Back in the "old days" I was quite the "Cold Warrior" insofar as wargaming interests went.
I was eager consumer of NATO v. Warsaw Pact games from the get-go. Most of the miniatures gaming, for example, involved "modern" stuff and I had an extensive collection of modern 1:285 scale GHQ/CinC armor as well as a lot of 1:2400 modern naval. I've been playing Harpoon since the very first Adventure Games edition.
A lot of this was professional interest. I was a company-grade field artillery officer in the 1980s with a tour of duty in Germany and even stateside my National Guard unit's training was always geared towards the NATO contingency.
And one of my favorite game systems for naval warfare was the Fleet series from Victory Games. At one point I had all of them and unlike many of my collections these actually got played a lot. I played campaigns of all the Fleet games and I have to say that it was both enjoyable and informative. Enjoyable because the game was very good from a player's standpoint. While intricate, it wasn't too complicated and it was very skill-based. Informative because it did an excellent job of illustrating the factors affecting naval combat and showing how much technology and geography worked against the Soviets. It was hard for the USSR side to win many campaign games, although many of the non-campaign scenarios were pretty balanced. Once a campaign got going, though, geography worked inexorably against the Soviets. While they might score an occasional success, the Allied forces had both numbers and location on their side. Typically the Soviet subs were hunted down, their surface forces driven back on their bases and their bombers forces attrited.
The end of the Cold War was, of course, a very positive development, but it did pull the rug out from the modern warfare simulation market. This has its ironies. For example, while the U.S. military trained hard for force-on-force heavy combat all through the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, almost all its actual fighting was contingency-style light infantry combat. Since the Cold War ended, on the other hand, the U.S. has fought two armor-heavy wars. Yet there's relatively less interest.
3rd Fleet was the last and most sophisticated of the Fleet series, and it actually didn't see print until after the Berlin Wall came down. In a very short time much of the naval hardware depicted in the game was scrapped. Up until the 1990s numbers were considered critical, so all navies regularly kept ships in service long after their design life. There were some World War II veteran warships still serving in many navies. In 3rd Fleet the U.S. battleship New Jersey and Brazilian destroyer Marcilio Dias were built for World War II, and the older games in the series had many more. Nowadays the U.S. Navy has scrapped and mothballed a large number of relatively new ships. As a matter of fact, some ships that were almost new in 1990 such as the Spruance-class destroyers are already gone as cost-cutting takes priority now.
I kept 3rd Fleet as the best representative of the series and one I might, possibly get to play someday. It has a fair number of smaller scenarios and even its biggest battles are much less ambitious than its sister games. I ended up selling off the rest. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if I never do play it again. While its a good game, time really has passed it by and I don't know anyone I'd even suggest playing it with. It's a relic.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
TCS: Screaming Eagles in Holland
Screaming Eagles in Holland comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 13
Published: 2002
Designer: Nigel Roberts and Bob Runnicles
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Screaming Eagles in Holland specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
22nd-23rd Sept., 1944, Veghel, Holland
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Allied: 101st Airborne Division (partial) and elements of the British XXX Coprs
German: KG Walther (elements 107th Pz Bde, 1st Bn-16th VG Regt., SS KG Frundsberg, 1st Bn-21st FJ) KG Huber (1035 Regt., KG Von der Heydte)
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 19 or so.
Playing time: Up to about 20 hours, according to the box.
The first TCS game published under MMP's logo after The Gamers was sold, Screaming Eagles in Holland provided some evidence that the series would continue after publication of new games became sparse in the new century. In the first 8 years of the system there were 11 titles published. In the last 10 years only three (or four if GD '42 appears soon).
Screaming Eagles in Holland is a pretty straightforward TCS game, with a good mix of all arms and quality troops for the most part on both sides. The Allies have elite paratroops, Sherman tanks and a decent amount of artillery, although a little lighter in size than they're used to (mostly 75mm Pack Howitzers). The Germans also have paratroopers, as well as SS infantry, some regular infantry, '88s', assault guns, Panthers and Panzer IVs. The Allies have a chance for some air support, as do the Germans as a variant, so just about every aspect of the rules comes into play.
The Allies have an edge in command quality, with command prep ratings of 2 or 3, compared to the 3 or 4 of the Germans. In addition the Germans are limited to just seven implemented op sheets (3 for KG Huber and 4 for KG Walther) and the two KG cannot coordinate in any way, representing the problems the Germans had historically in sequencing their attacks. The two German groups were attacking from opposite directions and had no communication with each other. They weren't even in the same corps! The best way to play this game is with at least two German players who are not allowed to communicate with each other.
As so often with TCS games, many of the special rules have to do with terrain considerations peculiar to a specific battlefield. In this case, the dominant characteristic of the area around Veghel was its extreme flatness and wet ground. In an extreme contrast for those who have played Leros, Hunters From the Sky or Semper Fi!, there's just one contour line on the entire map! One small 20 meter-high knoll is the only significant high ground.
In order to prevent unrealistic long-range fire, lines of sight between 0 elevation hexes are caped at a maximum of 10 hexes because in reality there existed numerous small LOS obstructions such as bushes that aren't big enough to rate a terrain symbol but did limit visibility.
Still, some long-range spotting is available, making artilelry and mortars useful. Beside the knoll and many buildings, the countryside is also dotted with windmills and church steeples, which make good observer perches.
The flat ground is waterlogged in many places, restricting cross-country mobility on much of the map, especially for vehicles. This limits the effectiveness of the armor units on both sides considerably, but probably hurts the Germans more because their tanks are better than the Allied armor while much of their infantry is inferior to the U.S. airborne troops.
One interesting side note is that one of the units in the U.S. OB is Co. E, 2nd Bn, 506th Parachute Infantry, which was the topic of the famous book and television miniseries Band of Brothers. The fighting in Holland is in Chapter 8 of the book and Part 5 of the miniseries.
There are just four scenarios in the game, which is about half the usual number. The first is a 77-turn campaign covering the entire battle over two maps. The second concentrates on the second day's fighting on both maps, and so it amounts to a shorter campaign game. The last two are shorter (10-13 turn) one-map fights suitable for an evening's play.
Tactical Combat Series No. 13
Published: 2002
Designer: Nigel Roberts and Bob Runnicles
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Screaming Eagles in Holland specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
22nd-23rd Sept., 1944, Veghel, Holland
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Allied: 101st Airborne Division (partial) and elements of the British XXX Coprs
German: KG Walther (elements 107th Pz Bde, 1st Bn-16th VG Regt., SS KG Frundsberg, 1st Bn-21st FJ) KG Huber (1035 Regt., KG Von der Heydte)
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 19 or so.
Playing time: Up to about 20 hours, according to the box.
The first TCS game published under MMP's logo after The Gamers was sold, Screaming Eagles in Holland provided some evidence that the series would continue after publication of new games became sparse in the new century. In the first 8 years of the system there were 11 titles published. In the last 10 years only three (or four if GD '42 appears soon).
Screaming Eagles in Holland is a pretty straightforward TCS game, with a good mix of all arms and quality troops for the most part on both sides. The Allies have elite paratroops, Sherman tanks and a decent amount of artillery, although a little lighter in size than they're used to (mostly 75mm Pack Howitzers). The Germans also have paratroopers, as well as SS infantry, some regular infantry, '88s', assault guns, Panthers and Panzer IVs. The Allies have a chance for some air support, as do the Germans as a variant, so just about every aspect of the rules comes into play.
The Allies have an edge in command quality, with command prep ratings of 2 or 3, compared to the 3 or 4 of the Germans. In addition the Germans are limited to just seven implemented op sheets (3 for KG Huber and 4 for KG Walther) and the two KG cannot coordinate in any way, representing the problems the Germans had historically in sequencing their attacks. The two German groups were attacking from opposite directions and had no communication with each other. They weren't even in the same corps! The best way to play this game is with at least two German players who are not allowed to communicate with each other.
As so often with TCS games, many of the special rules have to do with terrain considerations peculiar to a specific battlefield. In this case, the dominant characteristic of the area around Veghel was its extreme flatness and wet ground. In an extreme contrast for those who have played Leros, Hunters From the Sky or Semper Fi!, there's just one contour line on the entire map! One small 20 meter-high knoll is the only significant high ground.
In order to prevent unrealistic long-range fire, lines of sight between 0 elevation hexes are caped at a maximum of 10 hexes because in reality there existed numerous small LOS obstructions such as bushes that aren't big enough to rate a terrain symbol but did limit visibility.
Still, some long-range spotting is available, making artilelry and mortars useful. Beside the knoll and many buildings, the countryside is also dotted with windmills and church steeples, which make good observer perches.
The flat ground is waterlogged in many places, restricting cross-country mobility on much of the map, especially for vehicles. This limits the effectiveness of the armor units on both sides considerably, but probably hurts the Germans more because their tanks are better than the Allied armor while much of their infantry is inferior to the U.S. airborne troops.
One interesting side note is that one of the units in the U.S. OB is Co. E, 2nd Bn, 506th Parachute Infantry, which was the topic of the famous book and television miniseries Band of Brothers. The fighting in Holland is in Chapter 8 of the book and Part 5 of the miniseries.
There are just four scenarios in the game, which is about half the usual number. The first is a 77-turn campaign covering the entire battle over two maps. The second concentrates on the second day's fighting on both maps, and so it amounts to a shorter campaign game. The last two are shorter (10-13 turn) one-map fights suitable for an evening's play.
