To begin with, I must note that there is no set of rules more likely to produce a fiery discussion around the gaming table than a set of modern rules dealing with WWII and up.
All other eras are approached differently. For example, most of the time, one can bull one's way through a set of ancients rules... after all, you weren't there, and ;L wasn't there, and whatever historical, on-the-spot, documentation is to be found, was written by biased, quite partisan observers, each with his own particular point to put across.
Which means that to prove a point in your own set of rules, all you have to do is dig up the source that backs up your own theory, and ignore all the others, and shout quite loudly and convincingly at tableside. And this holds true for ancients, and medieval warfare, and the English Civil War, and Marlborian warfare, and the Seven Years War, and for Napoleonics. And for those who disagree and wish to debate the point, before we start our discussion, first tell me if, circa 1807, the French attacked in line or column. You cite your source, and I'll cite mine.
But, as I said, modern warfare rules are looked at differently. Everyone at tableside is an expert and everyone knows more than the rules' author. This is in the natural - order of things, for we've all seen real-life tanks and half- tracks and artillery on television, and we've all seen the Germans bash the Poles, and the Americans bash the Germans, and the Israelis bash the Egyptians, and the Iranians and Iraqis bash each other... why shouldn't we all be experts?
At our PW group get-togethers, I have noted that it takes a strong man to present a set of modern rules and, at the same time, hold off the opposition. While games set in other eras flow quite evenly and smoothly, it turns out that in a modern era game, the mildest, most even-tempered players are given to having instant fits, and frothing at the mouth, and rolling of the eyes, and throwing of the dice. I have seen the most mild mannered players turn beet red, and grind their teeth, and even I, lovable Unca Wally, on occasion will lie down on the floor and kick my feet in the air (I exaggerate to prove the point).
All this is by way of introduction to ARMOR PLUS, which started life on this planet as ARMOR ONE, wended its way through ARMOR FIVE, got up to about ARMOR TEN, and now, for all eternity, has been given the "PLUS" designation.
There are two key aspects to ARMOR PLUS (henceforth, for brevity, referred to as AP); the first concerns the casualty/damage calculations, the other concerns the sequence. From the outset, I have always been satisfied with the procedures relating to firing and assessing the effect on the target. In contrast, from the outset, I have always been dissatisfied with the sequence.
As stated in the original article on the ARMOR ONE rules in the REVIEW of September, 1989, there is a simple acquisition procedure when firing, which, if successful, is followed by the draw of a Loss/Damage card. The cards, some twenty of them... about ten for infantry as a target, and another ten for armor as a target ... denote the number of Strength Points lost by the target unit.
On each card is a matrix which relates the type of firing weapon to the type of target. Figure 1 shows a typical Armor Target card, illustrating the various configurations which can arise when firing at an armored vehicle. Each target has a different number of Strength Points, ranging from 20 for a heavy tank, to 7 for a halftrack.
Once the target is acquired, the umpire simply picks a card from the deck, cross-indexes the firing weapon with the type of target, and reads off the target's point loss. The target then tests to see if it is pinned (40 percent chance) and the next firing weapon is looked at.
The procedure is quick, and the intent is to avoid the time consuming calculations concerned with the caliber of the firing weapon, the target's armor thickness, the angle of its armor, its aspect, its movement rate, and so on. Range is factored in by simply subtracting, from the target's loss, the ten's digit of the range measurement... if, for example, the card indicates a 7 point loss to the target, and the range is 34 inches, then 7-3 equals 4, and the resultant loss in Strength Points is 4.
| Weapon | TYPE OF ARMORED TARGET | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hvy Tank/ Pillbox | Med Tank/ Aircraft |
Lt. Tank/ Airc | Arm Pers Carrier | Soft Veh. | |
| Hvy Gun | 5 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 3 |
| Med Gun | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 5 |
| Lt Gun | 3 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 2 |
| A/T Gun | 9 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 4 |
| Inf Gun | 8 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
In effect, what the cards do is combine the data f rom one huge chart.... normally accounting for all the parameters involved in firing, and requiring-the final result to be adjusted by all sorts of positive and negative modifiers... into a series of easily referenced teeny-weeny charts on each of which the effect of the modifiers is already "built in". I am noted for continually bemoaning the use of any charts at tableside, and this is one instance in which I bow my head, and acknowledge the inevitable.
