In surfing the wargaming internet sites, I noted there were lots of inquiries from novice wargamers who asked “With what set of modern rules is it best to start out?” My own answer is, of course, the Simon rules… any ol’ Simon rules… but I declined to answer, meanwhile noting that while many of the replies referenced different sets of rules on the market, in particular, one set was much called on, A FISTFULL OF TOWS (AFT), written by Ty Beard and Dave Burnett, for battles occurring during the years 1960 to 2010.
I downloaded AFT… there were several versions available. The first was termed AFT LITE, a very short 2-page manual, which looked absolutely useless. Exit AFT LITE. A 50 page version was next, and there was yet another, larger, version. There was even an advertisement for the sale of the rules… which gave rise to the question of why the authors provided them on the internet if they wanted to sell them.
I set up a game for two people per side. AFT’s scale is rather vast… apparently, it was originally created for microarmor… and 1 inch represents 100 meters (a football field). I chose to place my 20mm troops on the field… and decided to distort the scale a wee bit.
For example, an AFT infantry stand, representing a platoon, has a small arms range of 6 inches, while it moves 3 inches. This was kinda small for the 20mm figures on the table, so I “opened up” the game. My infantry moved 10 inches, and their range went out to 20 inches.
I did the same for the other troop types and weapons. The AFT charts were numerous and filled page after page… there were to-hit numbers (using 6-sided dice), and armor values, and weapon ranges, and penetration values, and movement rates, and rates of fire, and these went on and on… for all nationalities, and all armored weapons, and for all years, ranging from the 1960s to the present.
It reminded me of the huge number of wonderful tables in NAPOLEON’S BATTLES, listing every nitty-gritty parameter you can think of. Are tables of this sort accurate? Who cares?… as long as an author lists a number as a parameter, wargamers will buy it.
What I was primarily interested in was the inter-reaction between the sides in the sequence of play. And I figured that if I changed the scale of the relative weaponry effect a wee bit… not too much, just a wee bit… I wouldn’t lose too much in trying to judge the playability of the rules, and how the sides responded to each other. I also decided to switch to 10-sided dice, and avoid the 6-siders specified in AFT. Here’s an armor table I drew up for the sides, following the guidelines of AFT.
| Type | Close Range | Armor Value | Penetration | Rate of Fire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Flank | ||||
| Bradley | 6 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 4 |
| Hvy Tank | 10 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 2 |
| Lt Tank | 8 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 3 |
| Anti-Tank | 10 | NA | NA | 8 | 3 |
To use this armor table, the firing sequence had several phases:
- (a) First, look at the rate-of-fire column and toss that number of to-hit dice. The actual impact number was a function of range and cover. The anti-tank gun would, for example, toss 3 impact dice. Notice I said “impact”… we haven’t reached the actual to-hit number.
(b) Now look at the penetration of the weapon compared to the target armor. If the anti-tank gun fired at the flank of a light tank, the penetration value is 8, the flank armor of the tank is 3.
(c) For each successful impact in step (a), toss a number of dice equal to the difference between the penetration and armor value. Here, the difference is 8-3, or 5, so the anti-tank gun would toss 5 dice for every hit registered in step (a). These dice are the actual to-hit dice.
(d) In the original AFT, a toss of a 6 on any of the to-hit dice indicated the target was destroyed. In going to 10-siders, I changed that to a toss of a 10, i.e., 10 percent chance of instant destruction.
(e) In the original AFT, a toss of 4 or 5 required what the authors termed a “quality check”, a morale test, of the targeted unit. In going to the 10-siders, my version stated that a toss of 7, 8 or 9 required the quality check.
(f) The quality check was taken at the end of the fire phase. Here, the stand that tested looked at its status… green, average, veteran, or elite. In the original AFT, a result of anything but a 6 for a green stand, infantry or armor, and the stand was removed. This was pretty tough on the green troops. Veteran troops required a 3 or more to pass, but they were given a +1 on their 6-sided die. For simplicity, most of the troops in my presentation had to toss a 10-sider and, to pass, get anything but a 1, i.e., 10 percent chance to fail a morale test and to be destroyed each time a stand was hit. There was one modifier… for each of the hits in step (e), a +1 would be added to the die roll.
