[Ivan Sorensen]

I guess I didn’t intend to emphasise the gaming part as much as the miniatures part. Painting, building and tinkering is certainly hobby to me 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

Absolutely fantastic, thank you for sharing.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Since they generally came with more “stuff” than the scenarios require, there’s a fair bit of slack I suppose 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

Ah sweet. thanks! That’ll make it easier to line things up.

[Ivan Sorensen]

And snagged Paratrooper and Partisan for cheap this weekend. Both were bagged and without the box but the map boards are in very nice condition, all the scenarios are included and while I havent counted the counters (heh) yet, it seems pretty complete.

I know the Paratrooper scenarios were reprinted, but I kinda wanted to have the original ones, particularly since I have a couple friends who are interested in learning ASL.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Turns out I actually own one of the Chamberlain/Ellis books, so I’ll see about snagging a couple more

[Ivan Sorensen]

Three quarter inches would be quite cool actually. Shrink the table space a little bit without getting too fiddly.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Ah, nice to see some scholars (professional or self-declared) among the crowd 🙂

I tend to have at least a passing interest in general topics regarding historical periods, but the period before, during and immediately after WW1 is my big passion including reading literature from the era, watching things about the clothes and food, reading newspapers and so on.

I think what makes it so interesting is that it truly is a transition period. It is at once both very modern and familiar to us, while also being in many ways a completely different world.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Interesting thanks for sharing!

Do you (or anyone else) know if the Italians had platoon bombing sections like the French and British did, prior to the mentioned reorganisation?

[Ivan Sorensen]

Yeah, unless you are doing a “true skirmish” figure scale, range and terrain will always be at least a little wonky.

The one thing about using squad bases is that it would let people use Crossfire and ASL scenarios (f.x.) whereas half-squad bases isn’t that common.
And you can still use FOW based figures just fine. It just means you have twice as many to pick from on the shelf 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

Ah awesome, thanks for sharing!
Whats the basing like? Squad bases? Half squads?

Im still sorting out how I want to do my multi figure bases for 12mm

[Ivan Sorensen]

The perhaps one thing age has taught me is that its good to sit down and think about why you do things, including hobbies. A lot of people think their goal ought to be instagram level minis, but their actual goal really is to just spend time doing something with their hands (or vice versa!)

I had hoped Id have learned more in a lifetime but thats it, that’s all I got 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

When we played, I don’t think the table space was any larger than that and we played in 1/72.

Even a Whippet is only moving 2D6 and rifles can only shoot 12″ so you won’t need a huge table at all.

[Ivan Sorensen]

In my experience, using 28/32mm ranges with 15mm figures looks and feels pretty good in skirmish games, so that is what I usually suggest.

For smaller scales than 15s, I used to include the suggestion of using cm instead, but these days I think I prefer to just halve them if you want them reduced. Honestly the main advantage is that you also get to shrink the table space and it can be kinda nice to sit down over a 2×2 foot table.

I will note if the main audience was not anglo’s, I would put all distances in centimetres to begin with, but that isnt financially viable.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Really just getting some Norwegian troops painted up and digging into the campaign a bit more to play some tactical scenarios. I’m reading my way through the official British history right now.

Though doing a theme would be cool, since you can do commando raids, resistance etc.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Do large scenic bases for all your vehicles 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

Thank you for the support and I am glad you are liking it.

On the parking lot of tanks, I think its something that tends to occur unless you specifically have some sort of spill-over damage rule. Worth musing on though.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Yeah the groupings were basically just to keep the card deck short and it sort of maps to military formations. You can use a larger deck if desired. The main benefit of having multiple units on one card is that it allows for a bit more combined arms shenanigans

[Ivan Sorensen]

I’ve seen a few systems that handle it through the range instead (assuming presumably that the bow gunner can’t see for shit and thus can only shoot at things more or less right there) which is probably a reasonable case.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Thanks! That makes sense.

Being able to reduce cost, amount of junk that has to fit in the tank and weak points in the armour must also be worthwhile factors as far as whether to keep them or eliminate them.

I guess in that light the bow MG is to an extent an intermediate step between the WW1 and the modern tank.

[Ivan Sorensen]

The Victrix stuff is absolutely lovely and the range seems to be expanding pretty regularly.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Yeah, I felt a little funny putting ranges on things like tank guns, since by definition any skirmish gaming table is “really beeping close” for a tank but hey 🙂

There’s a much larger demand for games that are playable solo that I see, but to an extent my usual audience on the scifi and fantasy side also expect it. Its also a competitive advantage I suppose. If you don’t have to talk the entire gaming group into a new game at first, but you can still get it to table, thats a nice touch.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Cheers!

Standard movement range is 5″ for the average infantry unit. Small arms ranges is 30″ for a bolt action rifle, 40″ for a light machine gun and 50-60 for a heavy machine gun.
Being a skirmish game, we don’t really cover speculative fire from machine guns.

This is intended to be pretty reasonable for 15mm scale and still looks and feels good in 28/32mm scale. From memory that’s a bit more range than Chain of Command (I think?) and Bolt Action, but not as much as in Arc of Fire.

You will want a good amount of terrain on the table. For table size, the scenarios usually assume about 24″ of neutral ground between where the armies set up so a 3×3 foot table is recommended. If you want to use piles of vehicles, you will want to scale that up (or do 15mm).
Some scenarios start off part of the force in reserve and some do not.

