Hi Leon
Any word yet of what you are going to be doing with these yet?
Cheers
Not yet,yet.
Unfortunately, nothing more specific beyond what's already been posted so far. The 3 books will all be revamped and tweaked before we go ahead with a new print run of them.
First up will be BKC, as we've already got the bulk of the ranges in place for it. I've started collating a lot of the info and feedback from the BKC forum, then we'll combine that with some of our own thoughts and those of a select group of gamers. Everything will be discussed thoroughly before we go ahead and make the changes we think need making. Then brand new photos, new layout for the book and it's off to the printers! We're aiming for the end of the year for this.
Second in the queue is CWC, as we're expanding the ranges slowly and want to have a bit more available before we relaunch this set. Currently we're looking at early-mid 2016 hopefully.
And finally will be FWC, which we want to look at more closely and work on some new ranges to launch with the rules. This is going to be the time-consuming one, so it's going to be end of 2016 at the earliest I'd think.
In the meantime, the existing rules can still be bought as a hard-copy through Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=517064 (http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=517064)
And we might look at adding the old pdf's to Wargame Vault at some point.
8)
Cheers Leon
Quote from: Leon on 05 August 2015, 04:22:18 PM
Unfortunately, nothing more specific beyond what's already been posted so far. The 3 books will all be revamped and tweaked before we go ahead with a new print run of them.
First up will be BKC, as we've already got the bulk of the ranges in place for it. I've started collating a lot of the info and feedback from the BKC forum, then we'll combine that with some of our own thoughts and those of a select group of gamers. Everything will be discussed thoroughly before we go ahead and make the changes we think need making. Then brand new photos, new layout for the book and it's off to the printers! We're aiming for the end of the year for this.
Second in the queue is CWC, as we're expanding the ranges slowly and want to have a bit more available before we relaunch this set. Currently we're looking at early-mid 2016 hopefully.
And finally will be FWC, which we want to look at more closely and work on some new ranges to launch with the rules. This is going to be the time-consuming one, so it's going to be end of 2016 at the earliest I'd think.
In the meantime, the existing rules can still be bought as a hard-copy through Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=517064 (http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=517064)
And we might look at adding the old pdf's to Wargame Vault at some point.
8)
I am definitely looking forward to the updated Blitzkrieg Commander Rules being released.
Take care
Andy
Oddly enough I was thinking about the Commander Stable today and wondered where its going under Pendraken.
I've got all three rule sets as well as loads of minis for all three games that are gathering dust. I used to contribute loads of batreps to the old site and worked on the SCW list in BKC 2. I also contributed the Balkans Lists 1990's which were a free download.
If there's room for an old 'fan boy' I wouldn't mind helping with developments??
Although a bit gamey at times, it still gives a fun game in a short time
I have a problem with how the suppression is dealt.
For me, it should be before actual hits, or, even better, on the same roll than hits (to remove a roll).
Any thoughts ?
That would massively increase the amount of suppressions on AFVs, which if that's what you're after is great :D Means heavy armour is a bit rubbish though, and very easy to "mission kill" during the game?
Will hits stay on in the new version ? :-\
I wasn't happy with "hits stay on", infantry seemed to suffer even more. We've tried "hits stay on" for vehicles which seems to work well though - makes infantry much more resilient and stops you from just driving over the top of them shooting them down.
We do gradual removal of hits. One removed at the end of the turn for standard troops, 2 for elites, none for conscript types. Once you've taken a hit you can never recover the final "hit point." Works for us and simulates binding of wounds, rallying the shaken, rousting out the shirkers and "knowin' where to 'it it wiv' an' 'ammer."
Quote from: Ithoriel on 02 September 2015, 09:45:52 AM
We do gradual removal of hits. One removed at the end of the turn for standard troops, 2 for elites, none for conscript types. Once you've taken a hit you can never recover the final "hit point." Works for us and simulates binding of wounds, rallying the shaken, rousting out the shirkers and "knowin' where to 'it it wiv' an' 'ammer."
I do the same, one hit can never be recovered, and roll a d3 at the end of the turn to see how many hits get recovered, with a +1 penalty in cover like buildings and a -1 in dense terrain like woods to represent less coherency and being harder to rally
I like the simplicity approach, so the idea of leaving a hit on appeals.
Isn't the point about hits though that its less 'damage taken', and more 'sustained pressure sufficient to break the unit'.
So it means you have to concentrate fire to break a unit during a turn, and if you don't it recovers its combat effectiveness.
Interesting to read people's preferences though.
I agree that suppressions are..um...quirky. The flat 'your suppressions come off at the end of your turn' mechanic is a bit flawed in my view.
One thing I was thinking about is that suppression, rather than shutting a unit down completely, should be tied to Command rolls.
Something like;
Any unit taking half its hits or more in a turn is suppressed.
