15mm+ and BuAs

Started by Itinerant Hobbyist, 21 August 2019, 09:19:58 PM

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Itinerant Hobbyist

I know, heresy, for those who play in 15mm or bigger, how do you handle BUAs?

When I played in 6, I would simply mark the area with a gray piece of paper or flexible cobblestone square and move buildings out of the way.

Seems odd to do with 15s.

Are tanks in cover?

Sorry, this is one of those topics I'm thinking too much on.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

You need an obvious boundary - mark it with walls and hedges. 
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Lord Kermit of Birkenhead
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Leman

I play small action 1914 games in 15mm. For BUAs I lay down roads and put buildings around and alongside them. I then no longer sweat the problem.

The artist formerly known as Dour Puritan!

T13A

Hi

Playing in 10mm, I tend to have as separate BuA base for each area of buildings and count each base as a separate BuA for game purposes with the appropriate type of building or buildings (e.g. could be a farm of two or three buildings or one large factory but it is the base that counts as the BuA, not the individual model buildings) on top of the base (i.e. wooden, brick, stone etc.). Each BuA is at maximum about 15cm square (say for a church or factory but often quite a bit smaller). I do feel that you need this kind of differentiation to get anything like the 'feel' of WWII fighting in built up areas. This is of course based on BKC-II, I was hoping for some clarification in BKC-IV but sadly it has not paned out that way (for me at least).

Cheers Paul
T13A Out!

Big Insect

Hi T13A

What differentiation are you looking for around BUA fighting?
I'd be very happy to consider writing a separate optional supplement to cover this off.

Cheers

Mark
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

T13A

Hi Mark

Firstly I think  there is a contradiction within the rules as written (and I am approaching this from the point of view of a person 'new' to BKC). On page 12 under the general heading 'Built-Up Areas' and the sub heading 'Villages' it says:

"Buildings can be built from wood, stone, brick etc. but for our purposes the defensive capabilities of each building material is irrelevant" (see my post of 6 July 2019: www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,18824.0.html).

But then on page 36 under the heading 'Saves' it lists the different saves required by units occupying different kinds of buildings.  ???

I for one find this confusing and am hoping that the errata will clarify this issue.

I also think it is worth looking at Steve J's batrep of a game played in a large area of BuA here:

https://wwiiwargaming.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-battle-for-heimsdorf-bkcii-aar.html

I appreciate that the batrep is of a BKC-II game and not BKC-IV and what I would like to know is was this game played the way it was supposed to be played if using BKC-IV (i.e. the use of BuA's)? Hope that makes sense.

As to the differentiation I would like to see; I do feel that to get any realistic sense of 'fighting in built up areas' that you do need to represent distinct, separate sections of BuA's (but not individual buildings, see my post above), so that different sections of say a village or town can be assaulted, gained and lost etc. rather than just one large area as in Steve's game mentioned above. Not sure how the visibility rules would be effected by this?

Cheers Paul

T13A Out!

Big Insect

Thanks Paul - you are right that there is a degree of contradiction within the rules - not just around BUAs - as the game is/was originally designed for smaller scale models - 6-10mm (or smaller) with a Platoon being represented by a unit/vehicle.

At 15mm and larger you need a much more granular game and I believe that is where a lot of the wider 'errata' issues have actually come from.
In trying to please a broad-church of gamers - who play in different scales - from 2mm through to 28mm - the rules can in places become confused.

At 6mm-10mm representing a BUA (regardless of type - hamlet, village, city block, industrial area) generally works. At my club, for example we will divide a city into blocks (defined by a flat template with builds on it to represent the type of BUA - but that is mainly to distinguish the height. Units are placed on the template and the buildings moved around to allow deployment etc. as they are purely representative.

With 15mm (& above) I acknowledge that individual buildings can now be used - some would argue that this is viable at 10mm and I wouldn't disagree with them - it's a personal choice.

I did read Steve's battle report with great interest and would agree that with 5mm visibility Command and Control does become very challenging.
In many ways it's a bit like assaulting into a Smoke screen. Technically in the rules you cannot Close Assault units you cannot see (that is logical) so you have to advance into the smoke (or BUA) under Commanded orders and 'bump into' the enemy. You still fight a close assault with reaction fire, support etc.(but only from units that are with 5cm) but gain none of the advantages (& disadvantages) of initiating a Close Assault, if that makes sense.

I'll have a look at drafting up a 'larger' scale BUA fighting download (it might take a few weeks as we are still working on the main errata, plus SCW and Korean war Supplements. It will need to be at building level I'd suggest. I am well aware that other set (FoW for example) had highly sophisticated Close Area/Building Combat mechanisms, allowing a room by room melee/assault to be conducted - but again I come back to the basic premise that BKC is a Platoon equivalent level game.

Cheers
Mark
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.

T13A

Hi Mark

Thanks for the reply.

"At 6mm-10mm representing a BUA (regardless of type - hamlet, village, city block, industrial area) generally works. At my club, for example we will divide a city into blocks (defined by a flat template with builds on it to represent the type of BUA - but that is mainly to distinguish the height. Units are placed on the template and the buildings moved around to allow deployment etc. as they are purely representative".

Actually the above sounds pretty much the way I do it for my (10mm) games, but for all BuA's reagardless of overall size (i.e. farms, villages towns etc. with each 'block' being around 15cm maximum) and this of course allows each seperate 'block' to have buildings made of different materials (wooden, brick, etc). The difficulty, as already mentioned is how the visibility rules impact on this.

All that said, I do think getting the balance right between what feels like 'fighting in built up areas', practicality and playability is one of the most difficult things to achieve in any WWII rule set.

Cheers Paul
T13A Out!

Itinerant Hobbyist

Mark,
I'm just trying make it work, using the same size town templates I used while playing 6mm.

And how to use the buildings. I think I have it figured out.

Big Insect

Hi IH

I am all ears? Keen to hear your thoughts and discoveries?

Ping me directly, through the site/forum messaging system.

Much appreciated

Mark
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

This communication has been written by a dyslexic person. If you have any trouble with the meaning of any of the sentences or words, please do not be afraid to ask for clarification. Remember that dyslexics are often high-level conceptualisers who provide "out of the box" thinking.