Totally agree. Now let's talk about basing and game mechanics.
First basing. I'm cool with any base size between 1" by 1" and the FOW base
sizes. Some people like Stuart Murray use old GZG figs and Peter Pig which are
"true 15's and they fit just fine on a 25mm x 25mm base, IMHO the current GZG
minis fit better on a 30 x 30mm base (for a 3 to 4 man team) By way of
information, the FOW small bases are 32mm x 25mm and their medium bases are
50mm x 32mm. I think it's a matter of personal taste and the rules should be
flexible
on this point.
The way I see it, the 15mm GZG minis are 8 man squads so a typical squad
could be two 4 man fireteams or two three's and a two. Usually (always?)
there's two support weapons in an 8 man 15mm squad so I'm not sure if you'd
place a support weapon in each 4 man fireteam, or two in one. I might be
inclined if one of the support weapons was AT to do the two three's and a two
arrangement. Obviously this would be totally optional,
as some like to mix and match between 8 man packs and even between
manufacturers. But it would be nice to provide some TO&E and basing guidance
based on what's available from GZG. I think it would decrease the frustration
level when basing (*nobody* likes to mess basing up and have to redo it,
yuck!).
Now when the platoon fires, I'm assuming that we'd total dice per fireteam.
e.g. if I had 4 figs on base and they each had a FP of 3 I'd throw my D12.
Support weapon stands would throw their die for the support weapon on the
stand. A player could choose which stands are
firing and which are moving/close assaulting. That way you could have
2/3's of your stands lay down suppressing fire (hopefully) and the other
1/3 do the close assault. If you don't get the suppression, bad things
happen to the close assault stands (return fire). So even if I had 9 fireteams
in my platoon and they were all firing, I'd be throwing 9 dice
(plus the quality die). That doesn't sound too cumbersome.
Any additional ideas on this?
Most of this is borrowed from Stuart Murray's company rules (as I understand
them). Stuart's been running a system like this for some time
now. I posted Stuarts rules to the list back in the early Spring. Jon, if you
want Stuart's email, I could send it off list.
Oh, is this where I beg and plead to be in the playtest group?
-Mark Kinsey
> Allan Goodall wrote:
> On 11/3/06, Mark Kinsey <Kinseym@ptd.net> wrote:
I did a quick check of other rules I have to see how they handle base sizes.
There aren't many games in the scale proposed for
SG3/SG:AC/G-Cav/whatever it ends up being called. That is, most sci-fi
games are either individual figure bases, or they are 6mm.
The old Striker rules suggests that figures should be on bases 1" by 1".
That's all I have in my collection that comes close to SG3.
I checked Crossfire, Bases in Crossfire are 1.25" by 1.25", which translates
to Mark's 30mm by 30mm suggestion.
Out of curiousity, I checked Piquet's base sizes. They are 1.5" by 0.75" for
infantry squads. Call it 40mm by 20mm.
Unless there is a game reason for squads to be wider than they are deep, I'd
go with a square base for infantry. 30mm by 30mm works for me for 15mm. You
can scale it down to 20mm by 20mm for 10mm figures, or 15mm by 15mm for 6mm
figures and 50mm by 50mm (call it 2 inches square) for 25mm through 30mm
figures.
I would very much prefer an option for Flames of War basing to be used. That's
the game that my local gaming group plays a lot, and from whom I would be
trying to get recruits. Having the same basing as FOW would make it easier to
introduce the game to them, and also, on a temporary basis you
could do things like: "Well, your Soviet army is actually in this scenario
going to be the low-tech militia of a isolated colony resisting a NSL
invasion force."
[quoted original message omitted]
I like the Flames of War style basing because it looks good. Also, command and
FO teams are easy to pick out visually from the herd.
[quoted original message omitted]
I'll through in for some sort of multi-based system similar to FOW.
Easy to pick out command and a nice manageable basing system over all. Also it
allows for a good deal of crossover with minis, much in the same way that
that a lot of historical rules sets use the DBx-style basing to allow
easy flow from one set of rules to another.
> On 11/4/06, Eli Arndt <emu2020@comcast.net> wrote:
What are the base sizes for FOW? I saw the post that mentioned "small" and
"medium", but what sizes are used for the different kinds of units?
(The sizes I gave were for standard squads. I didn't mention the other
Crossfire or Piquet base sizes.)
Both Crossfire and Piquet said, explicitly, that they would work with any
basing scheme. The only games that are usually anal about base sizing are
those involving linear tactics, and usually they will work with another game's
basing as long as the sizes are consistent.
In other words, it's easy enough for Jon to come up with a basing scheme of
his own, probably something that would work equally well with DS2, and then
add a line that said, "Any basing scheme is possible." That way those who come
from an FOW background can use that
basing, those from a Crossfire background can use _that_ basing
scheme.
I personally don't care what basing scheme is used, but I hope Jon settles on
it early on. I'd like to get some figures together for playtesting, as I
strongly suspect that this will be Jon's next project.
> On 11/3/06, Mark Kinsey <Kinseym@ptd.net> wrote:
I don't intend to be too rigid with base sizes, and will probably just put in
some recommendations that they should be big enough to comfortably hold the
figures while not being too oversized either. Maybe a limitation that no
infantry base should be more than 50mm (2") in either dimension, but apart
from that anything goes.
Jon (GZG)
> --