Suppressed units cannot use initiative.
One or more suppressed units included in a command order group imposes -2 command penalty.
A suppressed unit successfully given an order removes its suppression.
I also rather like the idea of a suppressed unit being automatically destroyed by close combat (they surrender or flee).
Does that work? Does it clear out some of the clutter?
Not a bad idea :-\
Suppressed units already get a pretty hefty modifier in close combat and close combat is already pretty bloody...
I'd be disinclined to tinker, as in general it works overall as a system even if some bits don't always feel right on their own.
Only thing I find is despite six hits, infantry are not very resilient unless wedged in heavy buildings or trenches. We've found keeping hits on vehicles seems to address this nicely without any other tweaking...
I have been thinking about letting suppressed infantry act on initiative if possible. A last resistance before they get rolled over or someything :-\
Personally I'd say don't tinker too much at all.
There are lot of people with different house rules to play the game, and you just could not please all of them. Plus there is the possibility that that it's only a vocal minority who want to change things? After all not many people bother posting "I like these rules as they are", they just get on with it!
FWIW, I like the rules as they are! ;)
Just modify the Anti-tank gun rules, then ? ;)
I like the rules as they are too, we use them straigth out of the book in our group.
I just add on/try out new things if i play solo, to keep it interesting. And if i'm short on time i add on the 'hits stay on' rules to have a quicker conclusion.
The only thing we changed was the hit removal system. Although I would like to see helicopters stay on the table in CWC rather than being used as an asset
We've played quite a bit of BKC recently. It works well for big games, it generally keeps moving fairly well. Its definitely a big picture game, not a micro-management game.
With all WM style games a few bad command rolls can really effect part of your force. Bigger games help here as you will have more commanders.
The only house rule we play with is a limit of a maximum of 3 command rolls per commander per turn. To try to stop to many moves from one formation on a roll of lucky dice rolling.
Hits coming off at the end of a turn, is quite a key mechanism. I wouldn't like to remove d3, it would take an age to do all the dice rolling. Could go with removing a fixed number at the end of a turn. Its annoying to put a pile of fire on a heavy tank unit, and have it save just enough hits to be able to survive, and then be unscathed the next turn.
Having hits come off, does mean you tend to clump formations together so you can pour lots of attacks into a single unit to kill it. This feels rather un-historic.
We run it
Elite remove 3 regular 2 and green 1 and you take an extra one off if in cover and or not in sight of the enemy
We ignored things like cover. In cover the shaken recover faster, the shirkers find more places to hide. Under fire some hug the dirt but some of those "'ittin' it wiv an 'ammer" are motivated to strike hard, fast and true. We reckoned it evened out and kept things simple.
Yeah, I'd keep it as simple as possible with minimal extra "book keeping".
My "desire" for hits stay on was solely to bump up infantry - they just didn't feel resilient enough compared to AFVs. So AFVs retaining hits represents the cumulative accumulation of relatively minor damage that mounts up to render the vehicle a kill; infantry can pull themselves together, bandage up or grab a chap from the rear echelon once there's a bit of a lull so their hits still come off end of turn.
TBH we've been pretty exclusively played AVBCW sort of stuff, where it's actually less needed - almost all the AFVs are three hit, save six "wonders", as opposed to later war monsters! Or in CWC Abrams and Challies ;)
I've always felt that BKC, like Warmaster before it, got the right result for the wrong reasons but that that was infinitely preferable to the reverse :)
Double deffo agreed 100% :D
It's something that comes up often, and it's why I'm generally against tweaking rules sets these days - that days of me wanting to wade thru highly developed massively complex subsystems within games to track things that aren't relevant and which usually produce results that actually aren't "right" anyway are long gone :D
Quote from: fred 12df on 02 September 2015, 07:54:53 PM
The only house rule we play with is a limit of a maximum of 3 command rolls per commander per turn. To try to stop to many moves from one formation on a roll of lucky dice rolling.
How does that affect the capacity of units to destroy high-hit units like infantry?
Its hard enough to accrue hits, but limiting it to 3 shots seems to me to make high-hit units much more resilient. Do you find that?
Fair point, this might explain the clumping of units to concentrate fire.
But I'm not sure how often this comes into play with command 8 HQ, as they tend to fail their command rolls a lot. It really comes into play with the CV10 HQs who often seem to get off big strings of orders.
It seems to be more of a 'feel' thing rather than something we have fully thought through, as most of our players seem to get slightly embarrassed with too many activations from a formation.
Quote from: Leon on 05 August 2015, 04:22:18 PM
And we might look at adding the old pdf's to Wargame Vault at some point.
8)
Oooh, that would be dead handy. Just discovered the existence of these rules, and the associated AVBCW lists, Don't mind getting physical copies, but much prefer PDFs as a first choice.
- Neil.