Welcome to Platoon Forward!

Welcome to the site where the story of the battle is as important as the battle itself. Here we will focus on men thrust into extraordinary situations of life and death. They must lead other men with duty and honor to meet their countries objectives. Some will be blessed with great skill, some will carry great shortcomings. No matter what nation, no matter what war, no matter what theater, they are all called to move their Platoon or Squadron forward!

These are their individual stories as played out using my various campaign rules . Hopefully these stories will entertain and inspire you to use your own troops, airmen and sailors to accomplish your own great heroics.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Barge Busting in the Baltic

 Played another fun scenario over the weekend busting barges.  This time I went to the frozen north where I could use the KFK I just built.  I didn't roll up the forces but used the barge busting scenario from FF.  Rules were Coastal Patrol and I modified how many flood and fire hits were possible.  Visibility 2K yrds with calm seas.    4 MO-4 boats looking for a small convoy moving supplies that was spotted by air.  The Russians are rated poor.  Because of this they will start in column. 

Russians on the prowl. Each hex is 100 yards.  I use the spines as well so 11 directions per hex.

Russians spot something.  Big problem- like to stay away from the front.  I do say that all guns on the ferry have a -1 to hit in all but the calmest seas.

Russians veer away from the ferry.  Here's hoping we can get by it unspotted.  [ I do use the spotting rules from Crueler Seas. Just personal preference.]

Amazingly the plan seems to be working even though we also spot a KFK as well.  

Then Commrade Unstode [ MO-4 boat 4] sees a torpedo in the water and takes evasive action. 

[random event from Flotilla Forward.]   Clearly he has been hitting the vodka again!!

This wakes the KFK up and all hell breaks loose!  Coastal actions at it's finest.  Fortunately we have the KFK outgunned.  At this range even Russians hit once in a while.


 The russians finally spot the convoy.

As the MO-4s move around the KFK a fire breaks out on the third russian boat.  The KFK starts to flood and slows.

It is a losing battle.  The KFK starts to sink.


The MO-4 boats move towards the back of the convoy.  Meanwhile back on the third russian boat...

fire fighting wasn't emphasized in their training so the ship becomes engulfed in flames. 

A small barge starts to sink.  


 The convoy has slowly moved out of the way to give the ferry a clear shot at the russian boats.  

A direct hit on the lead MO-4 knocks out it's engine.  The Senior Leader signals boat 2 to pick up the crew and for boat 4 to go pick up the crew of boat 3.    With a KFK and barge sunk and another dead in the water we have done enough for tonight!

Boat 3 flashes by the Siebel ferry!  

Great battle that took 90 minutes.  It was surprising that the russians managed to sneak up on the germans like that.  I am slowly modifying the rules to suit my taste. It amazes me that rolling for the number of actions works as well as it does.   I liked the -1 to hit for the ferry.  The MO-4s and KFK each took 3 flotation and 3 fires.  I am even playing around with ship data cards.


 

Play test data card.

Happy Veterans Day to all our Veterans and a Happy Remembrance day!


Enjoy!


Joe
















Friday, October 18, 2024

Versatility for some warlord ships

 Just a quick post on a project I finished while building warlord's [ now skytrex] kreigfischkutter ships.  I bought a 2 pack a while back because these ships are ubiquitous in convoys and port patrolling in almost all navies.  My plan was to use magnets for the gun positions so I could swap them out to whatever country I wanted.  I haven't built a ship in ages so got lazy on the first one and just built a german KfK.


Here she is!  Ready for action.

Inspired I went back to the original plan for the second ship.  I think it went well so thought I would show you in case others wanted to stretch their fleets.  First up the german version...

 

 

 

The original mast broke in the box so I had to substitute but I think it looks fine for the table top. 


Next is our British version.  New flag and guns.


Finally our Soviet one for the Black sea.  


I also can flag her as a Romanian vessel with german figures for the Black sea and Finnish if Skytrex ever gets around to the Finnish boats!

Enjoy

Joe


 
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, October 7, 2024

Barge Busting in the Solomons

 It is baseball playoffs but I managed to dust off Coastal Patrol by TFL and the late Mr Schmidt and give it another go.  These rules are fast play but give a very satisfying game.  I made some modifications to the damage model on scratch paper so wanted to try a scenario out to see if I remembered them.  Last year I created a Japanese coastal force and talked about it on my May 2023 post.

I rolled up the scenario "barge busting" per Flotilla Forward and got normal seas with visibility 1 mile.


 Unusually, I didn't roll up or use any characters.   Two regular PT boats out looking to do damage.  


 Our two boats moving slow looking for trouble.

The moon must be behind clouds because no one is seeing anything! [ rather than card activation I use the die activation from Cruel Seas and added one US die for the better training and surprise.]


