Sacramento Miniature Wargaming Society August meeting

 There were two games at the August SMWS meeting.   DBA and a modern armor game I ran using Lightning War - Red Storm.

LWRS is a free set of rules covering WW2 to present day and is available by joining   https://groups.io/g/LWRS

Each element in LWRS represents about 15 vehicles or 150 men.  About a company or a battalion of artillery.  Units are multi-company battalions.  Battalion units are grouped into brigade/regiment formations under a commander.   With several brigades forming a division under a higher level commander.   A player can handle a division.   

Units are rated for five levels of quality, and four to five levels of equipment technology.   Rated from a low of 1 to a high of 5.   Formation and division commanders are also rated from 1 to 5 and can have a different rating from the units they command.  With this rating system an early war PZIV would count as a class 4 heavy tank, but by the end of the war it might be only a class 2.

Instead of IGOYGO the game has an interactive activation sequence.   Players roll a die for each formation.  Priority is assigned from the highest score to the lowest.   Starting with the highest score each player can choose to move immediately or pass and wait until later in the turn with the ability to interrupt the sequence at any point.   If all the higher scores pass the lowest scoring formation is forced to move and the sequence is repeated until all formations have moved.   Combat is then resolved with air strikes, followed by artillery, then direct fire and finally close assaults.  Each phase is simultaneous and units can become disordered due to damage in any and all phases.   Morale checks are made for losses or situations and units can become fatigued and whole formations become exhausted ending their offensive capabilities.

For this game the opposing sides were two fictional Latin American countries.   The Peoples' Democratic Republic of La Cucaracha led by El Supremo Jefe Patronis and The Federal Union of Buena Vista ruled by President for Life, Elvis Narcisco.   The PDRC uses Russian equipment and the FUBV uses German equipment.

As a side note, on YouTube there are several videos of Chiles annual military parade.   Chile uses modern German equipment and has kept the Prussian military traditions.   Units in historical Prussian uniforms take part in the parade and Prussian military music is played by the bands.

The game matched the first divisions of both nations in a meeting engagement and lasted a full day of six turns.   Each turn is two hours long.   The FUBV was starting to gain an advantage by the end of the day.   The table was six feet by six feet or 18km by 18km at the game scale of 1cm - 100m.

Below are some photos of the game.  Most are from the north side of the table with the PDRC on the left and the FUBV on the right.   Mike O'Brien took the first two pictures.

South Bay Gaming Club meeting March 14

There were four games at the club meeting today.   Form on the Admiral's wake (age of sale0 rung by Bob,  American War of Independence in 54mm run by nick,  WW2 air run by Chuck, and a fictional modern armor game run by me.

This was the battle of Salon de Companerismo had the Union Federal de Buena Vista first division fighting the first division of the Republica  Democratica Popular de la Cucaracha.   The UFBC first division had three combat brigades and one divisional artillery brigade.   The combat brigades had one brigade with two tank battalions, two puma battalions, an engineer battalion and one artillery battalion, one brigade with one tank battalion, three puma battalions, one engineer battalion, and an artillery battalion, and one brigade with three boxer battalions and an engineer battalion.   The divisional artillery brigade had three MRL battalions and one AA battalion.

The RDOC had a brigade with three tank battalions, one BMP battalion, and an raillery battalion.  The second brigade had two tank battalions, two BMP battalions and one artillery battalion. The third and fourth brigades had one tank battalion, one BMP battalion, two BTR80a battalions and one artillery battalion. The divisional artillery brigade had three artillery battalions, one MRL battalion, and one AA battalion.

The rules used were Lightning War - Red Storm, which are available for free from  LWRS group.io   We did use some house rules for the game as we kept the ground scale to one kilometer per 10cm (four inches) instead of the recommended doubling for the modern period and  changed the quality ratings by increasing them by 5 and using a roll of two dice instead of a single die roll for activating formations.  The table was 24km square.

View of the battlefield from the northwest

At the start of each turn two six side dice were rolled for each brigade and any modifiers are added.   For this scenario there were none.   Both sides were rated as good with a rating of 8 for all units except the RDPC artillery brigade. which was fair with a rating of 7  The die roll is used to determine the order of activation for each combat formation (brigades for this game). The score for each of the formations on both sides determines the order of movement for the turn.   The highest score can move first or choose to move later in the turn.  This gives the higher scores an advantage over lower scores as they can choose to move when it is to their best advantage.  The next higher score now has a choice of moving or deferring their move to later also.   The same applies to each formation in turn and can force the formation with the lowest score to move first.  This process is repeated until all formations have moved.

Indirect fire is then resolved followed by  direct fire.   It is possible for artillery fire to disorganize a formation which would then cause it to only fire with half its combat factors.   Artillery fire is not guaranteed as the unit calling the fire has to roll equal to or less than the artillery formations quality rating and calling divisional artillery has an additional negative modifier applied to its rating.  Artillery fire is very good at disorganizing units, but causing casualties on armored units is difficult due to the save modifiers.   Infantry in built up areas can also be very difficult to cause casualties on.

The UFBV used march and road movement to move quickly forward and gain a positional advantage over the RDPC.   At first casualties were very light.   The RDPC was advancing from the east and managed to occupy the town on the south center edge of the battle field.   The UFCV advanced towards that town and prepared to storm it with a pair of infantry battalions.  Artillery and direct fire had disorganized the DRPC defenders. If the UFBC could roll high enough for initiative on the next turn the two battalions would be able to move first and assault the defenders before they were able to recover from disorganization.  They were able to do so and their assault drove the defenders from the town.

View of the town on the turn prior to the assault on it.

Center of the battlefield on the same turn viewed from the southeast

Attacks by the RDPC to the south of that town were halted and driven back  In the center part of the table UFBV artillery and direct fire badly damaged another couple of RDPC battalions.

On the northern flank neither side was making much progress.   Artillery and direct fire from a Leopard 2 tank battalion damaged another BTR battalion.

Combat had taken a full rules day of six turns.  Both sides paused for the night and combat resumed in the early morning of the next day.  At this point UFBV artillery and direct fire took a toll on RDPC units. By the end of turn eight the two RDPC brigades on the southern half of the table had two exhausted battalions with possibly more by the end of the next turn.  It was judged a UFBV victory. We had played for about four hours with a short lunch break included.      

End of turn five.   RDPC tanks would occupy the hill in the left center and their infantry would occupy the town to the left of it.  UFBV infantry would advance up the road towards the town and the tank battalion on the road in the right center would advance through the town in the bottom center then deploy above it.

                                                                                                             
We have tried several different rule sets including Fistful of Tows, Spearhead, Cold War//Blitzkrieg Commander and others.   These played the fastest of all of them and were easy to comprehend and use.  The rules are available for free from https://groups.io/g/LWRS