Arabian Nightmare remembered
It's really a sign of how old I'm getting that it occurred to me today that our newest eligible voters this fall were born after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that was the first act in the first Gulf War.
It seems like just yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell, communism collapsed and Saddam Hussein displayed his trademark appalling sense of timing by invading oil-rich Kuwait just as the U.S. was looking for someplace to use its Reagan-buildup-honed Cold War army before paying it off as part of the "Peace Dividend." But it wasn't yesterday, of course, it was 18 years ago this summer.
There are a lot of remarkable aspects to that episode of history, but among them it was the "golden era" of paper wargaming's public influence. Frank Chadwick's Desert Shield Fact Book was on the New York Times' best seller list. Wargame designer and military analyst Jim Dunnigan was a regular on CNN. Other game designers/analysts also appeared on TV and on op ed pages of major newspapers. Wargame publishers rushed a number of games into print to take advantage of the moment, among them Avalon Hill/Victory Games with their updates to Gulf Strike, Omega Games' Desert Victory and TSR's A Line in the Sand.
Perhaps the most notable, however, was Strategy & Tactics and its Arabian Nightmare in issue No. 139. It was literally thrown together on the fly, under the direction of Dunnigan (in his second go-around as S&T editor) and designed by Austin Bay with assists from a nationwide circle of playtesters and experts. The whole thing was coordinated by emails, which might seem rather unremarkable now, but this was quite ground-breaking in 1990.
The end result was not a polished commercial product and competitive wargame, but more like a wargame kit that allowed the general public to get a first-hand look at the military possibilities. This was no small achievement, given the garbage that passed for commentary in newspapers, news magazines and, especially, television. There were plenty of alarmist voices grinding their various political axes with scant regard for the military realities. Pundits predicted tens of thousands of American casualties in a bloodbath against the "battle-hardened" and well-fortified Iraqi army. Indeed, Saddam himself seemed to believe the hype. Had he understood the actual balance of forces he might have saved himself from starting the long sequence of events that led to today's situation in Iraq by arranging for a face-saving exit.
Arabian Nightmare did a very credible job of presenting the likely course of events. A friend and I played out the first few days of the war and according to the game an air campaign would reduce the Iraqi army to impotence in short order and even if it didn't, the Coalition ground forces would run right over them.
It's mostly of interest now as a historical artifact, although it could be used to explore what-ifs about the campaign easily enough. It probably could even be used to look at the 2003 war, although I haven't tried that.
Unfortunately the run-up for the 2003 war didn't enjoy as much attention from wargame designers as it probably should have, although there were some efforts such as Back to Iraq in Command and S&T and Millennium Wars: Iraq. Maybe this was because the war seemed like another forgone conclusion. Certainly the public debate over the war didn't seem well-informed. In particular, there was very little attention given to the question of "what next?" Both Back to Iraq and MW: Iraq only concerned themselves with the first few weeks of fighting, although they did correctly predict the historical outcome.
Ironically, the earlier Gulf War games like Arabian Nightmare, A Line in the Sand and Gulf Strike paid more attention to the political ramifications of that war than any of the more recent games did.
Indeed, despite more than a year of speculation about a possible war with Iran, no wargame designer has tackled that topic in the detail it deserves. An updated Gulf Strike-like treatment of the issue would be quite illuminating. I know that my own wariness about launching a war against Iran is based in part on my memories of how challenging invading that country was for the much more numerous Soviets in the original Gulf Strike. I simply can't see it as doable with the force levels the U.S. could apply.
It would be a public service if one of our knowledgable modern specialists like Joe Miranda or Joe Balkoski would take a swing at the topic.
It seems like just yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell, communism collapsed and Saddam Hussein displayed his trademark appalling sense of timing by invading oil-rich Kuwait just as the U.S. was looking for someplace to use its Reagan-buildup-honed Cold War army before paying it off as part of the "Peace Dividend." But it wasn't yesterday, of course, it was 18 years ago this summer.
There are a lot of remarkable aspects to that episode of history, but among them it was the "golden era" of paper wargaming's public influence. Frank Chadwick's Desert Shield Fact Book was on the New York Times' best seller list. Wargame designer and military analyst Jim Dunnigan was a regular on CNN. Other game designers/analysts also appeared on TV and on op ed pages of major newspapers. Wargame publishers rushed a number of games into print to take advantage of the moment, among them Avalon Hill/Victory Games with their updates to Gulf Strike, Omega Games' Desert Victory and TSR's A Line in the Sand.
Perhaps the most notable, however, was Strategy & Tactics and its Arabian Nightmare in issue No. 139. It was literally thrown together on the fly, under the direction of Dunnigan (in his second go-around as S&T editor) and designed by Austin Bay with assists from a nationwide circle of playtesters and experts. The whole thing was coordinated by emails, which might seem rather unremarkable now, but this was quite ground-breaking in 1990.
The end result was not a polished commercial product and competitive wargame, but more like a wargame kit that allowed the general public to get a first-hand look at the military possibilities. This was no small achievement, given the garbage that passed for commentary in newspapers, news magazines and, especially, television. There were plenty of alarmist voices grinding their various political axes with scant regard for the military realities. Pundits predicted tens of thousands of American casualties in a bloodbath against the "battle-hardened" and well-fortified Iraqi army. Indeed, Saddam himself seemed to believe the hype. Had he understood the actual balance of forces he might have saved himself from starting the long sequence of events that led to today's situation in Iraq by arranging for a face-saving exit.
Arabian Nightmare did a very credible job of presenting the likely course of events. A friend and I played out the first few days of the war and according to the game an air campaign would reduce the Iraqi army to impotence in short order and even if it didn't, the Coalition ground forces would run right over them.
It's mostly of interest now as a historical artifact, although it could be used to explore what-ifs about the campaign easily enough. It probably could even be used to look at the 2003 war, although I haven't tried that.
Unfortunately the run-up for the 2003 war didn't enjoy as much attention from wargame designers as it probably should have, although there were some efforts such as Back to Iraq in Command and S&T and Millennium Wars: Iraq. Maybe this was because the war seemed like another forgone conclusion. Certainly the public debate over the war didn't seem well-informed. In particular, there was very little attention given to the question of "what next?" Both Back to Iraq and MW: Iraq only concerned themselves with the first few weeks of fighting, although they did correctly predict the historical outcome.
Ironically, the earlier Gulf War games like Arabian Nightmare, A Line in the Sand and Gulf Strike paid more attention to the political ramifications of that war than any of the more recent games did.
Indeed, despite more than a year of speculation about a possible war with Iran, no wargame designer has tackled that topic in the detail it deserves. An updated Gulf Strike-like treatment of the issue would be quite illuminating. I know that my own wariness about launching a war against Iran is based in part on my memories of how challenging invading that country was for the much more numerous Soviets in the original Gulf Strike. I simply can't see it as doable with the force levels the U.S. could apply.
It would be a public service if one of our knowledgable modern specialists like Joe Miranda or Joe Balkoski would take a swing at the topic.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
TCS: A Frozen Hell
A Frozen Hell comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 12
Published: 2000Designer: Al Wambold
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
A Frozen Hell specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
8th-12th Dec. 1939, Finland
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Finland: Task Force Pajari, 16th Infantry regiment and several independent battalions
Russian: 139th Infantry Division
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 17 or so.Playing time: Up to about 30 hours, according to the box.
Chronologically the earliest TCS game, A Frozen Hell was the last one published by The Gamers before Dean Essig sold the line to MMP.
The first 11 TCS games appeared in just 8 years, but dissatisfaction over the state of the armor rules prompted delays in a number of proposed titles while playtesters, game designers and series designer Essig debated aspects of what would eventually be known as the 4.x rules set. This ended up taking more than a decade to work out and as of this writing the new rules have still not been officially published.
In the meantime, some projects that didn't involve a lot of armor, especially tank-on-tank, went forward. Among them was A Frozen Hell, which is an unusual TCS title in many respects.
For one thing, it's the only game to abandon the 20-minute daylight, 1-hour nighttime turn length that had used so far. Instead both day and night turns are 30 minutes long. Because, however, the fighting took place in the far north during the dead of winter, the majority of turns are night turns. Most of the remaining turns are twilight or dawn/dusk turns. As a matter of fact there are only 10 full daylight turns per day! What's more, even during those daylight turns there's a significant chance for reduced visibility due to fog, mist or snow. Oh yeah, and the fighting took place under a new moon, to the nighttime visibility is just 1 hex, instead of the usual 2. And most of the map is covered in dense forest and swamp.
What all this means is that the fighting takes on a particularly intimate character, with ranged fire, and especially long-range supporting weapons such as machine guns and mortars playing a much reduced role. There's one battalion of Russian tanks available, but they play a very minor role because of the extremely restrictive terrain and the fact they're not very powerful tanks anyway(more of the ubiquitous T-26).
The Russians have considerably more supporting weapons than the Finns, but it doesn't do them much good given the terrain and weather, so the battle ends up being nearly a pure infantry brawl. The Finns have a significant edge in morale, while the Russians have a small edge in numbers. The Russians do, however, start off more concentrated and are particularly well-led, having a command prep number of 3, which is just slightly worse than the Finnish command prep of 2. The Russians are limited to just three implemented op sheets and no more than three battalions per op sheet, but they're well-advised to keep their troops together in any case.
