All,

"Please don't give formations one free movement."
Just so we're all on the same page, I only mentioned that as an optional rule.

And Toxicpixie, I like you're breakdown for 'stay-on hits,' pretty cool.  I like the 'armor on, infantry off,' in particular.

I'd never really given any thought regarding the FO on flank marches, just put him with his supported unit.  Guess I was playing it wrong technical, but, as you pointed out, that's what happens in real life.

Regarding recon: I only have BKCII, not CWC (I was about to purchase the PDF when Pete put up the message about it no longer being available; now it looks like I've got to wait unti 2016).  I've always heard CWC has some cool recon rules.  Maybe those are worth taking a look at?

Regarding the Stuarts vs Jagdtigers: "...with an optic or two damaged by lucky hits and a couple of crew injured by spalling, that discretion was the better part of valour..."

I could also see it as two German tank commanders seeing a battalion of Stuarts and realizing what must be right behind them, as well as over them (in the form of air/arty), and deciding to mix it up for a second so they could say they did their duty, then get the heck out of dodge.  But I get that that's too abstract for some folks.

I also agree with Sane Max about having unit min/maxes in the Army lists.  I mean, I get what Pbeccas is saying about working it out with your buddies, but if you can do that you don't need Army lists to begin with. 

Regarding Army lists, has anyone looked at it from an order of battle standpoint?  I mean, instead of points values, why not use those pages to say 'x' country can field an infantry regiment, a tank regiment, an armored brigade, or a mechanized brigade.  Here's how many stands of each kind of unit each of those has, to include arty support.  Then you dice for division/corps and air support.  And if you're really cool, you could even dice for campaign wear and tear, i.e., roll a D6 for each battalion: 5-6= full strength, 3-4= -1 stand per battalion, 1-2= -2 stands per battalion and that battalion's HQ is -1 CV for the game. 

Or something like that.  The T/O part is basically what Pendraken has already done with its BKC armies, right?

V/R,
Jack

Jack - CWC has the same roughly Recce rules as BKCII. I'll post the amended rules we used for the small game the other week. That is when I get round to it.

IanS

Ian,

Ahh, okay.  Sorry, not sure where I came up with the idea that CWC had different recon rules than BKC    I am prone to just making stuff up every now and again  

"I'll post the amended rules we used for the small game the other week."

That would be much appreciated, Sir.

V/R,
Jack

First Tiger lost to enemy action was taken out by a pair of British 6pdr A/T guns.

Even Jagdtigers aren't immortal and late war German armour plate is far more susceptible to cracking and flaking than early/ mid-war stuff.

No personal experience but from my reading and from talking to one or two who had, pour enough fire into armour and crews become reluctant to wait and see if something bigger is incoming.

Jagdtiger crews were frequently undertrained and the vehicles were massively unreliable.

In order to fire accurately after traversing more than a short distance across rough terrain the gun/ optics needed recalibrated. Plus a crewman had to exit the vehicle and set up the gun for firing or the recoil was in danger of dismounting the gun.

At least one Jagdtiger was lost because the commander panicked and turned the vehicle to present it's weaker side and rear armour to the enemy. Turned round to run away and got the entire crew killed.

Several broke down and were abandoned while manoeuvring to attack.

Several refused to fire on American/ British armour for fear of attracting artillery or air attack.

One of the seventy odd built was lost because a Volksturm unit knocked it out with a panzerfaust because they'd never seen one before!! That's like a 1.5% chance of your tank spontaneously combusting!

So many reasons that Stuarts vs Jagdtigers isn't a foregone conclusion.

I don't want a slew of special rules to cover all this, BKC II does a fine job with the mechanisms it already has. As said before, right result for the wrong reasons trumps wrong result for the right reasons in my book!

"Several refused to fire on American/ British armour for fear of attracting artillery or air attack."

YES!  That is exactly the thought process I was getting at when the Jagdtigers saw a battalion of Stuarts on the way.

"Hey, those sure are little tanks, with even littler guns, but I bet they have radios and a whole lot of friends about." 

V/R,
Jack

OK - this is what we used. The ECM is probably a bit higher level than here, and could  be ignored. However Recce support is fine, use it for the soviet T-34 platoons, and US cav Troop M3/5/24/8 Lt tanks and HMC's

Recce rules are as follows, just adds a bit more to Ians summary. They are presented below for players to familiarise themselves.