The quality check was the name of the game in AFT. Any stand that didn’t pass was destroyed. The above listing of steps (a) through (f) didn’t apply to anti-infantry fire. Here, a simple toss of 6 or more on a 10-sider by the firing stand caused a hit, and the target would take its quality check.
Note, therefore, that there were two ways to destroy an armored stand. First, when armor fired, a result of 10 on a to-hit die caused the target to blow up. A second possibility occurred when the target failed its quality check… POOF!… here, too, it disappeared.
But for an infantry stand, the only way to destroy it was to have it fail the quality check.
Jim Butters faced Cliff Sayre. Cliff had a slightly larger force… he was the attacker and Jim had already noted where, on the field, he had placed a couple of his units in ambush. The remainder of Jim’s troops would come onto the field in subsequent turns.
Cliff moved all of his units on. On his left flank, he had 2 Bradleys, each carrying one stand of infantry. A stand of infantry is a platoon, a Bradley represents around 4 or 5 vehicles, so that Cliff’s left flank force consisted of a small, 2-platoon company.
Normally, in the half-bound, AFT allows the active side to move, and then to fire, and it’s then that the non-active side fires. But the half-turn before, the now non-active side could have given his units “overwatch orders”. Which means that instead of waiting until after the active side moves and fires, the units on overwatch can blast away now, before the active side blasts away. And so, on Cliff’s left flank, as one of his Bradleys move up, it was targeted by an anti-tank gun of Jim’s which had been placed on overwatch. The range was 22 inches, and as indicated in the explanation I gave above, concerning armor-vs-armor fire, the chart says that the anti-tank gun tossed 3 impact dice, since its rate of fire was 3. At 22 inches, medium range, Jim was looking for a 7, 8, 9, or 10 to produce an impact. He got two impacts out of his 3 dice.
Now we examined the difference between the firing unit’s penetration value and the target’s armor. The Bradley’s front armor was a 5, the anti-tank gun’s penetration was an 8. The difference was 8-5, or 3, hence each of the two impact dice “blossomed out” into 3 potential hits, and Jim took a total of 6 to-hit dice, tossed ‘em and looked for either a 10 (see step (d) in the explanation), or a 7, 8, or 9 (see step (e) in the explanation).
One of Jim’s dice was a 10… BLAM!… the Bradley vanished… including all the infantry still riding inside. Cliff quickly learned that Jim’s anti-tank guns were certain death on Bradleys. On his next move phase, as Cliff’s force advanced, he mandated that all the infantry aboard the Bradleys get out… fast! He had another company of Bradleys on his right flank. When he did dismount the troops, he actually got a slight advantage, for then he obtained two units… one was the infantry platoon, and the other was the Bradley itself, a complete fighting platform. Note in the armor chart that the Bradley’s rate of fire is a hellacious 4… hence it tosses 4 impact dice. And its penetration value is a 5, so that it could penetrate anything except a heavy tank’s frontal armor.
And also note that the armor chart given above is my own concoction. The AFT tables and charts, for every weapon in the world, were all listed for the use of 6-sided dice, and, in truth, it made me dizzy trying to interpret the rows and columns of numbers. Several of the parameters appeared to be undefined (perhaps you get an explanation if you purchase the rules instead of downloading them), and so I “winged it”, and the above armor chart is the result.
Another item I didn’t understand was how artillery worked… there was a phase for bringing in off-board fire (with a 1-turn delay), but the method of how it impacted on the target remained a mystery. And a third mysterious item was the “overwatch” business. The first time I saw the overwatch employed was in the science-fiction rules of GDW. There, if you had a unit on overwatch, its penalty was that it couldn’t move on its own side’s movement phase. Here, too, the rules said that a unit on overwatch couldn’t move… but there didn’t seem to be an appropriate movement phase on which to be penalized… I feel certain that if I read the rules an additional 10 times, I’ll understand it all.
AFT has a huge casualty rate going for it, what with all the to-hit dice being tossed. Cliff’s comment was that the “slightly larger” force he was given as the attacker was way too small to produce any effective result. AFT needs odds of at least 2-to-1 for an attacker to win.
In all, Jim and Cliff and I were pleased with the AFT concepts… more later on AFT.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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