Special rules cover things such as ski troops (almost all the Finns) artillery fire knocking down trees and knocking holes in the ice, Finnish raids, the talented Finn leader Lt. Col. Pajari and hungry Russians looting Finnish field kitchens.
The Russians have more and bigger guns, but will have a hard time using them effectively. The FO rule seen before in Black Wednesday and GD '41 makes an appearance, although the FOs aren't the usual supermen and can be targeted normally. In many scenarios the Russian guns are forced into direct fire mode anyway.
Two rules of particular note are ambushes and Russian bonfires. Because of the extremely limited visibility that characterized the fighting, defending units won't always get to fire their usual "overwatch" fires and sometimes will even be taken by surprise by the moving units in a special kind of assault combat termed "ambushes" in the rules. Various factors affect the chance of this happening such as the existence of illumination, the types of op sheets involved, weather and similar considerations.
One special factor hindering the Russians are "bonfires." Ill-equipped for the very harsh conditions, the Russians often warmed themselves overnight using bonfires, with rather obvious tactical disadvantages. Russian units not assigned to an op sheet when night falls light a bonfire in their hex, which makes them especially vulnerable to raiding Finns.
As is usual TCS practice, there are a number of scenarios (eight) breaking the fight into discrete portions suitable for playing when space or time limits apply as well as a grand (in this case 99-turn) scenario that depicts the entire battle.
Tactical Combat Series No. 12
Published: 2000Designer: Al Wambold
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
A Frozen Hell specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
8th-12th Dec. 1939, Finland
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Finland: Task Force Pajari, 16th Infantry regiment and several independent battalions
Russian: 139th Infantry Division
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 17 or so.Playing time: Up to about 30 hours, according to the box.
Chronologically the earliest TCS game, A Frozen Hell was the last one published by The Gamers before Dean Essig sold the line to MMP.
The first 11 TCS games appeared in just 8 years, but dissatisfaction over the state of the armor rules prompted delays in a number of proposed titles while playtesters, game designers and series designer Essig debated aspects of what would eventually be known as the 4.x rules set. This ended up taking more than a decade to work out and as of this writing the new rules have still not been officially published.
In the meantime, some projects that didn't involve a lot of armor, especially tank-on-tank, went forward. Among them was A Frozen Hell, which is an unusual TCS title in many respects.
For one thing, it's the only game to abandon the 20-minute daylight, 1-hour nighttime turn length that had used so far. Instead both day and night turns are 30 minutes long. Because, however, the fighting took place in the far north during the dead of winter, the majority of turns are night turns. Most of the remaining turns are twilight or dawn/dusk turns. As a matter of fact there are only 10 full daylight turns per day! What's more, even during those daylight turns there's a significant chance for reduced visibility due to fog, mist or snow. Oh yeah, and the fighting took place under a new moon, to the nighttime visibility is just 1 hex, instead of the usual 2. And most of the map is covered in dense forest and swamp.
What all this means is that the fighting takes on a particularly intimate character, with ranged fire, and especially long-range supporting weapons such as machine guns and mortars playing a much reduced role. There's one battalion of Russian tanks available, but they play a very minor role because of the extremely restrictive terrain and the fact they're not very powerful tanks anyway(more of the ubiquitous T-26).
The Russians have considerably more supporting weapons than the Finns, but it doesn't do them much good given the terrain and weather, so the battle ends up being nearly a pure infantry brawl. The Finns have a significant edge in morale, while the Russians have a small edge in numbers. The Russians do, however, start off more concentrated and are particularly well-led, having a command prep number of 3, which is just slightly worse than the Finnish command prep of 2. The Russians are limited to just three implemented op sheets and no more than three battalions per op sheet, but they're well-advised to keep their troops together in any case.
Special rules cover things such as ski troops (almost all the Finns) artillery fire knocking down trees and knocking holes in the ice, Finnish raids, the talented Finn leader Lt. Col. Pajari and hungry Russians looting Finnish field kitchens.
The Russians have more and bigger guns, but will have a hard time using them effectively. The FO rule seen before in Black Wednesday and GD '41 makes an appearance, although the FOs aren't the usual supermen and can be targeted normally. In many scenarios the Russian guns are forced into direct fire mode anyway.
Two rules of particular note are ambushes and Russian bonfires. Because of the extremely limited visibility that characterized the fighting, defending units won't always get to fire their usual "overwatch" fires and sometimes will even be taken by surprise by the moving units in a special kind of assault combat termed "ambushes" in the rules. Various factors affect the chance of this happening such as the existence of illumination, the types of op sheets involved, weather and similar considerations.
One special factor hindering the Russians are "bonfires." Ill-equipped for the very harsh conditions, the Russians often warmed themselves overnight using bonfires, with rather obvious tactical disadvantages. Russian units not assigned to an op sheet when night falls light a bonfire in their hex, which makes them especially vulnerable to raiding Finns.
As is usual TCS practice, there are a number of scenarios (eight) breaking the fight into discrete portions suitable for playing when space or time limits apply as well as a grand (in this case 99-turn) scenario that depicts the entire battle.
Hasbro sales of games and puzzles
Hasbro is the world's largest game publisher. A look at its annual report shows that sales of games and puzzles has been trending upwards recently, although not by huge amounts.
Compared to its other classes of products, though games are steady sellers.
For example, in 2005 Hasbro sold $1,246,422,000 worth of games and puzzles. This increased to $1,294,110,000 in 2006 and $1,323,641,000 in 2007. These are gains of 3.8% and 2.2%, respectively.
In contrast, sales of Boys' toys actually declined 21% from 721,770,000 in 2005 to $575,841,000 in 2006, before rebounding 78% in 2007 to $1,024,023,000! Girls' toys, Preschool toys and Tweens toys are also subject to wide swings year-to-year based on the appeal of "hot" toys and fads.
Obviously games and puzzles are much less volatile than other categories for Hasbro, providing a steady sales base.
What's also apparent, however, is that games are not a wildly growing sector, either. The company provides no breakdown between games and puzzles, so it's not possible to tell what effect puzzles may have on overall sales, but I suspect puzzles are a very steady part of the business. No one puzzle is likely to take the country by storm and become a big hit, but puzzle lovers probably maintain a steady purchasing pattern over time because a solved puzzle no longer holds much appeal. This is rather different than popular games, which rely in large part on their replayability for their appeal.
This steady growth of game sales ought to provide some comfort to game hobbyists, because it implies that the pastime is holding its own despite the competition from other entertainment forms. On the other hand, there's scant evidence that games are becoming more popular, either.
Compared to its other classes of products, though games are steady sellers.
For example, in 2005 Hasbro sold $1,246,422,000 worth of games and puzzles. This increased to $1,294,110,000 in 2006 and $1,323,641,000 in 2007. These are gains of 3.8% and 2.2%, respectively.
In contrast, sales of Boys' toys actually declined 21% from 721,770,000 in 2005 to $575,841,000 in 2006, before rebounding 78% in 2007 to $1,024,023,000! Girls' toys, Preschool toys and Tweens toys are also subject to wide swings year-to-year based on the appeal of "hot" toys and fads.
Obviously games and puzzles are much less volatile than other categories for Hasbro, providing a steady sales base.
What's also apparent, however, is that games are not a wildly growing sector, either. The company provides no breakdown between games and puzzles, so it's not possible to tell what effect puzzles may have on overall sales, but I suspect puzzles are a very steady part of the business. No one puzzle is likely to take the country by storm and become a big hit, but puzzle lovers probably maintain a steady purchasing pattern over time because a solved puzzle no longer holds much appeal. This is rather different than popular games, which rely in large part on their replayability for their appeal.
This steady growth of game sales ought to provide some comfort to game hobbyists, because it implies that the pastime is holding its own despite the competition from other entertainment forms. On the other hand, there's scant evidence that games are becoming more popular, either.
I wish more opportunities for this existed
One of the neat things Columbia did with the reissue of Wizard Kings is provide opportunities for vanity "counters."
The Gamers did this a while,back as well, although I heard about it too late to take advantage. AH did something along the same lines with the way it named ASL leader counters after playtesters and designers.
It's just plain cool to have.
The Gamers did this a while,back as well, although I heard about it too late to take advantage. AH did something along the same lines with the way it named ASL leader counters after playtesters and designers.It's just plain cool to have.
TCS A Raging Storm
A Raging Storm comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 11
Published: 1997
Designer: Nigel Roberts and Bob Runnicles
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Semper Fi! specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
3rd-4th February, 1944, Anzio beachhead, Italy
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Commonwealth: Elements of the 1st Infantry Division
German: Kampfgruppe Graser (elements of four divisions); KG Pfeiffer (elements of two divisions)
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 25 or so.Playing time: Up to about 50 hours.
A Raging Storm is an intense, large-scale knock-down, drag-out divisional-scale fight.
In a break from the usual TCS pattern this game starts with the 44-turn campaign game and then lists five scenarios detailing various parts of the fight.
Many of the special rules have to do with terrain and map notes. Vehicles are restricted to the road net due to the soggy terrain, which not only limits their avenues of advance but also increases their vulnerability to overwatch fire. So, while there's a good amount of armor available for both sides, it's much less effective than normal.