Move : roll a d6. You can make this number of normal movement 'hops' anytime during the command phase. So you can move first or last, or anything in between. Normally you move either to provoke Opp fire [and hence reveal units] or wait until it has been used and then move safely. Unless you roll crap, you can go almost anywhere. 6 x 30 cm is a long way.

Communicate - roll a d6. 1 is auto failure. Otherwise : succeed up to 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 cm distance to the nearest enemy unit. LOS is NOT required. If you succeed you can choose to bolster the CV of the nearest commander by +1, or allow an FAO to direct fire against that unit, or allow an FAC to direct a strike against that unit, or reveal a concealed unit to the rest of your army - which can then shoot at it if given a successful order and units have LOS.

Recce ignore other recce - you can't use them to target each other.
Recce never receive orders, so command distance is irrelevant.
Recce always count one cover class better vs direct fire. No benefit vs indirect fire.
Recce cannot initiate close assault
Recce fight vs close assault like all other troops
Recce can support other troops in close assault and may use response fire like other troops.
You can never boost any commander's CV by more than +1
Recce obey the movement rules for their normal movement -foot or wheels or tracks or whatever

Electronic Warfare Unit
The electronic warfare unit may be attached to any one command (i.e. to any battlegroup led by a CO unit). The unit is treated like a specialised Recce unit. It may act in one of two modes:

ECCM Mode - using a recce action in the Initiative Phase it may roll 1d6. On a score of 6 all command units in the battlegroup add +1 to their CV for the remainder of the turn.

ECM Mode - using a recce action in the Initiative Phase it may roll 1d6. On a score of 6 all enemy command units within 50cm of the EW unit deduct +1 to their CV for the whole of the following player turn.

The unit is treated as the appropriate type of vehicle for the base model (e.g. if the model is a modified Ural 375 truck, use the hits and save value of a truck unit).

Note that this is a Recce Action. The Recce rules on page 10 apply.

As well as these rules there are also rules for units that are classed as Recce Support. The rules for these are as follows:-

Recce Support units are allowed to communicate as an initiative action but should have line of sight to the target unit as they are a solid unit not a representation as a recce stand is. They are not allowed to spot and do not receive the multiple moves. They move as per a regular CWC unit. Recce support does not suffer from command distance penalties.

Comments welcome - but will be ignored, particularly if from foreigners, or Runcorn. Seriously they do work, but need some refining I think.

IanS

Quote from: bigjackmac on 05 October 2015, 04:15:23 PM
Regarding Army lists, has anyone looked at it from an order of battle standpoint?  I mean, instead of points values, why not use those pages to say 'x' country can field an infantry regiment, a tank regiment, an armored brigade, or a mechanized brigade.  Here's how many stands of each kind of unit each of those has, to include arty support.  Then you dice for division/corps and air support.  And if you're really cool, you could even dice for campaign wear and tear, i.e., roll a D6 for each battalion: 5-6= full strength, 3-4= -1 stand per battalion, 1-2= -2 stands per battalion and that battalion's HQ is -1 CV for the game. 

The first part of this was more in BKC1 which had nice little tables giving the Order of Battles of various formations - it wasn't comphrensive, but certainly gave you a good idea. I think these were dropped due to space constraints in BKC2, as the army lists got a lot longer.

True proble. With including g comprehensive real world or ate is they varied so much. Both officially and unofficially, and from unit to unit - the peculiarities of British (not even commonwealth!) low level tank organisation is In the discussion above. And that's just one small part of o e army in a very general sense...

You need a whole other book for them... The notes in BKC 2 cover them effectively enough with the army lists/theatre selectors providing some more structure. That's enough to give you a generic organisation AND it's enough to give you the flexibility to model a specific unit at a specific time even if you do t just say "hang it" and play a strictly historical game with the strength return of the formations on that specific moment!

Again I'd suggest a rebrand and a touch up, not a major change. The rules work, they produce a mostly reasonable result from the over view and are very flexible. Friction is built in without being restrictive or complex. Average results occur usually with the odd extreme but nothing too swingy. Ok, so I might not like everything but the overall result is decent.

CWC on the other hand is in need of more serious tweaking to bring it into line with the above

I agree that the rules are essentially fine. There is always going to be some compromise. 

Just follow the wargamers adage "If you don't like the rule - adapt it yourself".  That is essentially what most of the above comments are saying.

