Hexsides and Hand Grenades

I don't often get out my Star Wars minis but I always find that when I do, I usually end up having a much better time than I thought I would.  After slogging through The Third World War for the past couple of weeks, I needed a chaser  - something light, quick, and easy.  Star Wars Miniatures fit the bill nicely in this regard.  There aren't a whole lot of rules to remember but it has some nice wargame-y aspects (line of sight, cover, squad cohesion and command elements, etc.) that make it a nice light tactical affair for afn evening play. Deep in the back of the gaming closet, I rummaged around and found my old "Battle for Endor" expansion set with a huge AT-ST along with the map for the famous shield generator scene from "Return of the Jedi".  Since my last game of Star Wars featured a small group of major characters ( Darth Vader and Obi Wan ) battling it out, I decided to change up and have a large group of minor characters (plus the AT-ST) in a big

Well, I went through the next several turns of my first game of "The Third World War:  Battle for Germany".  I made lots of rules mistakes and played through them as best as I could, gradually picking up the system until I had a fairly good grip on it.  Three turns and several evenings passed by while I worked out where I had gone wrong both in terms of rules and overall Pact strategy.  During my first play, NATO had kept the Soviets pinned tightly to the East German border and three weeks of fighting ended with only a trickle of Russian armor breaking out in the south before NATO plugged the gaps. Several mistakes I had made: 1)  Not counting movement points correctly when leaving enemy ZOCs 2)  Not advancing units correctly after forcing enemy retreats 3)  Not calculating terrain combat modifiers correctly (about half the time) Those are some pretty big errors but pushing through the turns definitely helped to give me the chance to learn the rules better and incorpor

Well, here we are coming to the end of turn 1 but there are two very important impulses to go through before things start to really wind down.  NATO gets two consecutive movement and combat impulses now, each with a regrouping phase at the end of it that lets you get rid of those nasty disruption markers that degrade unit proficiency. I pulled back quite a few units at the start of the impulse because I wanted to give them a chance to regroup.  The big advantage that NATO has over the Pact in this regard is that NATO units can fully recover their disruptions while the Warsaw Pact units cannot recover from the first level of disruption so once a Russian tank unit is hurt, for example, it stays hurt for the rest of the game. To that end, I had several units in the south that the Pact had hurt quite badly, including a West German panzer division with five disruptions.  Up north near Hamburg, so many units were hurting that I basically pulled the line back to the nearest river and

Continuing with my posts on my first game of "The Third World War" here and I'll try to provide a bit more detail here about what's happening.  If you're new to the game, it sort of flows in this basic sequence: 1.  Air Phase 2. Warsaw Pact move and attack (first echelon) with a NATO reserve movement phase in here afterwards 2a.  Warsaw Pact move and attack (second echelon) 3. Warsaw Pact move and attack (first echelon) 3b. Warsaw Pact move and attack (second echelon) 4. NATO move and attack x 2 5. End of Turn stuff (Supply, Aircraft maintenance, etc.) Right now, I've gone through 2 and 3 and I've "paused" the game just at the end of phase 3 to give this little report.  Basically first echelon phases allow for everyone to move and attack and second echelon allows for those Pact units that are not in enemy ZOC to move and attack again.  This allows for the Pact to keep pushing with its attempt to find a breakthrough in the NATO lines.

Okay, it's time for the Warsaw Pact to get this party started on the ground.  The first echelon impulse begins and we start with some jostling around the intra German border, hoping to hit at nearby NATO units and push hard past them. The Intra German border at the start of WW3 Everything in the south part of the board suddenly looks pretty vulnerable right now on the western side of the border.  A couple of the Pact units in the extreme south make it  including the Czechs in the far south, who are hitting at the 4th Panzergrenadiers Division to the east of Augsburg.  The odds here are actually pretty low (only 1.5: 1 in the Pact's favor) for this attack due to the low proficiency rating of the Czech divisions.  It probably would have been wiser to support their attack with a Soviet unit but I wanted to hit the 2nd ACR up north as hard as possible.  I also think that I can supplement the attack with air support, especially since the WP has air superiority this turn.

This is just a series of short posts dealing with my attempts to play through a turn of " The Third World War " in order to learn the basics of the game.  If you haven't tried it before, hopefully this will give you some insight into how it plays - providing I don't make too many major rules errors! The Air Superiority Phase starts and the Soviets throw anything up in the air that might be able to fly - regardless of whether it's obsolete junk or the newest high-tech fighters.  They have more air units available this turn (NATO starts getting serious with air reinforcements in the coming turns) so this is the Warsaw Pact's big chance for AS (and probably the only time they'll get it all game, from what I've been reading). Warsaw Pact throws almost everything into the air to gain air superiority on turn 1 With 24 air units on air superiority missions, NATO concedes the air to the Warsaw Pact for now and assigns its better aircraft (F-15s a

Over the weekend, my newest game aquisition, GDW's 1984 classic " The Third World War:  Battle for Germany " arrived.  TWW is one of those WW3 games that has a great deal of affection from many wargamers.  The fluidity of the rules along with the wide array of options available to both the NATO and Warsaw Pact along with the ability to mix the game together with others in the series for a huge 80s style superpower dust-up appealed greatly to gamers.  Reading the reviews at the time, it seems Frank Chadwick's design was largely perceived as elegant. Battle for Germany was the first of the games released in "The Third World War" series.  Set in 1990, the game was based on Chadwick's projections about a near-term conflict between the Pact and NATO that's sparked by events in the Middle East.  GDW was nothing if not confident about the game's ability to appeal to wargamers.  Consequently, the scope of the series expanded in future releases in th

This is part 2 of the 'Amgrunts' scenario from Lock 'n Load Publishing's Anzac Attack , the expansion for Forgotten Heroes II.  Part 1 is posted here . Last we left off, the Marines were in considerable trouble, with the NVA managing to surround their right flank and threaten to overrun it.  On the left flank, the Marines and the ARVN were having better luck against the NVA, managing to make some small gains.   Turns 5 & 6: The fifth turn starts with the Marines fending off the NVA squad and shaking up another one nearby with .30 cal fire from an Amtrac.  The NVA pull their half-squad back and manage to shake up an amphibious vehicle with mortar and machinegun fire.  Overall, the pressure starts easing up on the Americans on the right flank and the tables slowly turn in their favor.  The Americans push one squad and a half squad up the center of the board. American right flank has pushed back the NVA by the end of turn 5. On the left flank, t

Well, you've read the history , now it's time for the report! This is a 13-turn affair that involves three forces; the US Marines and the Republic of South Vietnam are up against the K-500 Battalion of North Vietnamese Army regulars.  Four maps are involved with a nice variety of terrain.  In the northwest, we have some very heavy jungle and east of that, we have lighter jungle with a small village.  The scenario doesn't say which side sets up first (oops!) but I'm just guessing based on my own LnL experience that it's the NVA. NVA force 1 consists of 8 squads with a 60mm mortar team set up on map board 1 to the northeast.  Two units with RPGs are set up in the kunai grass to the south of the village in an attempt to keep the American Amtracs at bay should they attempt a head-on attack from the south. NVA force 2 also has 8 squads and they are set up in the jungles on board 9.  A recoilless rifle and a platoon of men are set up along the road to ambush the Ame