ARNHEM

BACKGROUND

As I am sure we have all seen a Bridge to Far and if we are interested in World War 2 then we all know enough about the battle of Arnhem for me not to go into detail. If you are unsure this is a great article on Wikipedia that will fill in the blanks.

Our game begins with our advancing British Paratrooper attempting to advance to the town of Arnhem. Two Jeeps and a 10 man section led the initial advance.

They were part a troop of Reconnaissance jeeps from the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron. Unfortunately one developed engine trouble (we rolled the lowest initiative 11) so the other pushed on regardless. The Germans, seeing the mass landing, quickly organised a reconnaissance unit of their own in the shape of1 Schwimmwagen and 2 Hanomag Halftracks. 14 men in total.

The concept behind the game is this is a meeting engagement, as both sides rush to complete their mission. The British needed not to be held up and exit off the far side of the table. The Germans needed to hold the British to enable reinforcements to be organised.

The British moved first with one of their Jeeps hounding up the road a full move (24").  They also have a Bren team race uptake position overlooking the road. The Germans push their Schwimmwagen forward followed by one of their Hanomags.

The Schwimmwagen rounds the corner, seeing the closing jeep it dives into cover to try and bring its MG42 to bear. Unfortunately not quick enough and the paired Lewis guns on the jeep rip apart the Schwimmwagen killing all of its crew.

The Hanomag rounds the corner next and opens up on the jeep, but misses the jeep. Unfortunately, for the half-track they also haven't seen the Bren team. This team brews up the Hanomag immobilising it and forcing the men in the rear to run to the building for cover.

Faceoff between the jeep and the Halftrack

Hanomag brews up but the infantry race for cover in the building

The jeep racing seeing the Hanomag brewing up but all of its crew getting out the vehicle takes first left to get out of harm's way.

Two vehicles burning and the jeep racing out of dodge...

The second half-track has been working its way through the farmland and turns up just as the second jeep enters the board.

 The Germans  escaping from the burning half track start to occupy the buildings.

The second halftrack quickly suppresses the 2nd jeep. Suppression is just one of the new elements we are adding into this rule set.

A carefully placed German grenade takes out the first jeep, things are not looking good for the allies. The fighting then became so intense I forgot to take photographs so the end of the battle was not visually recorded. Eventually the allies managed to drive off the second half track but really could make headway against the Germans in the village. The fighting got intense and street by street the battle raged but by the time we had called it the Germans still held half the village and had thus won because they held up the allies advance.


A narrow victory but at this stage in the war they will take any victory they can get. The games was a very intense battle and was enjoy immensely by all the players.

28mm Russians

The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming...

Well, this is a work in progress, there will be changes I am sure but I was so excited at seeing this chap that I just had to post up the images up here. Our first ultra-modern Russian (28mm). I think he is quite special. We have several more on the way.

New Vehicle Render - Stryker XM1296 Infantry Carrier Vehicle w/MCT-30 Unmanned Turret

Our new vehicles which will feature in our next Kickstarter. The official designation is Stryker XM1296 Infantry Carrier Vehicle w/MCT-30 Unmanned Turret equipped with XM-813 Main Gun (30mm), M240 Coax and M6 Smoke Launchers.

More info coming soon.

Ultra Modern GI's Coming soon.

28mm Ultramodern GI's

This is a project we have been working on for a while and will be come a Kickstarter soon. This is just part of the range we will also be following up with Modern Russians and vehicles.

Below are some renders of a new modern 28mm US Range that we have coming out soon. We are really pleased with them. More information soon.

Minimi Gunner

Minimi Gunner 2

Grenadier

Grenadier 2

Office with Pistol

Drone controller

Infantry man

Infantry man

Below are some 360 turn tables so you can see them in all their glory.

