Apart from becoming targets do trucks actually serve any purpose in BKC4 on the tabletop
Depending upon the scenario, I've found them useful to getting troops forward or on and off table quickly, towing guns etc. Hope this helps?
I'd have to state the obvious one of transporting your troops to where they need to be. Obviously try and utilise some cover and don't drive them in range and LOS of something that will shoot them up.
Thats OK when you have terrain or over but on the Eastern Front some of the terrain is very flat as it the deserts of Egypt and Libya in lots of places. Plus if the defender has FAO in position in camouflaged pits etc it can make avoiding artillery fire impossible to ignore!
If it's important to get the troops forward quickly then a smoke barrage may provide some cover in open terrain...
On the old forum it was much discussed that the troops would normally have debussed 'off table' for many of the scenarios, given the 'scale' a normal 6' x 4' table represents. So I tend to use them as mentioned rather than for purely transporting troops. However as you say for the Western Desert or Russia, they tend to have more use, but are very vulnerable to fire.
I've only used an earlier version of BKC but if you can't use soft skinned vehicles, or any other kit for that matter, as they were used historically, then there is something wrong with the rules.
Hi
Totally agree with John on this one, but strangely I was loath to post anything negative about BKC on this forum. :(
Cheers Paul
Quote from: John Cook on 01 October 2021, 01:45:50 AM
I've only used an earlier version of BKC but if you can't use soft skinned vehicles, or any other kit for that matter, as they were used historically, then there is something wrong with the rules.
But historically Trucks (& other soft-skins) were really vulnerable - they have no defensive value - not even against small arms - but they can move your infantry & infantry support up at speed.
As Steve has stated mostly the infantry did not drive around in them - in open terrain - anywhere near an active battlefront, as they were just mobile coffins if hit.
As stated above - they are great for moving infantry & infantry support teams quickly - on good roads - in terrain that gives them some cover. Or to tow artillery or AT guns at the rear of the line. They are also relatively cheap and are also expendable (from a rules perspective) so don't add to or count towards the army break-point.
The idea that they'd be out in the open on an exposed Russian steppe or North African desert battlefield is not historically accurate. Despite what other sets of rules might have us think.
Yes, soft-skinned vehicles were vulnerable, the clue is in the name I suppose. If people use them as APCs then the problem is 'operator error' not the rules.
Of course, soft-skins have many applications other than providing a taxi-service for the infantry but anything post 1940 is foreign country to me. Trucks were not used to take infantry into contact in either the Spanish Civil War, the Russo/Japanese border wars or the early WW2 campaigns in France and the Low Countries. They were a means of transporting infantry quickly from A to B, if they were lucky. Most of the time, most infantry seemed to march even in the BEF, which was supposed to be fully motorised.
The use of points for armies is an unnecessary restriction, in my view, which I always ignored as I prefer games that are scenario based rather than constrained by some artificial mechanism, and if you are running a campaign, you can't predict the sizes of opposing armies anyway, they do that for themselves.
When we played our campaign we had "inter turns" sequence, when the motorized infantry could move further.
(During the battle, the trucks had to be on the table, and often hide behind hills / forests etc.)
It adds options while building campaign armies.
Quote from: ronan on 01 October 2021, 04:10:22 PM
When we played our campaign we had "inter turns" sequence, when the motorized infantry could move further.
(During the battle, the trucks had to be on the table, and often hide behind hills / forests etc.)
It adds options while building campaign armies.
That sounds like a really interesting idea Ronan - a sort of 'Logistics Phase' - I like it :D
In WW2 infantry were "motorised" in that soft skins took them to the Forming up place (FUP). Usually just out of killing ground and preferably in dead ground/ cover. Transport could be redeployed to ferry other troops/logistics. It is often forgotten on the wargames table that ammo is finite and its exhaustion can lose a firefight.
The post war APC was a battlefield taxi with sufficient light armour to survive small arms, but infantry still debussed and fought on foot.
The development of the MICV such as the Soviet BMP-1 was hailed as the next step whereby infantry would safely fight from within the vehicle. This tactical doctrine was proven to be heresy in the Yom Kippur war. No MICV can survive even obsolete AT weapons designed to destroy even MBT's. This increase in infantry firepower could render MICV and APCs as vulnerable as solfskins in the killing ground.
My comrades who fought in the Afghan can testify how vulnerable a "snatch Rover" was and that even a couple of GPMGs is no protection.
Yes, on the table softskins can suffer- but remember you can use them as decoy ducks to distract from more critical targets.