SOTR1949 | Skirmish Campaigns |
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| Written by Michael Cannon | ||||||||||||
| Friday, 11 July 2008 | ||||||||||||
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SkirmishCampaigns is a company that specializes in scenario books for 20th century wargamers. Although oriented towards an audience primarily interested in historicalgames, their booklets are just as valuable for the Weird War gamer. In Issue 1 we had an article on the fighting in and around La Fiere and I commented that these battles would make good grist for the scenario mill. Little did I know at the time that someone had the idea before I did.
1) the comments in the book indicate that the authors have actually gotten out and walked the ground, so they have a good feel for what did and could have occured,2) the scenarios are interlinked in a number of mikni-campaigns, so you have three in this book alone,3) there's enough historical commentary and bibliographical entries to allow you to develop your own opinions about the battles and change them if desired,4) there is a variable reinforcement table for each battle, so you know what core force you have but not what specialized tools might be available, 5) they have included rules limiting ammunition for critical systems, reflecting the reality that grunts only have what they can tote on their backs. So how do you take this historical stuff and convert it to SOTR1949 terms? Take a look at the map below. It's marked off in foot square increments (I have only reproduced a portion of it here - the real map reflects a table 3 by 3 feet square.) Although generated with an inexpensive paint style program, the graphics are sufficiently detailed to allow you to set up the battlefield. There's enough terrain to make it a challenge but not enough to bog down the game.You could almost take the map they give you and use it for varying SOTR battles with varying numbers of Resource Points.
How do the Order of Battles (OOBs) translate? The German OOB has the following:
In SOTR1949 terms you have the HQ at 4 RP, the two fire teams combined to yield 8 RP (with the Fire Team special rule allowing them to break into the same sections as above). The total RP for the base is 12 while the American base points total 22. Assuming you need at least two to one odds of attacker to defender, this is a good balance. The German attachments work out to be MMG - 4 RP, Sniper team - 2 RP, Panzerschreck 2 RP, and I'd just treat the additional LMG as that and count it as 2 RP (LMGs in SOTR are attached to a squad/fire team.) This works out to 27 figures for the entire German OOB and easily collected by a new gamer. Although the US forces in the campaign book are Parachute Infantry, you can substitute Armored Infantry with no loss to the scenario. The total American force is 40 models. You can build to these totals while playing this battle and then expand to play the other scenarios in the booklet. Now, how can you "weird" this up? The German Mech Grenadier Squad is 6 RP That takes yourInfantry and Gun Fire Teams shown above. In SOTR, you can get a Para Drop Armor squad for 6RPwhich consists of 5 models, or a Werewolf pack for 5 RP consisting of 3 models, or 5 Wolf Runners totaling 5 RP. These can be included as variable reinforcements or a s substitutesfor the items in the OOB. You can also add 10 Zombies with a "pinger" (the zombie controller) for 4 RP and then add blocks of 5 for 2 additional RP. If you want to be really nasty, allow the German player to upgrade 4 of the zombies to Zombie Bombs! The American force can be handled in the same way but you can add Chameleon Snipers (6 RP) *or* the Comanche Light Mech (3 RP). I'll do my best to get the models for this painted up by the next issue and do a run through of this game. In the meantime, I highly recommend this series of books for your use in generating a multitude of scenarios for your games!
Skirmish Campaigns: Normandy '44 - First Hours
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 11 July 2008 ) | ||||||||||||
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