The US finally spots the first blind which is nothing and then a second off to port which is a patrol boat. Knowing barges always stick closer to shore they veer closer to shore and keep their eyes peeled. 

"Barges dead ahead!"  Two minutes later everyone sees everyone.  Who will be the first to react?

The PT boats roar to life and start a "straffing run" of the barges.   These boats have 20mm guns fore and aft; not a 40 mm aft.  

The Japanese patrol boat is slow to respond with it's poor crew [ love the dice mechanism to roll for number of actions!]  They do get some shots off at the second US craft. 


The PT boats circle the convoy and come up the back side causing fires on two of the barges!  


However, from the rear a Japanese type "C" barge appears and the second PT boat starts to take damage. 


The Japanese escorts finally sandwich the PT boats in.  The PT boats continue to fire at the barges; their primary mission.  Suddenly, the Captain on the second PT boat is hit.  In enemy waters at night, taking fire from multiple directions, the crew is not at all pleased with their situation.


  As the PT boats escape the gauntlet the second PT boat starts to take on water!  The lead boat orders "Come around" which the second boat missed with all the chaos going on.   The Chief Petty officer...


  calls it a day.  He orders the crew to make smoke and to leave towards the rally point.   they can work on repairs and see if the captain is okay.


The lead PT boat comes around and attempts one more pass at the enemy barges.  The escorts switch their fire to the lead boat.     

The pass is made and the PT boat decides...

they have caused as much havoc as they can for one night.  

Great game that played in 40 minutes.  2 barges sunk with another damaged.  What I did was the barges needed 2 flood and 2 fire hits instead of 6 and the PT and patrol craft required 3.  I think this makes the smaller craft more fragile.  

Enjoy!


Joe








Friday, September 6, 2024

More musing on the "perfect" Ruleset

 Since it is summer much of my gaming time is spent playing history maker baseball. But during my many semi automatic functions I carry out to help my family during the day I have been thinking about my perfect rule set for land warfare in the modern era.  I have also had 3 interesting discussions about it on TMP which has helped spur my thinking on the subject. Now the amount of complexity, scale, "realism" and time involved are all matters of personal taste which is why we have so many great rulesets out there. So I have tried to define; for myself what would be the perfect ruleset.

1. First, as readers might remember, I have upscaled over the past two years from platoon to battalion level games.  I have realized that, given my bias that people and personalities make a difference in the moment, a battalion is too large.  Also the ground scale becomes off with 15mm figures which bugs me and the jury is still out on 6mm.  So I think platoon is great for stories and company is probably best for the sense of command.  Anything larger and you get too far away from the people.  In the Air Force people say squadron command is your best command,  anything higher and you are just commanding other commanders instead of airman.  That is true and probably biases my view here as well.  So I am going to focus on company level rules for the moment.

2.  Command is a great privilege/burden/test. You have to use the tools provided to accomplish the mission. This not only includes the material, but time and your people.  All your people will have strengths and weaknesses.  Hopefully you have trained your people and minimized their weaknesses.  So my perfect ruleset will make me feel like I am in command of a company of people not automatons.  I myself will have limitations of situation, time and danger which with to grapple.  Platoon Forward can provide the characterization.  But the ruleset will have to allow me to differentiate between Lt Smith the aggressive super star that I have to hold back and Lt Jones the barely adequate that I will have to keep an eye on an potentially step in.    

3.  The ruleset has to have a smooth combat resolution sequence.  I have already stated that I dislike TFL's "shock" routine as too fiddly.  I admit it works well.  Some chrome is nice in a perfect ruleset but not if it adds fiddle.  I will admit I am intrigued by Fields of Fire's  area fire system. I talked about it in my last post.  The hypothesis is that troops don't initially fire at specific targets but at an area.  As they calm down, win the firefight, see better, targets are pointed out by leaders, they start to concentrate their fire.   It seems to make sense and is different than anything else I have come across.  

4.  The ruleset has to be solo friendly.  I actually prefer to play solo because an opponent is never as interested in the story as I am .  They are concerned about winning.  I already have a system that deploys an unknown enemy force in PF that is normally balanced. I don't have an AI that controls the force on the board.  I have started working on one based on the attitude of the force, either attack or defense. 

5.  The game shouldn't take forever.  I would like to play an attack/defend scenario in about 2 to 21/2 hours.  

6.  The game system should be flexible enough to cover WW II, Vietnam, the African Wars, WW III through Afghanistan.

So any rules you know of do all that?   