Plausible Deniability PreOrders

PreOrders Available

Preorder Special Offer 1 Preorder Plausible Deniability for US$19.99
 

That's a US$5.00 saving You receive the PDF immediately and the printed version when it becomes available. Purchaser will need to pay postage and packing from the USA, UK or Australia (nearest).

http://www.skirmishsangin.com/shop/pre-order-plausible-deniability/ 

Preorder Special Offer 2 Preorder Plausible Deniability and add PDF version of Skirmish Sangin core rules for US$29.99

That's a US$10.00 saving You receive the PDFs of both books immediately and the printed version when it becomes available. Purchaser will need to pay postage and packing from the USA, UK or Australia (nearest).

http://www.skirmishsangin.com/shop/pd-ss-printed/ 

Preorder Special Offer 3 Preorder Special Offer 3 - Printed Skirmish Sangin, Printed Plausible Deniability (US49.99)

That's a US$20.00 saving You receive the PDFs of both books immediately and the printed version when it becomes available. Purchaser will need to pay postage and packing from the USA, UK or Australia (nearest).

http://www.skirmishsangin.com/shop/pre-order-plausible-deniability-pdf-version-of-skirmish-sangin-core-rules/

Plausible Deniability - just gone to the printers

So this book has now finally gone off to the printers. Can wait to see the final version once complete. So it should be on sale in two formats PDF and printed version very soon.

Plausible Deniability

Plausible Deniability

Hi, it's been awhile between posts but we are going to try and alter that moving forward.

I want to share some page samples of the new Spec Ops book for Skirmish Sangin called Plausible Deniability that is coming out soon. Exact date unknown but soon. I have been working on this book with Michael charge

It contains ORBATS for the following Special forces organisations:

• MARSOC
• SEALS
• SAS
• UK PATHFINDERS
• FALLSCHIRMJGER
• GSG9
• GROM
• SPETSNAZ
• RPIMA

Plus 12 scenarios and a whole bunch of new rules and kit. I have been working on this book with my fellow author Michael Charge and you can check out his blog here.

http://hntdaab.co.uk/blog

Platoon + Modern play through

Helmand, in the south-west of Afghanistan and roughly 500 hazardous kilometres from the capital, Kabul, shares a southern border with the unruly tribal region of north-west Pakistan. The province consists largely of furnace-like flatlands, bisected by the Helmand River, which is flanked either side by lush vegetation known as the ‘Green Zone’. The Green Zone is an area of densely irrigated land, supporting almost 90 per cent of the local population. Depending on the season, crops of poppy, marijuana and maize reduce visibility to 10 metres and sometimes less. The fertility of the Green Zone makes Helmand Afghanistan’s largest producer of opium.

Kemp, Richard. Attack State Red (Kindle Locations 763-768). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. 

Mission

To clear the Taliban out of the their strongholds in the green zone to the north of Gereshk.

Forces

ISAF - Two platoons, 1 French and 1 British

Taliban - 40 Miniatures

Game size

100+ miniatures on a 8ft by 6ft board

The Battle

The game began with ISAF pushing into the green zone, on the right flank the French made quick headway, on the left flank the British went to ground and began to pour in covering fire at the Taliban occupied compounds.

 The battle field looked like this:

 Below: The British dug in and providing covering fire for the French advance.

 Below: The French begin to advance on the nearest compound.

 Below: Wide version shot of the opening moves.

Below: Taliban begin to pour fire into the advancing French (as the Taliban player - this is where I began to roll really badly and only having a few APs as I had rolled low on the command dice, I made the best use of cover to keep ISAF at arms length)

Below: The British had rolled high on their command dice and by going to ground and not move could now pour fire into the Taliban compounds. However the Taliban fired back with many RPGs and PKMs but to little effect.

 Below: The French commander Raymond d'Tawa surveying the battlefield prior to the engagement

 Below: The British LMG's and UGL's plus the French LMG's and AT4's begin to hurt the Taliban

Below: The Taliban move up reinforcements but too little effect.

Below:  The French finally occupy the first compound after some bitter fighting.

Below: The Taliban on the hill get into a duelling match with the dug in British who didn't have it all their own way. But clever tactics by the British nullified a lot of the Taliban fire.

Below: The Taliban Command calls for a general withdraw.

 Conclusion

So ISAF carried the day, the Taliban had been too static for two long and once the British and French had spotted them the combined arms made short work of the opposition. Although a beleaguered Taliban did hold out for way longer than expected given how few command APs they had.

ISAF Platoon Unit Sheets

Learnings

Well every time we play this game we learn just a little more. This time the command points were definitely an issue and we have already sorted a fix out for that. The fire teams worked well and the ability to go to ground for troops worked really well. The British  and French players using real tactics made the Taliban pay big time. The system handles the number of troops easily and its exciting seeing the game scaling up in size.

