Do you use them?

[Darkest Star Games]

Specifically, do you or would you purchase and use support vehicles, such as ammo carriers, tank retrievers/engineering vehicles?
I know not many games call for them, so most probably do not worry about having the types in their collection, but I wanted to check popular opinion here abouts.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Anonymous]

<p style=”text-align: right;”>Sure, why not?</p>

[Norm S]

I have never needed them in a game, so my money is likely to go elsewhere.

[Rhoderic]

Presently I wouldn’t know what to do with them. I’d need to be given some educated ideas for how to incorporate them in gaming in a way that doesn’t feel forced or far-fetched. Like, would a tank retriever attempt to retrieve an immobilised tank in the middle of an actual combat situation? Or is that a bit daft, even in sci-fi?

[Rod Robertson]

Yes. They make great reasons for interesting scenarios. Convoy protection, protecting an ARV and crew during a recovery or running ammo to troops under fire to name but a few uses. I am building up to a big WWII scenario set in Boulonge in 1944 with Bulldozers, Defrocked Priests and AVRE’s which will be an engineering and combat nightmare.

Cheers and good gaming.

Rod Robertson.

[PatG]

I had a platoon of Grizzly 6 wheel LAVs advance across an open field. I had done recon and found nothing, shot up the treeline to be sure, dropped smoke to be really sure – then got utterly destroyed by a couple of T-80s packing theoretical Soviet thermal imaging gear.

Next move – the table cracked up when I drove my lone Husky LAV recovery vehicle out to pick up the mess.

[Steve Johnson]

Only bridge layers for specific river crossing scenarios, but other than that, no.

[Northern Monkey]

I only use them to add to Command stands they have no game value as such, simply window dressing.

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[Angel Barracks]

15mm no, 6mm yeah, if they were cool.

I was actually thinking upon this.
In my 6mm Napoleonic type games I had a fair few models that served no real game purpose, field ambulances, camp hangers on, caissons etc.
I thought they made the army seem more like an army.

But with my skirmish games I am not really playing with an army.
There is no supply chain for thousands of men as I am playing with just 20 men.

I think as window dressing they would be maybe a bit wrong.

But as a scenario objective, totally yeah.

Medi-van: One of your VTOL pilots crashed and is being taken for questioning in a medi-van, bust him out.

Comms-van: You can’t get your drones to work in the target area as the enemy comms-van is the lord of ECM, take it out.

Bridge-van: (yes a van!) You are going to push the enemy back toward the Liao River and don’t want them to be able to retreat, take out the bridge layer.

Etc…

They would be good as scenario objectives, and it would be nice to only have 1 of something to paint up rather than several..

[Darkest Star Games]

Great input guys, thank you.

 

I use recovery and engineering vehicles in some of my games, especially Vietnam, where it was not uncommon to try to recover a damaged tank under fire (whether the firefight started before or after the recovery started!), as well as in modern OIF and Afghan games.  I personally think they’re great for skirmish gaming, and probably more appropriate being on table over things like arty, air support, or higher command elements.  I’ll keep going with them as catalog depth always helps!  (eventually, hopefully!)

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Bandit]

Norm S wrote:

I have never needed them in a game, so my money is likely to go elsewhere.

This is the core problem for many eras. For Napoleonics and other horse & musket – everyone wants limbers and supply wagons and caissons – but no one uses them because games don’t call for them.

Yet games have a lot of tabletop markers in many systems.

In Et sans résultat! we use supply vehicles instead of tabletop markers. It allows wargamers the excuse they are looking for to put out the “oh man that is cool but since the game doesn’t call for it I should buy more infantry” models.

I would think that all genres would benefit from this. I know there were a lot of cool support vehicles for BattleTech but I’ve never seen them on a tabletop because their in-game use wasn’t really part of the core rules, or even well supported in expansions.

Cheers,

The Bandit

[John Treadaway]

Rhoderic wrote:

Presently I wouldn’t know what to do with them. I’d need to be given some educated ideas for how to incorporate them in gaming in a way that doesn’t feel forced or far-fetched. Like, would a tank retriever attempt to retrieve an immobilised tank in the middle of an actual combat situation? Or is that a bit daft, even in sci-fi?

I’ve tried this http://www.hammers-slammers.com/specialists_1.htm in Crucible rules, suggested by Patrick Sexton’s group in Chicago.

It certainly works well enough for CEV and recovery and ambulances and so forth.

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[PatG]

Dude! (sorry, Kyote, but it’s appropriate here 🙂 ) where did you get Grizzly and Huskies? Do they have Cougars? What scale?

1/285 – 6mm CinC:

http://www.pfc-cinc.com/page/page/313009.htm

[Robert Foran]

They would make great additions for interesting scenarios, but here’s the thing, I would probably only ever need one or two at most, for example, a scenario might require one side to escort a recovery vehicle out to a disabled tank, while the enemy force is tasked with stopping that recovery effort and capturing said tank. I really only need one recovery vehicle for this.
Given that I’m the one buying the miniatures, I could see myself buying generic support vehicles or even faction specific support vehicles, to be used in these scenarios.

[PaintingLittleSoldiers]

I use them in scenarios mostly but the ones I purchased are matchbox snow mobiles.

[MartinR]

I play quite a few operational games so I have masses of support vehicles: mainly logistics,  but also repair,  medical,  comms etc as well as various types of engineering vehicles.  In more tactical games it tends to be that combat engineering vehicles which gets used more,  but the logistics stuff can be handy for tracking artillery ammo in a more visual way.

All scales,  2, 6, 15 and 20mm. In 2mm I often put the logistics elements directly on the bases of artillery units.

All of this stuff contributes to an impressive array of traffic jams behind the teeth elements.

In earlier periods it is mainly wagons,  pack mules,  artillery cassions etc but I do have several stands of porters for e.g. East Africa etc.

 

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

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