Unique claims:
Campaign rules included in the book. Options to generate forces randomly if you prefer, along with a points system. Solo mechanics that can be used on their own or with the Operations system to create simple campaigns. Delayed casualty resolution for infantry and for many vehicle hits.

And of course we use alternating activations, whereas many skirmish games use either a dice system or cards. Thats not a plus or minus, but some people prefer this or that, so it is worth mentioning.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Huh, Im not sure. I just posted it to the ww2 forum since thats where it belongs.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Cheers retro and thank you for the kind words!

Im pretty excited about armour. THe intent is the non random system (luck and location should shake it up enough) but I wanted to include the random option for people who might get spicy at the notion that X gun will usually or rarely penetrate.

Its not on Patreon currently.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Im a dummy, yeah, this would be much better in general

[Ivan Sorensen]

That raises perhaps a parallel question:

What is the first “modern war” then?

[Ivan Sorensen]

This is probably also complicated by the fact that tabletop commanders often finish scenarios with 75% combat ineffective as a grand victory 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

For No End in Sight, once bolt actions become the norm the “implied reaction fire” probably starts struggling to work.
I only played the 1e of Force on Force but I think that covered WW2 as well as moderns. That may have been intentional for them to be a bit more diverse, but I think I’d take that back as long as you have small unit tactics.

Some of the real “cool operator” type games I think only work in the ultra modern era and maybe back to like Vietnam.

[Ivan Sorensen]

This is really more of a philosophical question I suppose 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

Oh super cool. Is the campaign book out or is that something you are still working on?

[Ivan Sorensen]

Is this ending up in a specific project or are you musing for the fun of doing so?

[Ivan Sorensen]

https://nordicweasel.posthaven.com/history-dad-how-building-armies-work

A quick look at the ways you can build armies. I tried covering all the basic stuff, but if I forgot to answer something, please ask.

[Ivan Sorensen]

https://nordicweasel.posthaven.com/history-dad-core-mechanics-examples

Alright, post 1 is the basics of activations and shooting things. Posts later will talk about army building and a few other odds and ends. But I suspect this will help people suss out if they are into it or not.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Cheers, yeah I will do up a couple posts showing how a turn works and ao forth.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Some WW2 games have you roll for X number of men instead of per man, which might act a solution. 10 men in a “turn” representing whatever time interval may not be 10 chances to make a mark, it may be 2-3 chances to make a mark at whatever odds seem reasonable.

Essentially saying that over that period of time, the unit took a dozen pot shots and of those, we might find 2 that could do something.

In skirmish games we already do this anyways for eras with repeating firearms, so it is just taking that to its logical conclusion.

[Ivan Sorensen]

The Danish drill manual I am digging through (from the 1860s admittedly) has some notes on ranges at which troops should be permitted to open fire (with the text hinting that these were ranges beyond which fire would not be effective), but is pretty thin on what it was expected said fire would actually do other than, presumably, bother the enemy.

This is with rifled firearms, but it states that in open order at over 400 alen (about 200 meters) only the best men should be permitted to try a shot. Below that, each man fires at his discretion “but only if there is a possibility of a hit”.

An interesting anecdote is that if a moving unit needs to shoot at something or a single target is sighted, such as an enemy scout on horse, the officer was to have a single man fall out, take the shot and then get back in the ranks.
It does not discuss that any further but the same principle is applied in a couple of cases so it might make sense that as you say a given body of men may have one or two who were pretty accomplished shots from prior experience, but it would not be worth having the whole unit waste a bunch of powder if they would not be likely to hit anything anyways.

Looking at “best case” scenarios, I wonder if there is documentation out there for what hunters might have expected (a weapon they know intimately and which may well have been better quality, careful aiming but typically only one chance to make the mark).

[Ivan Sorensen]

You might well be right!

To actually talk game mechanics again, it would be interesting to have a setup where the hit chance was based on the number of potential bodies in the rough direction you were shooting.

Incidentally this also solves most swashbuckling questions: A lone hero racing off to do <insert thing here> is probably not gonna get hit, because shooting at the grunts over there is more profitable 🙂

[Ivan Sorensen]

To clarify: I am not after game mechanics.
I think we are kind of talking about two different things here:

I dont really expect to find an exact percentage by yard table. That obviously cant exist. What I mean is this:

We know the highest bound of accuracy (range tests are pretty well documented), say around 50ish percent, and we know the lowest bound (total ammunition fired in a battle compared to casualties) which usually comes out to fractions of a percentage point.

So we have about a 50+ percentage point split of possible outcomes from “eh, fifty/fifty?” to “might as well not bother”. Thats a huge split.

A light infantry redcoat in North America spotting an enemy soldier over there by that tree must have had some idea of his chances of scoring a hit in that particular set of circumstances and whether the shot was worth taking (and WHEN it would be worth taking), especially since his life would depend on knowing this information.

Likewise people training, commanding and drilling light infantry must have had some idea about the effectiveness of their fire in typical circumstances that they could find themselves in.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Just to keep people on track, the purpose of the thread was to try to suss out the historical values. Wargame weapons of course all hit on a 4+ at 24″ range 🙂

Do we have any reliable guesses as to rates of fire during extended skirmishing?
With accounts of men fighting for hours, obviously they were not sustaining 3 rounds per minute (between ammo running out and the muskets not standing up to that sort of punishment, so do we have any idea of what it may have looked like? A leisurely shot every minute or so?

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