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

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

Afghanistan with Lt Richards and Fields of Fire

Apologize for the long hiatus.  My father in law continued to age poorly and finally passed in his sleep two weeks ago.  As we take care of him and his demented wife this took a lot of time and quite an emotional toll.  I just haven't felt like wargaming since spring.  I read some and played tabletop baseball games.  

I played one game of SAGA

 

But it was only okay.  

Recently I decided maybe if I played a company level game instead of a battalion level game I could become more inspired.  I saw that Fields of Fire was releasing a 3rd edition rulebook. Perfect timing as I really felt like reading more than gaming.  For those of you that aren't familar, Fields of Fire is a Solitaire infantry combat game where you are the company commander; it is a board game so has some limitations.  It is quite innovative but had a horrible rulebook.  I reviewed it back in 2013.  It had some good points but frankly wasn't worth the energy to make it into a top notch miniatures game.  [ I reviewed it Feb 2013 if your are interested.]

I played around with it for vietnam

and thought it showed potential.  

So here is a report of a game using one of my Force on Force platoons I rolled up using Platoon Forward.  It focuses on Sgt McMann's squad of the 10th Mountain in Afganistan in 2011.  There last battle was posted Aug 2021. 

Capt Ross looked across his desk, " Ken, I am asking you to go on foot.  This way you will rub shoulders with the people.  They are why we are here, remember?"  Yes Sir but we will be more exposed to those same people and I don't want any more casualties.  " Look LT, I don't want casualties either but it is 2011, we are now diplomats AND soldiers- you go on foot." Yes Sir!

Fields of Fire [FOF] uses a card deck to determine the board. You move from card to card. Movement and distance is thereby somewhat abstracted.  It can be realistic as you don't always know the terrain you are in.  However, in 2011 there would  few surprises for this FOB.  Instead of drawing cards I rolled up a board as per Platoon Forward setting a village in space 2,3.  

   This is what I got.  FOF uses area movement so this is actually a 4x4 board.  As an example, the left side of the board has a pond, then crops followed by small building then woods.  Lt Richards route is going to take him up the left side to say hello to the farmers, check out the woods at the top left them visit the market and fly the flag.  Finally he will check out the river and head back to the FOB.  Humvees will pick them up at the river.  

Here is the platoon pictured above.

Lt Richards    Comes from wealth.  Volunteered to make a difference and to tick off his family.  Mercurial temperament.    average leader

1st squad  Sgt McMann     Average leader but well respected in the company and his squad.  His squad is veteran. [ FOF only has 3 grades of troops]

2nd squad Cpl Adams    Recently of 1st squad.  Took over 2nd squad with the death of their SL.  Still learning the ropes  Poor leader/ NL squad

3rd Squad Sgt Gonzalez  Average leader who is very scholarly.  Average squad

The NCOs were as excited about the plan as Lt Richards was but it was decided that 1st and 2nd squads would hoof it out to the  woods.  At that point the 3rd squad would meet them in Humvees as cover.  2nd squad would poke around in the woods then they would all make nice in the market and go home.  There was a movie tonight.

 

2nd squad leading the way.  

Squads are normally made up of 3 steps.  Each step represents 2-3 men.  It can be clunky sometimes but overall it works.  As stated, this is a solitaire game.  When you enter a new area of a potential contact you roll to see if you encounter something and if you do what is it and where.  I have to say the solo enemy is the strongest part of FOF.  It is well thought out.  For the miniature gamer it isn't very generic though.  You really would have to craft a new opponent for almost every scenario I think.  

A shot rings out from somewhere almost killing Cpl Adams.  The rearward part of the squad if pinned by the sniper and Adams is frankly terrified.  Fortunately Sgt McMann's squad saw the shot from across the road and drive the sniper off.  Lt Richards picks up Adams, dusts him off and sends 2nd squad on their way.