The Germans have a "Main Line of Resistance" that the British can't cross, basically giving them a safe haven for organizing their offensive. Meanwhile the British are generally limited to "Battalion Defense Areas," a concept first seen in Hunters From The Sky. In this game, however, the BDAs are printed on the map.
BDAs are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they're pretty restrictive. The Germans know exactly where they are and the British are forced into defending more or less in the historical positions. On the other hand, BDAs are more flexible than the usual prepared or hasty defense op sheets would be. British units within their BDA can move and fight freely, which lets them conduct a more active defense than usual.
While the Germans have some rules helping them out, such as an initial infiltration move, they do not have their usual edge in quality. In fact, on average the British troops have a slight edge in morale.
Both sides have plenty of guns and the British also have plentiful ammunition as well.
Overall, this will be a bloody, intense battle over the course of a single day. It's a feast for TCS fans, but probably not a good place to start for newer players.
Tactical Combat Series No. 11
Published: 1997
Designer: Nigel Roberts and Bob Runnicles
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Semper Fi! specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
3rd-4th February, 1944, Anzio beachhead, Italy
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Commonwealth: Elements of the 1st Infantry Division
German: Kampfgruppe Graser (elements of four divisions); KG Pfeiffer (elements of two divisions)
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 25 or so.Playing time: Up to about 50 hours.
A Raging Storm is an intense, large-scale knock-down, drag-out divisional-scale fight.
In a break from the usual TCS pattern this game starts with the 44-turn campaign game and then lists five scenarios detailing various parts of the fight.
Many of the special rules have to do with terrain and map notes. Vehicles are restricted to the road net due to the soggy terrain, which not only limits their avenues of advance but also increases their vulnerability to overwatch fire. So, while there's a good amount of armor available for both sides, it's much less effective than normal.
The Germans have a "Main Line of Resistance" that the British can't cross, basically giving them a safe haven for organizing their offensive. Meanwhile the British are generally limited to "Battalion Defense Areas," a concept first seen in Hunters From The Sky. In this game, however, the BDAs are printed on the map.
BDAs are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they're pretty restrictive. The Germans know exactly where they are and the British are forced into defending more or less in the historical positions. On the other hand, BDAs are more flexible than the usual prepared or hasty defense op sheets would be. British units within their BDA can move and fight freely, which lets them conduct a more active defense than usual.
While the Germans have some rules helping them out, such as an initial infiltration move, they do not have their usual edge in quality. In fact, on average the British troops have a slight edge in morale.
Both sides have plenty of guns and the British also have plentiful ammunition as well.
Overall, this will be a bloody, intense battle over the course of a single day. It's a feast for TCS fans, but probably not a good place to start for newer players.
Monday, April 21, 2008
TCS: Semper Fi! review
Semper Fi! comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 10
Published: 1997
Designer: Lee Forester
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Semper Fi! specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
17th-18th Aug., 1950; 18th-20th Nov., 1950; 28th Nov.- 1st Dec. 1950 Korea
Four small maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:United States: Elements of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and elements of the 1st Marine Division
Communist: Elements of the 4th and 6th Divisions, North Korean People's Army and elements of the 58th, 59th and 80th Divisions of the Chinese Volunteer Army.
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: From less than 1 to up to about 15 or so.
Playing time: From one hour for the smallest to about 20 hours.
In the earliest TCS games there were usually a half-dozen "training" scenarios that depicted small company/battalion-sized firefights that allowed the players to learn aspects of the game system before they tackled the full-blown regular scenarios, but that handy tool was abandoned as the series went on. Most of the games did make sure to include one or two smaller scenarios among their number, but for the most part the trend was towards larger and more involved battles.
Semper Fi! was apparently conceived as a way to introduce new players to the TCS system by concentrating on smaller fights. In some cases one or both sides have just a company or battalion's worth of troops and even the largest scenario would be no more than medium sized in the typical system game.
Unlike other games in the series, Semper Fi! does not depict one continuous action, but instead a series of separate battles, so there's no overall campaign game. Some of the battles were, however, linked and there is a chance for a mini-campaign game linking some scenarios.
Semper Fi! is the only TCS game to date (aside from Force Eagles War, which is considered part of a separate series) to take place outside World War II and related conflicts, but tactically the Korean War was very much a World War II-era conflict. Nearly all the weapons and tactics were the same as World War II and nearly every leader above the company level in both armies would have had extensive World War II experience.
Despite this, Semper Fi! does include more than the usual number of special rules.
The game continues listing the Infantry guns and ATGs as "Special B" targets that are usually area targets for most fire. Weapons units use the integral "nominal" trucks that have become the defacto system standard. On-Map artillery is modified somewhat and a new streamlined "assault combat routine is introduced.
There are special rules to take account of Korea-specific conditions such as Heat Exhaustion in one battle, the dedicated Marine air support in a couple of battles and the special morale characteristics of U.S. Marines in all the battles.
A number of smaller, specialized infantry units such as bazooka teams and headquarters squads appear.
The Communists, in contrast, have few special rules. Both North Korean and Chinese units have a morale benefit for night combat and a disadvantage in anti-tank combat. Communist mortars are off map and restricted in the amount of fire support they can provide due to ammo shortages and counter battery fire.
Chinese units "benefit" from political officers who can cancel a suppressed result at the cost of a step.
The Communists do benefit from a rule providing a special status of "hidden" available to units at set up that do not move. Distinct from the usual spotting rules, "hidden" units cannot be attacked until they get revealed by firing, moving or being adjacent to U.S. units. This rule is critical to the Communists to allow them to survive the U.S. firepower advantage. It prevents the Marines from simply sitting back and picking off Communist units with Corsairs or artillery barrages at leisure.
All the scenarios are short enough that players will probably only have a chance to execute their initial op sheet, although there's some chance the Marines might have a chance to draw up and implement a new op sheet occasionally.
Two scenarios take place on the Changallon Valley Map, a 20 by 27-hex battlefield of steep hills overlooking a very soggy rice-paddy filled valley. In the first scenario, which doesn't use the command rules, a few platoons of North Korean infantry ambush a Marine column with two infantry companies, battalion headquarters troops, a recon section in jeeps and a platoon of tanks with artillery and air support. In the second scenario one of the Marine companies fends off a night attack by a company of North Koreans. This scenario does use op sheets, but there will be just one per side and with just five turns no opportunity for a change.
Three scenarios take place on the 16 by 18-hex No-Name Ridge map, with features a rice-paddy encircled ridge with a few nearby hills. The first scenario covers a morning attack on the ridge, held by a reinforced battalion of North Korean infantry, by an understrength battalion of Marines. The second scenario continues the action with an afternoon attack by a second battalion of Marines while the third scenario covers the whole day's fighting. This third scenario provides the only opportunity for any tank-on-tank action in Semper Fi!, with a platoon of M-26 Pershing tanks possibly engaging some T-34/85s and/or Su-76s.
Three more scenarios cover the saga of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines as it defends "Fox Hill" on the 16 by 18-hex Fox Hill map. The first scenario depicts the first night's fighting, as Fox Company faced a two-company attack by Chicoms. Variants add more Chinese, change the weather or add artillery support. This is my favorite scenario in the game system for teaching because there are many tools available for adjusting the play balance. For example, the game can be played with up to two whole battalions of Chinese attacking during a snow storm to provide a real challenge for an experienced U.S. player against a novice. On the other hand, the veteran Chinese player can try to take the hill with just the original two companies of infantry while giving the novice U.S. a battery of 105 mm howitzers in support. The second scenario depicts the second night's attack on the weakened Fox Company, which does, however, have artillery support. Like the first night's attack the Chinese historically didn't come in full strength, with just two companies. A variant adds the balance of that battalion for a greater challenge. The third scenario links both night's attacks, while adding the possibility of a third night. This makes a nice little campaign game, playable in an evening.
The Hagaru map is the setting for the final five scenarios. At 30 by 35 hexes, this is the largest battlefield and the OB is also, by far, the most extensive. The scenarios cover several nights of fighting around the airfield at Hagaru. The terrain is mostly flat, snow-covered open ground, except for a steep hill overlooking the airfield and the flattened town of Hagaru. Each historical night's fighting is covered, as well as one hypothetical. The U.S. forces are an eclectic mix of Marine combat and support troops, Army units and even some British commandos. Although not depicted explicitly, many of the "American" units include large numbers of Korean draftees as well. In contrast to the hodge-podge of U.N. troops, the Chinese forces are numerous and homogeneous. Depending on the scenario, the Chinese attack with one to three regiments of infantry, each having 30 platoons of infantry, nine "weapons" (light mortar) sections and nine machine guns sections. The only support they have are some off-board mortar fire and, occasionally, a few infantry guns.
The scenarios on the Hagaru map are fairly big, but each covers just a single night's worth of fighting. As night turns are an hour each, instead of the usual 20 minutes and winter nights are long, they end up being no more than 11 turns long, so even these scenarios are relatively small by TCS standards and can probably be played to completion in an evening.
Compared to most games in the series, Semper Fi! had an unusual amount of errata, some of which definitely affects play and players should be sure to download it.
Semper Fi! is one of my favorites in the system. Getting together for one of the larger games can be difficult and usually they require multiple sitting to complete so someone needs to have the space to leave the game set up. Semper Fi1 scenarios, on the other hand, can always be played in a single evening, especially if players take the time to draw up their op sheets before hand.