Whatever, use of the cards makes the game flow that much more efficiently and variations on this theme have been satisfactorially and successfully incorporated into games of other eras. Now we come to the AP sequence... not a satisfactorial development at all.
ARMOR ONE started out with the simple A-move/B-Fire/B-Move/A- Fire alternate sequence. All elements on one side moved together, and all fired together. However, what with the chaos of modern communications problems, continually firing weapons, long ranges, rapid movement, etc., a sequence in which the entire fire effect of one side could be so synchronized and controlled and coordinated so effectively didn't appeal to me... it was, if you will pardon my use of the term, not at all "realistic".
And so I sought to break the sequence up... not all weapons would f ire at the same time, nor would all elements move at the same time. Here, a card deck was used..-. each card in the Movement Deck specified a different type of element to be moved... "wheeled vehicles move 8 inches", or "medium tanks move 6 inches", etc. Give wheeled vehicles 4 cards and medium tanks 3 cards, and their movement rates during the bound become 32 inches and 18 inches, respectively.
This solves the movement problem quite nicely, and now the issue at hand focuses on how to intersperse firing procedures with the movement increments. A unit can't fire every time its movement card is drawn because the rate of fire of its weaponry is completely independent of its movement rate.
What to do? Create a "Fire Deck", of course. Each card designates a particular weapon to be fired. Even better, the weapons of both sides can fire simultaneously... "All medium guns fire", or "All anti-tank guns fire".
This works fine, since, just as is done in the Movement Deck, faster firing weapons can have more cards in the Fire Deck. But it brings up a question of balance between movement and firing. we now have two decks from which we draw alternately... some elements move, then some fire, then some move, etc. With multiple firing, i.e., weapons firing on more than one card during the bound, then if the fire effect per card is too great, by the end of the bound, we've wiped out all the engaged forces, and we have an extremely short game. Conversely, with too small a fire effect, the game goes on interminably.
67 Variations on a Theme
ARMOR ONE through TEN employed sixty-seven variations on the above theme, trying to attain game balance. Many worked, some didn't, but, still, it always seemed as if there must be a better way.
And I was not the only one toying with an armor game; the other fellas in the group were also at work. Brian Dewitt produced a set, Fred Hubig designed one, Fred Haub is, purportedly, in the throes of coming out with one. As indicated in the introduction to this piece, we all had deleterious things to say about each other's versions. In fact, the nicest thing that I can recall that anyone said about anyone else's product was something to the effect: "It needs work!" As stated, each one of us is a self proclaimed expert in WWII warfare, just as is every other wargamer on this planet.
One example of our inherent, collective expertise deals with troops being transported in their half-tracks. ARMOR ONE made no provision for the men to fire from the vehicle. During one of our first games, the situation arose, and I indicated that there was nothing in the rules to cover this.
"Ah ha! 11, said Bob Hurst, "Gotta change that. German troops made good use of their vehicles in this manner. They would direct assault in the vehicles, blasting and firing away as they came in."
Since I am a reasonable fella, ARMOR TWO had the troops blasting and firing away in their vehicles.
Sometime around ARMOR SEVEN, the issue arose again. "Troops didn't fire when en route," was the cry. A brief discussion, after which the Hurst theory again emerged triumphant. And so, if you play ARMOR PLUS, your men will have the privilege of blasting and firing away while in transport.
Incidentally, our interest in the WWII era was sparked by Bob Hurst... Bob has been tooling up for a campaign outlined in the Frank Chadwick's COMMAND DECISION rules system, and accumulating a rather large 15mm army of Americans and Russians and Germans, etc. The particular battle rules that he'll use are still up for grabs.
We tried the Chadwick COMMAND DECISION rules (REVIEW, March, 1990), discovered it uses the standard routines of "you move and fire", and "I move and fire", and found nothing exciting about the system. In fact, we all thought that we could do better. In fact, we thought that anyone could do better.
