Forgotten War scenarios

[Sean Clark]

Chip Yong Ni requires 51 Chinese infantry companies. The UN forces get a bit of artillery but only half a dozen or so infantry companies.

I'd be interested to hear how this scenario played out in playtesting. Was each base a company, or did you go with 3 platoons to a company  therefore needing 153 Chinese infantry bases?!?

Also, the maps are a little unclear. There are no keys as such and look to have been directly lifted from modern day maps with modern road networks on.

I appreciate the Korean landscape is probably not that interesting  but I'm struggling to decipher what is what with regards to elevation/hills etc and any kind of vegetation  difficult ground or villages.

Can anyone help?

[Leon]

Chip Yong Ni requires 51 Chinese infantry companies. The UN forces get a bit of artillery but only half a dozen or so infantry companies.

I'd be interested to hear how this scenario played out in playtesting. Was each base a company, or did you go with 3 platoons to a company  therefore needing 153 Chinese infantry bases?!?

Also, the maps are a little unclear. There are no keys as such and look to have been directly lifted from modern day maps with modern road networks on.

I appreciate the Korean landscape is probably not that interesting  but I'm struggling to decipher what is what with regards to elevation/hills etc and any kind of vegetation  difficult ground or villages.

I'd have to ask Rob (one of the authors) about the playtesting side of things, although he's probably not played it through with that many bases on the table!  He'd done similar scenarios for a different ruleset a few years back so he's brought some of that over to ours.  I know that he tried to choose very different engagements to make it more interesting.

As for the maps, they're present day topographical maps with an approximate outline of the troop positions.  There's a few reasons for this:

- Firstly we had someone lined up to make the maps for us but they dropped out and left us in the lurch.  I ended up having to drive to Rob's house with my laptop the day before we went to print, in order to get something sorted and into the book.  These were from a military maps site and were the best option available to us.

- Maps are also expensive.  The maps in our SCW book cost over £1000 so even after 3 years of sales we're still running at a loss on that book.

- And lastly, there's a lack of accurate info for most of the engagements so a lot of the maps you can find online are best estimates as to who was where.  There's a few good maps that have been produced for books on the period but not for all the scenarios we were looking for, and it would have been impossible to try and license any of those in time for printing.

For Chip-Yong Ni in particular, the important features are the north-south road that runs from inside-top-left to mid-bottom-right, like an extended S shape.  And then the higher ground that the Chinese units are occupying around the village. 

I think the Leeds club were tempted to give it a go on a massive table and see how long the UN forces could last!

[Raider4]

Maps are also expensive.  The maps in our SCW book cost over £1000 so even after 3 years of sales we're still running at a loss on that book.

Ouch! Well that doesn't sound good  .

[Sean Clark]

Gosh. That is expensive. The ones in Libertad look nice, but I imagine something more basic as seen in most other scenario type books would be accepted by the masses - especially if it makes a big saving on production costs. We'd all rather Pendraken had the money for new ranges/expansions I'm sure!

The Forgotten War book is lovely and will be an invaluable resource. I'm making plans and qondering whether to dip my toe into the demo game world just to show off the figures and period 😀

[Leon]

We really need to find a reliable but cost-efficient graphic designer for some of these maps, as the costs for them can vary massively.  I think there's a lot less info for both the SCW and Korean War than there would be for something like Vietnam or Arab-Israel, so if we do supplement books for those in future it shouldn't require as much research time (and conjecture potentially).

[Sean Clark]

Agreed Leon. Wargamers dont need hyper real maps to lay out a gaming table. Something drawn in MS Paint can suffice. The simpler the better really, identifying the key terrain features is all that is needed. We gamers can then add in all the little detail pieces we like to do like bits of scrub and rocks or fences.

There is a great video on the Little Wars TV channel showing how to use Paint for simple maps.

[pierre the shy]

Agreed Leon. Wargamers dont need hyper real maps to lay out a gaming table. Something drawn in MS Paint can suffice. The simpler the better really, identifying the key terrain features is all that is needed. We gamers can then add in all the little detail pieces we like to do like bits of scrub and rocks or fences.

There is a great video on the Little Wars TV channel showing how to use Paint for simple maps.

Thanks for posting that Sean, probably the most useful youtube video I have watched for a LONG time 

He makes it look very easy but I agree totally that paint is not ideal, but very easy to use to make all sorts of maps/banners/flags/counters with a bit of practice/patience (and a bit of artistic licence ).

[Sean Clark]

It is remarkably easy to get decent results very quickly. I knocked something up within a few mintues that was quite respectable. With a bit of practice, you can end up with something really quite professional looking.