Tactical Combat Series No. 10
Published: 1997
Designer: Lee Forester
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Semper Fi! specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
17th-18th Aug., 1950; 18th-20th Nov., 1950; 28th Nov.- 1st Dec. 1950 Korea
Four small maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:United States: Elements of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and elements of the 1st Marine Division
Communist: Elements of the 4th and 6th Divisions, North Korean People's Army and elements of the 58th, 59th and 80th Divisions of the Chinese Volunteer Army.
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: From less than 1 to up to about 15 or so.
Playing time: From one hour for the smallest to about 20 hours.
In the earliest TCS games there were usually a half-dozen "training" scenarios that depicted small company/battalion-sized firefights that allowed the players to learn aspects of the game system before they tackled the full-blown regular scenarios, but that handy tool was abandoned as the series went on. Most of the games did make sure to include one or two smaller scenarios among their number, but for the most part the trend was towards larger and more involved battles.
Semper Fi! was apparently conceived as a way to introduce new players to the TCS system by concentrating on smaller fights. In some cases one or both sides have just a company or battalion's worth of troops and even the largest scenario would be no more than medium sized in the typical system game.
Unlike other games in the series, Semper Fi! does not depict one continuous action, but instead a series of separate battles, so there's no overall campaign game. Some of the battles were, however, linked and there is a chance for a mini-campaign game linking some scenarios.
Semper Fi! is the only TCS game to date (aside from Force Eagles War, which is considered part of a separate series) to take place outside World War II and related conflicts, but tactically the Korean War was very much a World War II-era conflict. Nearly all the weapons and tactics were the same as World War II and nearly every leader above the company level in both armies would have had extensive World War II experience.
Despite this, Semper Fi! does include more than the usual number of special rules.
The game continues listing the Infantry guns and ATGs as "Special B" targets that are usually area targets for most fire. Weapons units use the integral "nominal" trucks that have become the defacto system standard. On-Map artillery is modified somewhat and a new streamlined "assault combat routine is introduced.
There are special rules to take account of Korea-specific conditions such as Heat Exhaustion in one battle, the dedicated Marine air support in a couple of battles and the special morale characteristics of U.S. Marines in all the battles.
A number of smaller, specialized infantry units such as bazooka teams and headquarters squads appear.
The Communists, in contrast, have few special rules. Both North Korean and Chinese units have a morale benefit for night combat and a disadvantage in anti-tank combat. Communist mortars are off map and restricted in the amount of fire support they can provide due to ammo shortages and counter battery fire.
Chinese units "benefit" from political officers who can cancel a suppressed result at the cost of a step.
The Communists do benefit from a rule providing a special status of "hidden" available to units at set up that do not move. Distinct from the usual spotting rules, "hidden" units cannot be attacked until they get revealed by firing, moving or being adjacent to U.S. units. This rule is critical to the Communists to allow them to survive the U.S. firepower advantage. It prevents the Marines from simply sitting back and picking off Communist units with Corsairs or artillery barrages at leisure.
All the scenarios are short enough that players will probably only have a chance to execute their initial op sheet, although there's some chance the Marines might have a chance to draw up and implement a new op sheet occasionally.
Two scenarios take place on the Changallon Valley Map, a 20 by 27-hex battlefield of steep hills overlooking a very soggy rice-paddy filled valley. In the first scenario, which doesn't use the command rules, a few platoons of North Korean infantry ambush a Marine column with two infantry companies, battalion headquarters troops, a recon section in jeeps and a platoon of tanks with artillery and air support. In the second scenario one of the Marine companies fends off a night attack by a company of North Koreans. This scenario does use op sheets, but there will be just one per side and with just five turns no opportunity for a change.
Three scenarios take place on the 16 by 18-hex No-Name Ridge map, with features a rice-paddy encircled ridge with a few nearby hills. The first scenario covers a morning attack on the ridge, held by a reinforced battalion of North Korean infantry, by an understrength battalion of Marines. The second scenario continues the action with an afternoon attack by a second battalion of Marines while the third scenario covers the whole day's fighting. This third scenario provides the only opportunity for any tank-on-tank action in Semper Fi!, with a platoon of M-26 Pershing tanks possibly engaging some T-34/85s and/or Su-76s.
Three more scenarios cover the saga of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines as it defends "Fox Hill" on the 16 by 18-hex Fox Hill map. The first scenario depicts the first night's fighting, as Fox Company faced a two-company attack by Chicoms. Variants add more Chinese, change the weather or add artillery support. This is my favorite scenario in the game system for teaching because there are many tools available for adjusting the play balance. For example, the game can be played with up to two whole battalions of Chinese attacking during a snow storm to provide a real challenge for an experienced U.S. player against a novice. On the other hand, the veteran Chinese player can try to take the hill with just the original two companies of infantry while giving the novice U.S. a battery of 105 mm howitzers in support. The second scenario depicts the second night's attack on the weakened Fox Company, which does, however, have artillery support. Like the first night's attack the Chinese historically didn't come in full strength, with just two companies. A variant adds the balance of that battalion for a greater challenge. The third scenario links both night's attacks, while adding the possibility of a third night. This makes a nice little campaign game, playable in an evening.
The Hagaru map is the setting for the final five scenarios. At 30 by 35 hexes, this is the largest battlefield and the OB is also, by far, the most extensive. The scenarios cover several nights of fighting around the airfield at Hagaru. The terrain is mostly flat, snow-covered open ground, except for a steep hill overlooking the airfield and the flattened town of Hagaru. Each historical night's fighting is covered, as well as one hypothetical. The U.S. forces are an eclectic mix of Marine combat and support troops, Army units and even some British commandos. Although not depicted explicitly, many of the "American" units include large numbers of Korean draftees as well. In contrast to the hodge-podge of U.N. troops, the Chinese forces are numerous and homogeneous. Depending on the scenario, the Chinese attack with one to three regiments of infantry, each having 30 platoons of infantry, nine "weapons" (light mortar) sections and nine machine guns sections. The only support they have are some off-board mortar fire and, occasionally, a few infantry guns.
The scenarios on the Hagaru map are fairly big, but each covers just a single night's worth of fighting. As night turns are an hour each, instead of the usual 20 minutes and winter nights are long, they end up being no more than 11 turns long, so even these scenarios are relatively small by TCS standards and can probably be played to completion in an evening.
Compared to most games in the series, Semper Fi! had an unusual amount of errata, some of which definitely affects play and players should be sure to download it.
Semper Fi! is one of my favorites in the system. Getting together for one of the larger games can be difficult and usually they require multiple sitting to complete so someone needs to have the space to leave the game set up. Semper Fi1 scenarios, on the other hand, can always be played in a single evening, especially if players take the time to draw up their op sheets before hand.
Friday, April 18, 2008
TCS GD '41 review
GD '41 comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 9
Published: 1996
Designer: Wig Graves
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
GD '41 specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
22nd-25th October, 1941. South of Tula, Russia
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Russia: 6th Guards Rifle Division, part, 4th and 11th tank Brigades, 1st Bn, 201st Parachute Brigade
German: Grossdeutschland Motorized Infantry Regiment, elements of 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 20 or so. Playing time: Up to 40 hours, according to the box.
GD '41 continues the TCS saga of the Grossdeutschland Regiment that started in GD '40. The goal is to depict one battle from each year of the war from the perspective of this elite German army unit.
GD '41 may be the epitome of what the TCS system should cover, a combined arms battle with a good mix of armor, infantry and artillery between two roughly equal forces with some real choices between strategies.
This iteration of the TCS system has very few special rules, the standard 3.1 rules being sufficient to cover most eventualities.
Most of the special rules cover peculiarities of the Russian forces, including "encouraging" commissars, battalion-sized artillery shoots, physical forward observers, restrictions on tank fires, "bunching up" and limits on the number of op sheets available. Most of these rules already appeared in the earlier Black Wednesday game.
Heavy weapons are transported using inherent trucks, wagons or halftracks in a rule becoming standard fare in TCS. Also making an appearance are two new "standard rules" refining infantry guns ability to fire at point targets in some situations and making infantry and ATG "special B" targets that are usually affected by fire as area targets except in certain circumstances.
The five scenarios follow the by-now well-established TCS routine of breaking the historical battle up into discrete phases by location or time in order to accommodate players with time or space limits as well as an overall campaign. There's also a "prequel" scenario that covers the fighting before the Grossdeutschland Regiment appeared, which mostly provides a chance for the Russians to have some fun blunting a too-hasty German attack.
As usual, the Russian side is probably the more challenging to play. The Russian player is limited to just one implemented op sheet per brigade/regiment which means that he doesn't have a lot of flexibility and his five formations (4th Gd. Regt., 10th Gd. Regt., 1-201st Para, 4th Tank and 11th Tank) can't cooperate on the battlefield. In addition, the tank brigades are committed piecemeal by die roll. On the other hand, the burden of attack is on the Germans, the Russians are well-fortified and their tanks are as good as the German ones or better.
The Germans do have an important firepower advantage with more and more flexible guns and plentiful air support. The German advantage in command should give them a sufficient edge.
As usual with TCS, players who are looking for a balanced or "fair" fight are likely to find the game wanting, but for players interested in the dynamics of World War II battlefield tactics GD '41 is another good choice.