Back to the sequence for ARMOR PLUS. Enter Brian Dewitt and a 1987 game produced by WEST END called TANK BATTLES. This uses an interesting sequence in which all units are graded, A, B, or C, and each has a card which must be played if it is to move or fire. If you play a B unit card, I can "top" you with the card of an A unit, and thereby get to move or fire before you do.
In effect, this constitutes a type of "preemptive" action in which each player has to judge carefully when, during the bound, he should react with, and set in motion, his higher graded units.
We've played with preemptive routines before... in our ancients game, one can order a preemptive charge to intercept a moving unit, and Fred Hubig, in his armor game, has a phase for preemptive fire. Rather than grade the units, however, in Fred's set-up the preemptive actions are accomplished with the aid of "command points", issued each turn to each side. Due to the restrictions on the number of available command points, there are a limited number of such actions each turn.
And I can remember, years ago, Doug Ziprick wrote in describing his armor game, in which, at the beginning of each turn, one placed a little chittie, face down, next to each unit. The chitties were turned up, and the color of the chitties determined the order of play.
The latest sequencing technique in ARMORPLUS borrows from the TANK BATTLES game. Each side has its own card deck, and on each card is noted one or two units, together with their common status, A,B,C,or D. The decks are face down, and both sides reveal their top cards simultaneously.
The units with the higher status- go first -move or fire - unless the opposition wishes to dispute the issue. If this occurs, and one side wants to preempt the movement of the enemy unit, Command Point cards are played, and the side with the greater number of points gets to move/fire its units.
There are a limited number of Command Points, hence one cannot dispute every draw of every card. In its deck, each side has a special card designating that Command Points are to be replenished... because the draws are random, one never knows when the replenishment card will be drawn.
Fred Hubig's game is a one-tank-equals-one-tank, etc., set of rules in microarmor. The sequence and its premptive action phases, in simplified form, looks like the following:
- A: replenish command
B: preemptive action plus artillery fire
A: move/fire
B: replenish command points
A: preemptive action plus artillery fire
B: move/fire
Note that, prior to Side A's move/fire phase, B can use his Command Points to order his units to fire before A gets a chance to issue his own orders. Similarly, B's artillery fire, plotted last turn, now falls on A's current positions.
The Hubig firing procedure is a two-phase affair:
- a.Units have both an "Armor Value" (a function
of strength) and a "Silhouette Value', (a
function of size), and the sum of these two
indicate how difficult the target is to hit or
penetrate. The firing weapon's attack value is
divided by the sum to determine the number of
hits. Thus the larger the attack value, the
greater the number of hits.
b.For each hit, a 10-sided die is thrown. A 1,2,3 indicate no penetration, while the higher numbers (9, 10) indicate the target is destroyed. Middle range numbers result in pin markers. The pin markers, if not removed during a morale check, keep mounting up. An accumulation of five markers renders a unit completely ineffective and it is then removed from the field.
In all our scenarios dealing with the modern era, more so than in other eras, I've noted a great difficulty with the "ambush" problem, that is, when is a unit discovered? Is a hidden unit placed on the table when it fires? or when the opposition stumbles over it? or when an enemy unit approaches within some minimum distance? For some unfathomable reason, "ambushes" in other era games do not present as much of- a problem. We've tried "dummy markers", we've tried visibility rules, we've tried "unit is exposed if enemy within 6 inches", we've tried "pop up and fire" sequences, we've tried everything that doesn't seem to work. The ambush problem is similar to the hidden movement problem associated with submarines in naval wargames... I've never come across any procedure that really functions well.
Similarly, the "hull down" problem also rears its head quite often. Is your unit in "cover"? ... no problem at all. But if a tank is designated "hull down", suddenly the earth opens up, all the Demons of the Nether World unleashed, brother fights brother, father against son, etc. Why use of the term "hull down" creates such discord and dissension, while "cover" is so easily digested, remains one of the unsolved mysteries of this generation.
Did Frank Chadwick have this problem? ... did Don Featherstone? ... we may never know.
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© Copyright 1990 Wally Simon
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