At the play test in Cold Wars (USA), that were using an earlier version of these rules we got these really great comments:

"I had the good fortune of playing a test version of the rules at the Cold Wars Con on Lancaster, PA, USA last weekend, and had a blast.  A platoon of British regulars sweeping through an Afghan village ran into 4 squads + HMG of Taliban.  We played in 20mm and the rules were streamlined - no armor or air, no off-board assets - and it was great fun.  To my mind, it struck the right balance between simulation and playability.  Really looking forward to the full-blown rules set."

Platoon+ - A WW2 playthrough

So as part of the ongoing development of Platoon+ we have started playtesting the rules and I have to say we are liking what we are seeing and can't wait to begin to share it with you.

As with all rulesets, no rules are born perfect and we are tweaking the variables to maintain accuracy and to obtain maximum playability.

There are still a lot of the mechanics you know and love from Sangin but now players get to play one or two platoons on their own. That's 60+ miniatures so as you can see this is a significant step up.

As always one of the ways we do a test is to play the rules in a different period to see if they still work and as part of this we have recently been playing a series of WW2 games using the rules.

See a typical platoon sheet below:

Here are some images of the game.

Rays beautiful table, I am so lucky he lets me use his boards for play testing

Mike H trying to work out just where his Yanks will come on the board

Mike L moves his German's up to take the building, quickly followed by his second squad

Ray tries to out flank the Germans in the main building

Mike H Yanks take cover in the cornfield

The author trying to hold his gut in and insistent on wearing his skirmish OUTBREAk T shirt

There were Four platoons involved, 2 US and 2 German and the game was a meeting engagement with both sides needing to take the village.

I would like to show you the new turn sequence and how command and control works in the game

The new turn sequence Looks like this:

Turn sequence

The Command Phase
Player rolls command dice and allocates dice to each section in his platoon.

The Morale phase
Any morale tests are resolved.

The Activation Phase
The squad with the highest activation now activates (if there is tie both groups roll 1d6 with the highest going first).

The Combat Phase
The squad can them spend APs to do the following in any order:
Move, Resolve Fire weapons, Resolve Melee combat

In this blog post we are going to introduce you to the new command dice and discuss why we have added this element to the game.

At platoon level the game is no longer about the efforts of an individual man or even an individual squad, it's about how best to field your Platoon elements and to do that we need to show how the command and control elements work.

In most games your Platoon HQ (Command Group) is little more than a collection of miniatures that hang around at the back and have little to no influence on the game.

Platoon+ this is very different. In platoon+ squads only have 1AP to use per combat phase and their additional APs come from the way the Command Group hand out the command dice.

Command Dice

All Command dice are 1d6 and are allocated at the beginning of the combat round. The players roll the 1d6 and the number of points allocated are additional APs that squad can use throughout the combat round. When a squad runs out of command AP they still have 1AP per active combat phase, these cannot be saved and must be spent in their combat phase or be lost.

An average platoon has 3 or 4 command dice and these are rolled and allocated at the start of the combat round. Only one dice can be allocated to one squad and not every unit will get a dice.

EXAMPLE

Joshua has an average US Infantry unit. The unit has 3d6 command dice, Joshua rolls the dice and gets 2,3,4. Each number is the amount of additional AP the unit the points are allocated to now get and add to their single AP.

Joshua allocates the dice as follows:

Squad	Command Dice Roll
Platoon HQ	2
Squad Alpha	4
Squad Bravo	3
Squad Charlie	0 - no dice allocated

Players will have insufficient dice to allocate points to all units. Units without a command dice have a default 1AP to spend during each combat phase.

These extra points that each squad gains from their command dice have to last the full combat Round of 10 combat phases in which any one squads is only active 4 times, but you do burn through the command points pretty quick and to paraphrase the song "knowing when to hold 'em and knowing when play 'em" is a big part of the game.

In the opening move of the game. The first US Squad arriving on the board first (we are still using an initiative system similar to Sangin) spent 3 of their AP and raced across the board towards the village, stopping on the road taking cover from the corn field and a stonewall.

Next to activate were the Germans who burn even more APs (4) to move forward and occupy a building on the edge of the village.

The rest of the US units began an encirclement of the village while the Germans attempted to block the US on the right. The opening moves were mainly movement but when one US squad having failed its spot roll occupied the building across the way from the Germans they were meet with German grenades and many casualties were incurred?

The Germans didn't have it their own way, they were meet with gunfire from the USA in the centre of the village but did manage to move additional squads and their HQ team into the village?.

So more to come soon of this battle and along the way we'll tell you a few more things about Platoon+