First squad leaves the crops and comes by the small farm.  Pvt Shaw nods to two women and is smart enough not to say anything.  Here we have another potential contact...

suddenly mortar shells erupt near the farm catching Shaw and the point team dead on.  They fall while the rest of 2nd squad is pinned down.  The 2 women flee in panic. 

FOF uses "orders" to simulate the C +C of warfare.  You draw a card to see how many orders you get [ between 2-6 but normally 3-4] then you issue orders to your men to make things happen.  What sets this apart from games like O group is that you need an order for pretty much anything except to fire.  Troops will fire at the closest enemy.  In fact they need an order to stop once he is dead or retreated.  It reads clunky but once you have tried it a few times it works well and feels realistic.  [ You have to use common sense sometimes, for instance, if I want a squad to move through the crops to the small farm I would not use two orders for that.  I would use one order and tell the squad to move through there to the farm.]  

Lt Richards day just got worse.  He has unseen mortars hitting his lead squad and has at least 2 men down.  He orders McMann to find that mortar [spot] while he radios back to 3rd squad to come up now and bring the medics. [Radio].  After McMann's experienced squad finds the mortar on the riverbed Richard's orders him to detach a half squad [ detach] and advance him [move] into range of the mortar to pin them down [ don't need an order to fire. Once in range [ center of picture in open terrain] they will open up.]  If Lt Richard had a fifth order he could try to call down some US mortars on the enemy mortars.  

Next turn [ about ten minutes for all of the above to happen] Lt Richards gets contact and soon the enemy gets a taste of their own medicine!

3rd squad shows up with doc in toe and Pvt Shaw is stabilized and taken back to the FOB.  Sgt Gonzalez sends 1 Humvee back with the doc while he stays in support.  

The platoon arrives at the woods.  Lt Richards decides that 2nd squad has been roughed up so 1st squad enters the woods.  Another potential contact...

The woods are clear but there is movement in the village.  2nd squad fires and the enemy quickly retreats.  

One of the neat things about the potential contacts is that they rarely are in the same area; they most often are only nearby and able to shoot into the area just entered.  Occasionally, you surprise the enemy like we did here though we didn't really take advantage of it.

 At this point it is clear that the village will not be friendly. 

Lt Richards decides to send 1st squad into the village directly and 2nd squad through the rough on 1st squads right.  3rd squad's Humvee and our LMG will support.  

I am sure you are surprised by all the red markers on the board in the picture above.  Remember that troops open up as soon as they see the enemy and vice versa.  The markers are showing strengths of primary direction of fire.  Troops become target fixated unless ordered to change.  Also, fire is at the entire area rather than at a specific target unless at point blank range.  This seems odd to most wargamers but I like it alot.  The thought here is that on the modern battlefield you will rarely get a good look at the enemy.  Most troops will fire at flashes, shadows or just in the direction that everyone else if firing at.  [ unless at point blank range] Hence fire it not at a specific target nor is it cumulative.  These two rules make this a very different game from any I have played.  I think the concepts are sound and it jives with my limited experience and what I have read from SLA Marshal, One Bullet Away, The Thin Red Line, Company Commander ect.  Like any model it suffers at the extremes and I am modifying it a bit but I think it sets FOF apart in a good way. I think in the future I will replace the markers with small bits of colored pipe cleaner; should look better.

 

The point team for 1st squad are directed to find cover in the village. [ order expended].  Normally a leader needs to be with troops to find that one or two places in a terrain piece that will provide great tactical cover.  I think in villages that idea falls apart but I do think it should count as an action.  

A large firefight erupts as Cpl Adams springs the main ambush in the rocks. Two squads and a LMG are generated in the town.  These should have been hidden but I forgot in all the excitement so the bullets fly!  All the baddies in the square focus on Cpl Adams in the rocks outside of town.  He is quickly pinned down and demoralized.  

Each turn you get 0-2 orders that the troops themselves can accomplish with their own initiative such as seeking cover or picking out targets.  This represents your lower NCOs.  There are never enough of these!

Lt Richards sees Adams in trouble.  He low crawls into the rocks with the rest of his squad.  He picks out the LMG and orders the squad to concentrate fire on it while he tries to rally Adams.  