Tactical Combat Series No. 9
Published: 1996
Designer: Wig Graves
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
GD '41 specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
22nd-25th October, 1941. South of Tula, Russia
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Russia: 6th Guards Rifle Division, part, 4th and 11th tank Brigades, 1st Bn, 201st Parachute Brigade
German: Grossdeutschland Motorized Infantry Regiment, elements of 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 20 or so. Playing time: Up to 40 hours, according to the box.
GD '41 continues the TCS saga of the Grossdeutschland Regiment that started in GD '40. The goal is to depict one battle from each year of the war from the perspective of this elite German army unit.
GD '41 may be the epitome of what the TCS system should cover, a combined arms battle with a good mix of armor, infantry and artillery between two roughly equal forces with some real choices between strategies.
This iteration of the TCS system has very few special rules, the standard 3.1 rules being sufficient to cover most eventualities.
Most of the special rules cover peculiarities of the Russian forces, including "encouraging" commissars, battalion-sized artillery shoots, physical forward observers, restrictions on tank fires, "bunching up" and limits on the number of op sheets available. Most of these rules already appeared in the earlier Black Wednesday game.
Heavy weapons are transported using inherent trucks, wagons or halftracks in a rule becoming standard fare in TCS. Also making an appearance are two new "standard rules" refining infantry guns ability to fire at point targets in some situations and making infantry and ATG "special B" targets that are usually affected by fire as area targets except in certain circumstances.
The five scenarios follow the by-now well-established TCS routine of breaking the historical battle up into discrete phases by location or time in order to accommodate players with time or space limits as well as an overall campaign. There's also a "prequel" scenario that covers the fighting before the Grossdeutschland Regiment appeared, which mostly provides a chance for the Russians to have some fun blunting a too-hasty German attack.
As usual, the Russian side is probably the more challenging to play. The Russian player is limited to just one implemented op sheet per brigade/regiment which means that he doesn't have a lot of flexibility and his five formations (4th Gd. Regt., 10th Gd. Regt., 1-201st Para, 4th Tank and 11th Tank) can't cooperate on the battlefield. In addition, the tank brigades are committed piecemeal by die roll. On the other hand, the burden of attack is on the Germans, the Russians are well-fortified and their tanks are as good as the German ones or better.
The Germans do have an important firepower advantage with more and more flexible guns and plentiful air support. The German advantage in command should give them a sufficient edge.
As usual with TCS, players who are looking for a balanced or "fair" fight are likely to find the game wanting, but for players interested in the dynamics of World War II battlefield tactics GD '41 is another good choice.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
TCS Leros
Leros comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 8
Published: 1995
Designer: David Friedrichs
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Leros specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
12th-17th, 1943, the island of Leros, Greece
Three full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Commonwealth: 234th Infantry Brigade, reinforced; Italian coastal artillery
German: Kampfgruppe Mueller with elements from the 22d Air Landing Division, Brandenburg Division, 1st Bn, 2nd Parachute Regt., 2nd Bn 22nd LW Field Regt. and 3rd Bn, 440th Infantry Regt.
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 8 or so.
Playing time: Up to 120 hours, according to the box
The Tactical Combat Series seemed to have an affinity for invasion games in its earlier days. Even Matanikau featured a scenario with Marines coming ashore in Higgins boats. In Omaha the invaders came by sea, in Hunters From the Sky the invaders came by air. And in Leros, they come by both.
Leros uses the same airlanding system as Hunters and its own naval transport and landing system, although it has similarities to Omaha. Most of the game's special rules revolve around getting to the island, although a few also deal with a few minor aspects of the island battle.
Leros presents an interesting situation because the invaders do not have a significant numerical advantage over the defenders, nor a huge edge in quality.
The main things the Germans do have going for them is the sheer size of the island and their uncontested air supremacy.
The island, while small in an absolute sense (just a few miles from end to end) is still relatively large for a defending force that only amounts to three battalions at start. The Germans can land literally anywhere, although some beaches are clearly better than others. A few places are too well covered by Italian coastal guns to be practical, but Germans willing to brave some losses have more options than the British defenders can cover.
The classic solution to the British problem would be a mobile defense, but this is where the second German advantage comes in. Every turn there will be German aircraft overhead, making movement around the island very difficult for the British.
Historically the battle was very hard-fought and evenly balanced, but ended in a British defeat that Winston Churchill thought very humiliating so late in the war.
As was becoming the typical TCS pattern, the game provides multiple scenarios depicting various parts of the battle limited by area or time as well as a campaign game that can use any of the three-map scenarios as a starting point. While the forces involved are not large by TCS standards, the number of turns can be heroic, up to 275, so this is still a pretty big game when played as a campaign. There is one small, one-map, 4-turn scenario involving about a dozen German company-sized units against about 8 companies worth of British that is the best bet for an evening's play.
A few minor variants add some additional Allied forces such as a high-quality company of Greek commandos and a low-quality battalion of Italian garrison troops. There's even a chance for some British air support if the British player is feeling too persecuted by the Luftwaffe.
The British command wasn't very effective and this is reflected with a rather below-average prep rating of 5 and a restriction of no more than 6 implemented op sheets, which is a very unusual restriction for a non-Russian army in TCS. They also don't get the usual staff modifier.
On very important errata clarifies that Italian coastal guns only get to fire at one beach zone per turn. The published rule directly contradicts itself within six sentences, which is an embarrassing oversight. Still, it's worth noting that the amount of errata in the TCS line is generally fairly limited by wargame standards and rarely critical.
There's probably no TCS game where vehicles play a smaller role than in Leros. Even in Matanikau, which was set in the jungles of Guadalcanal, there were some tanks and half-tracks. In Leros the only "fighting" vehicles are some unarmored flak halftracks the Germans can lug to the island. And some of the heavy weapons on both sides have integral "nominal trucks" to move them around. That's it.
Both sides have a lot of different ways to approach the battle and it's unlikely players will exhaust all the possibilities, so this game has high replayability.
Tactical Combat Series No. 8
Published: 1995
Designer: David Friedrichs
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.
Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.
As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.
On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.
Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules, currently 3.1.
Leros specifics:
Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
12th-17th, 1943, the island of Leros, Greece
Three full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons.
Opposing Sides:
Commonwealth: 234th Infantry Brigade, reinforced; Italian coastal artillery
German: Kampfgruppe Mueller with elements from the 22d Air Landing Division, Brandenburg Division, 1st Bn, 2nd Parachute Regt., 2nd Bn 22nd LW Field Regt. and 3rd Bn, 440th Infantry Regt.
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 8 or so.
Playing time: Up to 120 hours, according to the box
The Tactical Combat Series seemed to have an affinity for invasion games in its earlier days. Even Matanikau featured a scenario with Marines coming ashore in Higgins boats. In Omaha the invaders came by sea, in Hunters From the Sky the invaders came by air. And in Leros, they come by both.
Leros uses the same airlanding system as Hunters and its own naval transport and landing system, although it has similarities to Omaha. Most of the game's special rules revolve around getting to the island, although a few also deal with a few minor aspects of the island battle.
Leros presents an interesting situation because the invaders do not have a significant numerical advantage over the defenders, nor a huge edge in quality.
The main things the Germans do have going for them is the sheer size of the island and their uncontested air supremacy.
The island, while small in an absolute sense (just a few miles from end to end) is still relatively large for a defending force that only amounts to three battalions at start. The Germans can land literally anywhere, although some beaches are clearly better than others. A few places are too well covered by Italian coastal guns to be practical, but Germans willing to brave some losses have more options than the British defenders can cover.
The classic solution to the British problem would be a mobile defense, but this is where the second German advantage comes in. Every turn there will be German aircraft overhead, making movement around the island very difficult for the British.
Historically the battle was very hard-fought and evenly balanced, but ended in a British defeat that Winston Churchill thought very humiliating so late in the war.
As was becoming the typical TCS pattern, the game provides multiple scenarios depicting various parts of the battle limited by area or time as well as a campaign game that can use any of the three-map scenarios as a starting point. While the forces involved are not large by TCS standards, the number of turns can be heroic, up to 275, so this is still a pretty big game when played as a campaign. There is one small, one-map, 4-turn scenario involving about a dozen German company-sized units against about 8 companies worth of British that is the best bet for an evening's play.
A few minor variants add some additional Allied forces such as a high-quality company of Greek commandos and a low-quality battalion of Italian garrison troops. There's even a chance for some British air support if the British player is feeling too persecuted by the Luftwaffe.
The British command wasn't very effective and this is reflected with a rather below-average prep rating of 5 and a restriction of no more than 6 implemented op sheets, which is a very unusual restriction for a non-Russian army in TCS. They also don't get the usual staff modifier.
On very important errata clarifies that Italian coastal guns only get to fire at one beach zone per turn. The published rule directly contradicts itself within six sentences, which is an embarrassing oversight. Still, it's worth noting that the amount of errata in the TCS line is generally fairly limited by wargame standards and rarely critical.
There's probably no TCS game where vehicles play a smaller role than in Leros. Even in Matanikau, which was set in the jungles of Guadalcanal, there were some tanks and half-tracks. In Leros the only "fighting" vehicles are some unarmored flak halftracks the Germans can lug to the island. And some of the heavy weapons on both sides have integral "nominal trucks" to move them around. That's it.
Both sides have a lot of different ways to approach the battle and it's unlikely players will exhaust all the possibilities, so this game has high replayability.