We have a rule at our club - The one putting on the scenario states what tweaks are in this game - ie - HMG can surpress tanks, hits stay on etc. We then just play them.

I think thet the rules need a few clarifications and rebranding. People who play with BKC2  like the rules otherwise like LH they would not play them.  If you change them too much you get another set of rules. This means running the risk that people will not bother to upgrade if they do not like the new changes.

Martin at Peter Pig did this with his last "tweak of AK47" he tweaked it so much it became another set.  Lots of peoplke did not like them and stuck with the old set. 

Quote from: bigjackmac on 05 October 2015, 04:15:23 PM

Regarding Army lists, has anyone looked at it from an order of battle standpoint? 

Very much so.  We play most of our games using order of battle rather than the BKC point system.  We use the free lists, scenarios and campaigns on the Fire and Fury Battlefront WWII wargame rules website.  Battlefront WWII has a similar scale where a stand = a platoon, and a tank represent 3 or 4 tanks.   The lists work really well with BKCII.  Sometimes you may need to tweak a scenario by adding a HQ but generally the cross over is good.

Quote from: Just a few Orcs on 05 October 2015, 07:59:52 PM

Martin at Peter Pig did this with his last "tweak of AK47" he tweaked it so much it became another set.  Lots of peoplke did not like them and stuck with the old set. 

That's a great example of the over tweak.  AK47 went from a brilliant set of rules to a crazy cat set of rules.  So we stuck with the old version. 

What i would like to see, is a small note on the composition of a bataillion for the army list you are using.


For example, if you look at the online battlegroup builder and you choose a british airborne army in 44, the following shows up on your army sheet under special rules:

-A Para Battalion is composed of an HQ, an MG Platoon, Mortar Platoon and three Companies of 3 Platoons.
-An Air Landing Battalion is composed of an HQ (including a Recce Platoon and Pioneer Platoon), three Companies of 4 Platoons plus a Mortar Section, and a Support Company.



Putting this in the army list gives you a quick idea about the composition of your force, without doing any research!

While this would be great, its a lot of work to compile the data.

And as can be seen from your two examples its actually quite hard to present this data in a consistent format.

And the airborne example is perhaps the most straight forward as there are only 2 battalions.

For British NWE, you would have 5 different battalion structures within an armoured division (excluding the artillery) and I think the independent tank brigades used a slightly different structure again.

While this would be cool - I just think it would be really hard to do. To a degree the force limits try to suggest these kind of structures, but struggle to do so due to the huge variety of kit and formations.

Quote from: petercooman on 05 October 2015, 09:19:10 PM
What i would like to see, is a small note on the composition of a bataillion for the army list you are using.


For example, if you look at the online battlegroup builder and you choose a british airborne army in 44, the following shows up on your army sheet under special rules:

-A Para Battalion is composed of an HQ, an MG Platoon, Mortar Platoon and three Companies of 3 Platoons.
-An Air Landing Battalion is composed of an HQ (including a Recce Platoon and Pioneer Platoon), three Companies of 4 Platoons plus a Mortar Section, and a Support Company.



Putting this in the army list gives you a quick idea about the composition of your force, without doing any research!

My notes for the two para battalions have the following listed

Para =  HQ, 9 x Inf, 1 x MMG, 1 x Mortar, 1 x 6pdr and 1 x Eng
Air Landing = HQ, 12* x Inf, 2 x MMG, 3 x Mortar, 2 x 6pdr and 1 x Eng

AL was 4 coy of 4 pltns - but the pltns were quite low strength, so I have gone with 12 stands to represent them. Some of the MGs could be 20mm AA guns, but these were little used.

Quote from: fred    12df on 05 October 2015, 09:52:26 PM
While this would be great, its a lot of work to compile the data.

And as can be seen from your two examples its actually quite hard to present this data in a consistent format.

And the airborne example is perhaps the most straight forward as there are only 2 battalions.

For British NWE, you would have 5 different battalion structures within an armoured division (excluding the artillery) and I think the independent tank brigades used a slightly different structure again.

While this would be cool - I just think it would be really hard to do. To a degree the force limits try to suggest these kind of structures, but struggle to do so due to the huge variety of kit and formations.

Well, they don't have to be completely perfect,and able to cover all structures, but i was thinking more as an example to have a rough guideline of what was commonly used, and change it up yourself to represent 'wear and tear' on the battaillion (or reinforcments)