While fire isn't additive and affects the whole terrain piece; leaders can spot individual targets and have units concentrate fire on them.  Concentrated fire IS additive and other than thump guns, the best way to bring large number of guns into play. 

Meanwhile back in town...

Sgt McMann and 1st squad is duking it out in the small buildings and alleyways on the west side.  Here grenades are king.  Both sides end up pinning the other.  Sgt McMann asks for help but the Lt is busy with 2nd squad.    Finally, after a good 15 minutes...

 Several men make a break for the woods.   Our LMGs that have been providing crossfire into the town shift fire automatically onto these new targets.  Unfortunately, all we do is pin them.   

At this point we are well into an hour into the mission.  Capt Ross wants to know if the patrol is wrapping up.   Lets review:

1st squad is pinned down in the west end of the village.  

2nd squad is pinned down just outside the village proper with Lt Richards.  He has been unable to rally anyone.  

3rd squad that came up to help has been firing into the market to relieve pressure on 2nd squad when...

Pvt Chu their LMG gunner is hit!  

Lt Richards admits that he is facing 2-3 platoons and could use either some artillery [ not allowed in the village] or the QRF.  Ross states he is dispatching them now and he is coming up to see what is going on.

Capt Ross arrives and expects a Sitrep now!  The Cougar with the QRF sits on the road awaiting orders.

 

Lt Richards extracts 2nd squad and briefs the boss.  Ross nods and shows little emotion either way.  He has a plan within 60 seconds.  "Ken, you take your platoon and secure McMann and the west side of the village.  Tony will take the QRF and assault the east side.  We can still make the movie" he says finally cracking a smile.

With the company commander on the board he obtains his orders and then activates his subordinate platoon leaders.  They in turn activate their squads.  It really does feel like you are commanding a company.    

Lt Richards goes over to the humvee and has them shift fire from the marketplace to the west side of town. [ Yep, two orders; one to get there and one to show them where to fire.]

Meanwhile...

As 57mm rockets start to hit the eastern buildings the Taliban leader sees the cougar approaching.  At this point he has bloodied the infidels and suffered only 6 casualties.  He decides it is time to withdraw.  There will be many more opportunities to catch the americans napping.  

Final battlefield.

I hope this report gives you some idea of the gameplay.  I think many of the concepts are new and refreshing.   I went back and pulled my thoughts from my review in 2013:

It works well.   The rulebook is confusing (including the second edition I downloaded) but the examples of play on the GMT website help a lot.   If you think about what is actually happening on the board it it not that complicated and after about 5 turns the game flowed.  [ I was even able to remove about 25% of the markers.]  The command mechanism works well and shows you the decisions real commanders have to make.  The combat mechanism took me a while to get use to but actually works.  The solitaire enemy works well once they appear.   The way they appeared on the board still seemed a little random to me but it did produce an enjoyable game both times.   

 

I like this game a lot.  A couple house rules I will add in are:

HQ units will have a higher chance to rally than squads.  (they are the leaders right!)

Cooler random events stolen from Platoon Forward

I will add something for weight of numbers.   3 squads firering have got to be better than 1.

Close combat could be better represented.

 

Best parts of this game are:

 

Command and control mechansim really gets it

Snipers are killer to get rid of

Enemy AI once they are on the board is good

You can use Platoon Forward with this game

I still agree with all the above except adding something for weight of numbers.  Concentrating fire takes care of that.

Downsides

Rules still aren't perfect and it takes some effort to learn. 

I have already mentioned having to carefully write scenarios. While this is a great solitaire sandbox system it will take planning before hand to get the most out of it.

 There is a fair amount of fiddle in having to order your men and breaking down squads which would only work in a solo game with a gamer who has a fair amount of time.  

In short, I think this game rewards those looking for a solo experience of being in command of a infantry company in combat if you are willing to put in some time to learn some new concepts and go with them in a leisurely manner.

Enjoy

 

Joe