Force on Force comes close at the platoon level.  I have house ruled leadership, artillery and some armor.   Troops, Weapons and Tactics is an honorable mention if I use my variant that replaces shock.  Rich was nice enough to publish is way back.  Chain of Command [which I playtested] doesn't really do it but it is fun to play. 

O group, Battlefront WW II and Piquet and touch on parts of my list above.  Fields of Fire actually gets too in the weeds with command.  You count the number of bazooka rounds!

Soooooooooo, I decided to create my perfect ruleset by throwing bits and pieces together.   What follows is a report of a straightforward.  


An infantry company in Sicily tasked with a simple attack mission.  Everyone is average except our "star", SSgt Hinchcliff platoon leader 1st platoon.  

US will enter from the right and need to take the ruined abbey on the left.  They will have 12 turns because after that I will become bored.  Black markers are the blinds per platoon Forward.  

The Abbey right and hill 253 left from US jump off.

US always has plenty of artillery so pre game we pound hill 253.  

And we're off!   I am using 5 command dice per O group but then using a heavily modified ordering system from Fields of Fire.  The stuarts will lead.  2nd platoon will move towards the hill.  3rd platoon will occupy the woods.  SSgt H will be in reserve.  


Turns out there was a squad of Italians on the hill in foxholes.  They were roughed up a bit...

And all but 3 men decide to leave.  

Those three men manage to pin down 2nd squad/2nd platoon.  One of the neat/frustrating things about this system in WW II is, as the company commander, once you send 2nd platoon out you really have no control or say in what they do.  Unlike O group, I can't active 2nd platoon this turn, the Lt will show some initiative to follow my plans at a reduced efficiency.  He needs help.  I send my first sergeant out to rally 2nd squad and get them moving towards the hill!  

Meanwhile, my AI opponent decides to mortar the woods where 3rd platoon is.  Not good.


Also the Italians have a 47mm ATG positioned to take on my stuarts.

After 3 turns 30 minutesish.   Stuart tank is taking fire from the abbey and they are trying to spot the gun.  3rd platoon has rallied and I sent a runner to tell them to push up to see if they can spot and lay some fire down on the abbey.  2nd squad is moving again and going to climb the hill.  I am moving up to get closer to the action with my staff. 


Another shot of the action.  I have just come up and personally ordered 2nd platoon onto the hill.  

as we are nearing the abbey I roll for the rest of the Italians.  We get 1 squad [20 men], 1 leader, 1 mmg and extra LMG.

The 1st Sgt brings up a LMG that was lagging to the CP.  We order it to the hill to provide covering fire for our advance.   2nd platoon finishes their occupation of the hill.  3rd platoon sends a runner to tell me they are taking a lot of fire from the front of the abbey as they probe.  I hatch a plan!  I send a runner to go get 1st platoon.

A quick "O group" meeting behind the hill.  "Sgt Hinchcliff", 2nd platoon is going to swing left.  I want you to move straight up at the abbey using the rough ground for cover.  The stuarts will provide covering fire."

The Italians from the hill have moved back to the hedges at the cart path.  2nd platoon is starting to win the firefight with the help of the LMG.  It is time for them to start their advance.  

One of the stuarts shifts fire, adding to the misery of the Italian defenders.  Their NCO goes down.

2nd platoon continues their advance.  But the Italian AI is shifting both MGs from the front to this endangered side.

As one squad dukes it out close range near the cart path the rest of the squad becomes engaged with MG fire from the abbey.  2nd platoon suddenly has it's hands full.  But once a plan is in motion it is hard to pull back.  I watch from behind the stuart tank as the first squad of 1st platoon makes it to within 30 yards of the abbey when suddenly...

a heavy MG opens up on the squad.  When did that move there!?!  Clearly the AI is working.

It isn't pretty as the squad pays a heavy price for my plan.  

But SSGt Hinchcliff isn't a star for nothing.  He knows his orders so without my input, he moves up 2nd squad and finds some cover for himself and 2nd squad. I desperately order the stuart to fire at the building.  


Again without my help, Hinchcliff picks out the location of the MMG, orders the bazooka to fire [ black ball] as well as the rest of the squad to aim their fire. [ white ball].  It is enough, the MMG falls silent.  


I stopped there as I was at 140 minutes.  I felt I had learned a lot from the playtest.  

The order system with the dice and orders at each level worked really well.  Fine tuning only.

I liked the area fire but need to clearly define the areas and make them a bit smaller.

The combat chart I made was too harsh.  Almost no one could ever move without being pinned.  

The AI worked surprisingly well for a first try.  Granted it was on defense but it responded to a situation by moving forces from one flank to another.  

I need to speed the game up but hopefully with less pins that will help.


Overall I enjoyed it and I thought it showed promise.  It might not be everyone's cup of tea but more to come!

Enjoy!


Joe