TCS Black Wednesday
Black Wednesday comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 7
Published: 1995
Designer: David Friedrichs
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns.
Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules.
Black Wednesday specifics:
Rules: Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
Feb. 10th-11th, 1943, Kranis Bor, Russia, near Leningrad
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons. These are termed "Enhanced" TCS counters in the rules.
Opposing Sides:
Russians: 63rd Guards Rifle Division, 72nd Rifle Division, 708th Rifle Regiment, Red Banner Tank Brigade, independent tank battalion.
Axis: 250th (Spanish Blue) Infantry Division elements, German regimental-sized Kamfgruppe Heckel
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 34 or so.
Playing time: Up to 50 hours, according to the box
While not the first game with the final 3.1 version of the TCS rules. Black Wednesday was the first to really take advantage of the streamlined features of that update. In particular, its hard to see how the older artillery rules would have worked with this game, as the number of guns involved is truly massive. The Axis alone have 16 batteries available. The Russian have no less than 12 battalions of artillery, not counting another dozen battalions of guns and rockets firing the preparatory barrage!
Likewise it's fortunate that morale is tracked at the battalion level in 3.1 instead of the company level of earlier versions, otherwise there's be more than a hundred company morale boxes.
This is a massive infantry battle, a corps-sized frontal assault into a fortified line. The Russians have 63 tanks available, but terrain and command restrictions will limit their effectiveness, even though they're mostly good tanks (T-34s and KV-1s). The Spanish have no tanks, but there's a chance of a few German AFV arriving as reinforcements, so this is truly an infantry/artillery fight.
There are a fair number of special rules covering various OB, terrain and doctrinal issues.
The bulk of the special rules deal with the Russian preparatory barrage which can either follow the historical schedule or one drawn up by the player before the game. In either case the prep must be fired, must be fired on schedule and woe to the Russian that get in the way by accident. The Spanish will need every advantage of the on-map fortifications to survive.
One notable restiction the Russians labor under is a strict limit on the number of op sheets in play. Normally, in TCS op sheets can comprise units of any size, although the game system rewards op sheets that include at least one whole battalion. The Spanish/German player will, for example, generally organize his op sheets by battalion. The Russians, in contrast, are limited to just one op sheet per division. This means they can have just three implemented op sheets and three non-implemented (op sheets being readied) at a time. In addition, they can have a separate op sheet for the tank units, if they're not included on a divisional sheet.
Besides the obvious inflexibility involved in having the whole division operating on one op sheet, the Russians have further disadvantages. For any divisional op sheets implemented during the battle (in other words, any after the initial one in place at the start of the game), the actual implementaion is battalion by battlion, controlled by die rolls.
A further implication of this rule is that failure is simply not an option for the Russians. Executing the failure instructions for a whole division or any large part of one will doom the whole Russian effort. There isn't time to start all over.
Some other interesting rules include forward observers for the Russian artillery, commissars who can "encourage" units to ignore suppression results (at the cost of a step) and "bunching" which requirs the Russians to stick together.The wording of the bunching rule illustrates the proper frame of mind that TCS players need. "Bunching is meant to be a guideline, not a hard and fast 'do this or suffer' rule. ... If you find that you are already looking for ways to circumvent it -- save yourself the trouble and play without it."TCS is not a game system for rules lawyering.
As usual, the game includes multiple scenarios depicting various phases and incidents in the battle, limiting the scope in area or time to provide digestable portions for two players. Any of the two-map scenarios can also form the basis for a campaign game. There's also a hypothetical scenario depicting a German counterattack to retake Krasni Bor.
Black Wednesday is massive game, probably best played a group project, although it is playable by two players with patience and space to leave the game set up.
Tactical Combat Series No. 7
Published: 1995
Designer: David Friedrichs
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns.
Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules.
Black Wednesday specifics:
Rules: Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
Feb. 10th-11th, 1943, Kranis Bor, Russia, near Leningrad
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV, weapons and troops are all are full color icons. These are termed "Enhanced" TCS counters in the rules.
Opposing Sides:
Russians: 63rd Guards Rifle Division, 72nd Rifle Division, 708th Rifle Regiment, Red Banner Tank Brigade, independent tank battalion.
Axis: 250th (Spanish Blue) Infantry Division elements, German regimental-sized Kamfgruppe Heckel
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 34 or so.
Playing time: Up to 50 hours, according to the box
While not the first game with the final 3.1 version of the TCS rules. Black Wednesday was the first to really take advantage of the streamlined features of that update. In particular, its hard to see how the older artillery rules would have worked with this game, as the number of guns involved is truly massive. The Axis alone have 16 batteries available. The Russian have no less than 12 battalions of artillery, not counting another dozen battalions of guns and rockets firing the preparatory barrage!
Likewise it's fortunate that morale is tracked at the battalion level in 3.1 instead of the company level of earlier versions, otherwise there's be more than a hundred company morale boxes.
This is a massive infantry battle, a corps-sized frontal assault into a fortified line. The Russians have 63 tanks available, but terrain and command restrictions will limit their effectiveness, even though they're mostly good tanks (T-34s and KV-1s). The Spanish have no tanks, but there's a chance of a few German AFV arriving as reinforcements, so this is truly an infantry/artillery fight.
There are a fair number of special rules covering various OB, terrain and doctrinal issues.
The bulk of the special rules deal with the Russian preparatory barrage which can either follow the historical schedule or one drawn up by the player before the game. In either case the prep must be fired, must be fired on schedule and woe to the Russian that get in the way by accident. The Spanish will need every advantage of the on-map fortifications to survive.
One notable restiction the Russians labor under is a strict limit on the number of op sheets in play. Normally, in TCS op sheets can comprise units of any size, although the game system rewards op sheets that include at least one whole battalion. The Spanish/German player will, for example, generally organize his op sheets by battalion. The Russians, in contrast, are limited to just one op sheet per division. This means they can have just three implemented op sheets and three non-implemented (op sheets being readied) at a time. In addition, they can have a separate op sheet for the tank units, if they're not included on a divisional sheet.
Besides the obvious inflexibility involved in having the whole division operating on one op sheet, the Russians have further disadvantages. For any divisional op sheets implemented during the battle (in other words, any after the initial one in place at the start of the game), the actual implementaion is battalion by battlion, controlled by die rolls.
A further implication of this rule is that failure is simply not an option for the Russians. Executing the failure instructions for a whole division or any large part of one will doom the whole Russian effort. There isn't time to start all over.
Some other interesting rules include forward observers for the Russian artillery, commissars who can "encourage" units to ignore suppression results (at the cost of a step) and "bunching" which requirs the Russians to stick together.The wording of the bunching rule illustrates the proper frame of mind that TCS players need. "Bunching is meant to be a guideline, not a hard and fast 'do this or suffer' rule. ... If you find that you are already looking for ways to circumvent it -- save yourself the trouble and play without it."TCS is not a game system for rules lawyering.
As usual, the game includes multiple scenarios depicting various phases and incidents in the battle, limiting the scope in area or time to provide digestable portions for two players. Any of the two-map scenarios can also form the basis for a campaign game. There's also a hypothetical scenario depicting a German counterattack to retake Krasni Bor.
Black Wednesday is massive game, probably best played a group project, although it is playable by two players with patience and space to leave the game set up.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
TCS Hunters From the Sky
Hunters From The Sky comprehensive review
Tactical Combat Series No. 6
Published: 1994
Designer: W.G. "Wig" Graves
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules.
Hunters From The Sky specifics:
Rules: Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
May 20-23rd, 1941, Maleme, Crete
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV are full color icons, Weapons and troops are map graphic symbols
Opposing Sides: Commonwealth: 5th New Zealand Brigade and elements of various other British, Australian, New Zealand and Greek formations
Germans: Sturm Airlanding Regiment, reinforced with elements of the 5th Mountain Division and 7th Air Division
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 18 or so.
Playing time: Up to 20 hours, according to the box
With the 3.1 version of the rules the Tactical Combat Series would reach the maturity and stability that could carry it through the next decade and more.
The artillery system was now brought into the regular action phases providing a fully streamlined sequence of play with the minimum amount of fuss. Also simplified was morale, with morale losses now tracked at the battalion level instead of the company level."Buttoning up" was added to the armor rules, doing something to reduce the effectiveness of armor.
The major unresolved issue of 3.1 was the stodgy interaction of armor with other armor and anti-tank weapons. Many players thought there should be a more dynamic "dueling" kind of mechanism to better reflect the nature of tank combat, but addressing that issue was put off to the future.
Oddly enough, Hunters of the Sky makes very little use of any of the new features of version 3.1. There are just five tanks in the game (all British) and very little artillery (a grand total of seven batteries).
The biggest oddity of Hunter of the Sky is that it's the one game in the series that doesn't use the command rules at all. Considering that the command rules are basically the heart of the entire game system, this is very odd indeed.
The Germans are completely unhindered by any command considerations at all and can be used however the player sees fit. The biggest challenge for the Germans is landing in one piece. Almost all of the Germans arrive by air, either in gliders, by parachutes or by airlanding. Each has its risks, particularly if the Commonwealth still has some functioning anti-aircraft guns in range of Maleme airfield.
