The Sharp End Gaming

I am in command of two battalions of US forces equipped with M1A1 Abrams tanks, Bradley IFVs, Stingers and Javelin teams, you name it. My goal is to prevent the OPFOR Regiment of Soviet Infantry from exiting the western edge of the map. First contact. This afternoon on my lunch break I discovered a very old game from 2002 called TacOps4. TacOps4 is distributed by Battlefront and has a demo on their site which is patched and runs fine on Windows machines. I like this game. It looks awful and probably looked awful in 2002 but it has some real depth to the engine (a number of OOBs in difft theaters, an editor, a huge weapons and unit database and a simplicity to the combat that helped me immerse myself into the game quickly. Let me begin by saying you should skip the tutorial and try one of the larger scenarios.  The screenshots I am using are from the TF Gallagher 6 scenario.  The tutorial is so small with little room to think tactically that I almost turned the game...

When you play an operational game for so long (Command Ops), and then try to shift gears and take on small units in a game like Combat Mission Fortress Italy you are most likely going to get your clock cleaned. Inspired by JC's post about Darby's Rangers at Gela and Doug's foray into Operation Husky  inspired scenarios I tried out a quick custom battle of my own using Battlefront's Combat Mission Fortress Italy last night (unfortunately no screenshots). The situation and Allies plan: Elements of a German reconnaissance battalion are probing an important road junction in rural Italy with two companies of Fusiliers. To meet them, British paratroopers have dug in on the opposite slope of a stream to provide direct fire on the objective.  I've also deployed paratroopers inside the vineyard on the slope above the objective.  They are dug in around some stone barns which lie next to the objective. There are a number of small stands of trees that will give the Germ...

Last night I worked on 2 AI plans for my Compound 14 scenario.  The first plan had waves of Taliban fighters moving aggressively to engage US forces and potentially outflank them.  The second plan sent them advancing on the board but doing so more cautiously and only engaging with ambushes at 300 meters or less. Both plans worked out about the same for the Taliban though they did manage to double the US casualties from 2 to 4 KIA the second time I playtested.  The pictures below are from my three playtests of the battle.  Adding AI plans created a degree of uncertainty for me, which as the scenario author was nice and did make the AI marginally tougher than when they were defending in place. I am still learning about the editor and developing a solid AI plan is more of a challenge than I thought.  In a few instances I mowed Taliban down in the open as they made for unrealistic objectives I had set.  The way the AI works without preset paths is neat. The...

I have recently discovered the NatGeo show Battleground Afghanistan.  The show is pretty compelling and I've enjoyed following Golf company and their missions inside Helmand province. I wanted to simulate one of the shows I watched so the post below is my attempt to do so. I am still learning how to use the Combat Mission Shock Force Editor so the scenario is rough. I don't have the Marines expansion for Shock Force so I used 2 platoons of Stryker Infantry in this Compund 14 mission. Mission :  A reinforced battalion of US infantry has been inserted into the Zamindawar region of Helmand province to take the fight to the Taliban.  Zamindawar also has numerous poppy fields that   the Taliban are using to fund their war against ISAF so destroying the Taliban's hold on the valley has a financial impact on their prosecution of the war against ISAF. After one week on the ground, Charlie company has pushed the Taliban back and identified Compound 14 as the location...

I fooled around with the editor this evening to recreate a short firefight I saw on television over the weekend on the NatGEO channel. A Nato convoy of 3-400 trucks is pushing southwest along Highway 1 from Kabul to southwestern Afghanistan with critical supplies for Nato's summer campaign outside Kandahar.  A platoon of US Army Stryker Infantry has been assigned guard duty along the route in a dusty village.  Choosing the highest ground in the village they occupy a former Taliban compound and wait for the expected attack. Taliban forces are marshaling within the district and streaming out of the hills to attack the compound and cut the road. Firebase Echo under attack.   More to follow...

I love the quick battles editor in Combat Mission Fortress Italy and Gustav Line.  There are so many maps and units to choose from.  This morning I played a quick battle pitting a German Parachute company from the 1st Parachute Division vs. two reinforced platoons of Red Devils from British 1st Airborne.  The Brits, played by me, held the high ground around a hilltop objective.  I set a thirty minute time limit and watched world war 2 play out once again before me. Having time to prepare foxholes around the objective the Brits dug in with one platoon on the hilltop.  The deployment zone was huge though and I was worried about the rough terrain hiding movement, so I deployed a platoon on the valley floor in case the Germans tried a flanking maneuver.  That was mistake #1.  No one from this platoon made it back up the hill... The battle begins.  The "Lost Platoon" can be clearly seen in the valley with the remainder of my infantry dug in on bo...

Calling in a barrage of smoke on the hilltop German defenses. The Germans are on every ridge from here to Berlin... The Germans are well trained, entrenched and fighting from the top of every hill.  The Italy/Sicily campaign is a bear...more to come.

I am really enjoying Wargame Airland Battle.  It vastly improves on the original Eugen Systems Cold War title European Escalation and is something I will continue to play for quite awhile.  That said, it lacks one thing that I was reminded of while playing a Battlefront Fortress Italy scenario this morning:  unit value. By that I mean a combination of the unit's tactical importance to the scenario and your ability to impact the units fate and therefore develop some sort of emotional attachment with the unit.  In Airland Battle, you almost never see the unit you deploy again.  And frankly that's okay because chances are you have a few more variants of that unit in your virtual deck.  With limits on the number of aircraft you can deploy, they are the only unit you are forced to use "wisely."  Every other unit is basically free to do whatever crazy thing you need them to do and you will order them to do crazy things because they will do it without a tho...

I am really excited about Les Grognards.  It's an older game from a small publisher that apparently was a Battlefront title before it was self-published.  I discovered it about a month ago and decided to give the demo a go last week. It looks like a self published title and my graphics card doesn't make it look any sharper.  That said, I played the demo for a week before I decided to buy the title.  Like the amateur gamer that I am, I have been fumbling through the game and learning on the fly ever since.  Les Grognards reminds me of the Scourge of War series before Slitherine/Matrix took over the publishing of that series.  Which to me means: poor graphics some weird mechnics but awesome historical detail and therefore a must have. The Les Grognards demo is full of glitches (try playing the Montebello map with the Montebello order of battle) but somewhere on the battlefield of GrandChamp I decided this may be the best Napoleonic warfare game I have p...