In addition to your straightforward "For the Motherland" type stuff that was up to an individual unit's discretion, there were also named tanks or tank columns sponsored by individuals or organizations, those had inscriptions determined by the donors. There were dozens of tank columns like these and thousands of tanks, but for every one that's painted up nicely you have ten going into battle with just a tactical number if anything.

spectralent posted:

Everyone keeps complaining about my grey T-34s even though I painted them exactly like the pictures

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Victorious RKKA solves "which Feldgrau is accurate for july of 1942" problem by grinding nazis of all shades into uniform grey.

Tias posted:

Sooo back at painting my OT flame tank, and.. what colour are tracks normally? Track sprockets and chain links? Did they give it all the whitewash/4BO go-over, or would it be more gunmetal?