On the other hand the Germans are very powerful. Many German platoons have a firepower of "9" which makes them one of the strongest shooters in the entire TCS line. They also have a base morale of "1" which means they will almost certainly fight down to their last step. Every one of these guys that gets show down by AA fire or lands in the sea is therefore a big victory for the Commonwealth, because they're going to have a tough time dealing with them once they land.
The Commonwealth does have a few tanks and the Germans have almost no antitank capability. They have a few 37mm ATG, but the "AT" rule that normally allows infantry a close assault ability against armor is suspended for this game. But the tanks are too few, not very strong and the best ones (a pair of Matildas) are also prone to break down, so they're not a game-changer.
Meanwhile the Commonwealth is laboring under two big handicaps. First, the Germans have complete air superiority and there will be Stukas and Me 109s blasting the British almost every turn.Second, the Commonwealth does have a command control restriction. Each battalion has a battalion defense zone, which is defined by a 10-hex radius from a certain hex. Their units can operate freely within that zone, but not outside of it until "released." In the historical game the battalions aren't released until midnight on 21 May, but as an optional rule there can be a die roll to release units, which aids the Commonwealth a bit.Commonwealth units within a battalion defense zone that haven't moved are considered "dug in," but once they move they permanently lose that status. No other units in the game can ever be dug in, which is usually a function of being on a Prepared Defense op sheet in this game system.
Obviously the Commonwealth player has to devoted a lot of thought to his initial setup because he's not going to want to move very much. Being dug-in provides an important -1 column shift on the area fire table that the Commonwealth will badly need facing the firepower-rich Germans. Perhaps even more important, being dug in provides a beneficial -2 modifier on the morale table.
Aside from the rules needed to detail the German air assault there aren't many special rules in Hunters. Perhaps the most colorful is the ability of the Germans to capture and use some British equipment, up to four Bofors guns and a couple of trucks.
The first three scenarios break down the action into its main phases with relatively short 23-45 turn lengths. There's also a grand, 204-turn, campaign game that covers the entire four-day fight. Players can either use the historical German landing schedule or create their own.
This game plays quicker than the usual TCS game because there's less paperwork involved, but it's still a large game without any really small scenario.
Tactical Combat Series No. 6
Published: 1994
Designer: W.G. "Wig" Graves
TCS Overview
Repeated from earlier reviews. If already familiar with TCS skip this part.
Now published by Multi-Man Publishing, the TCS is one of The Gamers founding lines of series wargames that use a common set of standard rules to allow players to explore many different battles without having to learn a new set of rules every time.
In TCS the ground scale is 125 meters per hex, time is 20 minutes per daylight turn and units are platoons of troops, weapons sections and individual vehicles, so it’s about halfway between the ASL/Squad Leader squad-based systems and the traditional PanzerBlitz/First Battle platoon-oriented systems typically seen in tactical 20th Century wargames. Unlike most of its peers, TCS games always depict specific historical incidents on the actual terrain. There are no “geomorphic” representative maps or generic counters.
Distinctively, the TCS system is much less concerned with the characteristics of the hardware used than the typical tactical wargame. Offensively, units either fire area-effect weapons such as small arms and high explosives or with weapons with a point effect such as anti-tank guns. Similarly, they are either area targets such as soldiers or point targets such as a vehicle, or occasionally both. If armed, the unit has a range and if made up of troops a morale rating. If it’s a vehicle or gun it has a defense rating based on its armor.Platoons have five “steps” while weapons units have one or two. Vehicles represent individual machines and are either hit (mission kill) or not.As one would expect there are rules covering special conditions, tactics and needs such as smoke, fortifications and various terrain effects, but the basic structure is very straightforward and, compared to other tactical wargames, uncomplicated. This aspect of the game is deliberately kept simple.
The real heart of the game system is the command control rules, which mimics the kind of staff planning that goes into conducting actual military operations at this scale. Players actually draw up their battle plans in schematic form on “op sheets” specifying exactly how they plan to conduct their attack or defense using specific units in specific ways. Once the plan is drawn up it waits while sufficient “weighted turns” accumulate in order to put it into effect. How much time passes will depend on factors such the complexity of the plan, how many different units are involved, the nature of the mission and the overall quality of the unit’s staff work and a die roll. A simple movement plan involving no contact with the enemy by a single company under a highly trained staff might take just a turn or two before coming into effect. On the other hand, a complex, multi-battalion deliberate assault by a poorly-staffed army like the Soviets may never actually happen.
This is a fascinating and unique system that creates a very different pacing from what’s usually seen. Long stretches of time tend to pass with relatively little going on interspersed with periods of intense action. It much more closely resembles the pacing of actual military operations than most tactical wargames.On the other hand, this is also the system’s biggest weakness. It is wholly unsuited for competitive playing styles. It relies absolutely on the players making good faith effort to act within the spirit of the rules. It relies on them faithfully executing plans that no longer make tactical sense because ground facts have changed since the plan was drawn up. It requires players who will not attempt to wring every possible “legal” advantage the rules might allow but instead try act as the real-life commanders would have. It’s pointless for players whose first consideration is winning to play this. This is a game system for people interested in the journey, NOT the destination.
It can be played solitaire fairly easily by drawing up alternative plans for both sides and then dicing among those for the actual plans being used.Series designer Dean Essig firmly insisted that no game in the series would be made obsolete by any rules changes. All updates to the system are required to be backwards compatible and therefore every game (Except the modern Force Eagle's war) can (and should) be played with the latest edition of the rules.
Hunters From The Sky specifics:
Rules: Tactical Combat Series Rules version 3.1
May 20-23rd, 1941, Maleme, Crete
Two full-sized maps
Unit symbols: AFV are full color icons, Weapons and troops are map graphic symbols
Opposing Sides: Commonwealth: 5th New Zealand Brigade and elements of various other British, Australian, New Zealand and Greek formations
Germans: Sturm Airlanding Regiment, reinforced with elements of the 5th Mountain Division and 7th Air Division
Total number of battalion equivalents (the usual op sheet size) in play: Up to about 18 or so.
Playing time: Up to 20 hours, according to the box
With the 3.1 version of the rules the Tactical Combat Series would reach the maturity and stability that could carry it through the next decade and more.
The artillery system was now brought into the regular action phases providing a fully streamlined sequence of play with the minimum amount of fuss. Also simplified was morale, with morale losses now tracked at the battalion level instead of the company level."Buttoning up" was added to the armor rules, doing something to reduce the effectiveness of armor.
The major unresolved issue of 3.1 was the stodgy interaction of armor with other armor and anti-tank weapons. Many players thought there should be a more dynamic "dueling" kind of mechanism to better reflect the nature of tank combat, but addressing that issue was put off to the future.
Oddly enough, Hunters of the Sky makes very little use of any of the new features of version 3.1. There are just five tanks in the game (all British) and very little artillery (a grand total of seven batteries).
The biggest oddity of Hunter of the Sky is that it's the one game in the series that doesn't use the command rules at all. Considering that the command rules are basically the heart of the entire game system, this is very odd indeed.
The Germans are completely unhindered by any command considerations at all and can be used however the player sees fit. The biggest challenge for the Germans is landing in one piece. Almost all of the Germans arrive by air, either in gliders, by parachutes or by airlanding. Each has its risks, particularly if the Commonwealth still has some functioning anti-aircraft guns in range of Maleme airfield.
On the other hand the Germans are very powerful. Many German platoons have a firepower of "9" which makes them one of the strongest shooters in the entire TCS line. They also have a base morale of "1" which means they will almost certainly fight down to their last step. Every one of these guys that gets show down by AA fire or lands in the sea is therefore a big victory for the Commonwealth, because they're going to have a tough time dealing with them once they land.
The Commonwealth does have a few tanks and the Germans have almost no antitank capability. They have a few 37mm ATG, but the "AT" rule that normally allows infantry a close assault ability against armor is suspended for this game. But the tanks are too few, not very strong and the best ones (a pair of Matildas) are also prone to break down, so they're not a game-changer.
Meanwhile the Commonwealth is laboring under two big handicaps. First, the Germans have complete air superiority and there will be Stukas and Me 109s blasting the British almost every turn.Second, the Commonwealth does have a command control restriction. Each battalion has a battalion defense zone, which is defined by a 10-hex radius from a certain hex. Their units can operate freely within that zone, but not outside of it until "released." In the historical game the battalions aren't released until midnight on 21 May, but as an optional rule there can be a die roll to release units, which aids the Commonwealth a bit.Commonwealth units within a battalion defense zone that haven't moved are considered "dug in," but once they move they permanently lose that status. No other units in the game can ever be dug in, which is usually a function of being on a Prepared Defense op sheet in this game system.
Obviously the Commonwealth player has to devoted a lot of thought to his initial setup because he's not going to want to move very much. Being dug-in provides an important -1 column shift on the area fire table that the Commonwealth will badly need facing the firepower-rich Germans. Perhaps even more important, being dug in provides a beneficial -2 modifier on the morale table.
Aside from the rules needed to detail the German air assault there aren't many special rules in Hunters. Perhaps the most colorful is the ability of the Germans to capture and use some British equipment, up to four Bofors guns and a couple of trucks.
The first three scenarios break down the action into its main phases with relatively short 23-45 turn lengths. There's also a grand, 204-turn, campaign game that covers the entire four-day fight. Players can either use the historical German landing schedule or create their own.
This game plays quicker than the usual TCS game because there's less paperwork involved, but it's still a large game without any really small scenario.
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