From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 00:35:31 -0500
Subject: Scouts/Spotters, HTML, Drones and odd cross cultural experiences
John A. said: Nonsense. I've won scenarios with scout platoons. Or at least, decisively engaged the enemy with indirect fire and caused so much damage that he spent a LOT of effort tracking down the scouts, which caused him to loose the game. [Tomb] Funny similar example. Iraqis in Gulf War dug in in coastal town. Water along one long board edge. Mines, T-72s, BMPs, lots of infantry, mortars. US and UK attacking - Challengers, M1A1, Bradleys, etc. (At least 2:1 numercial plus tacair and arty). Iraqi player puts up fake minefield signs and little sand lumps all over. Totally fakes out US advance (no engineers accompanying apparently... nor intel....). So the Yanks go for a wide swing into one end of town (take a flank). Cram their WHOLE force down this narrow alley. Send an apache or some other sort of chopper into town (oops, say hello to SAMs... boom). Iraqi player has one little observer unit with a 105mm RR on the hill at that end of town. No infantry. Fires at a Bradley. Light damage. The US player debarks an entire infantry platoon plus an armoured platoon and conducts a hasty attack upon the hill thinking it is loaded with enemy infantry. Meanwhile the Iraqi player is calling in some off board fire support and lining up his tanks for flank shots at the almost parked US attack lane while they wait painfully for the US attack on this hill to locate the (obviously well hidden) Iraqi infantry and mines.... whereas the spotters and their jeep just burrow down to dodge fire from 4 tanks, 4 bradleys, and 8 stands of infantry.... Now, this was quite a few years back and the players made (in some sense) a credible assumption that the Iraqi defender would have defended this location.... but he stopped his entire attack to overrun this one hilltop.... and that let the Iraqi player play Hobb with his parked armoured formation. Won the battle on the hilltop, lost the battle for the town.... HTML: Chen-song, could you (if possible) disable your HTML on list mails? It is really doing _ugly_ things to the digests. Thanks. Drones: I see they now have a pie-plate sized unit controlled by a wrist computer and flown via a thin optical fiber. Short range (couple of hundred meters) but lets infantry squads look over hilltops, buildings, around corners, into caves, etc. Very cool. I'm trying to think of how to do this justice in SG2 but haven't quite got it figured yet. Molotovs and Satchel Charges for SG2: Molotov... I'd give these D6 impact. Range short only. They might work versus a normal vehicle, mostly just annoy a tank unless they get a very lucky hit in. Satchel Charges - I'd give them (note, at Oerjan's guidance I know give my IAVRs this) 3d12* impact. Some of the new satchel charges (large, tis true) are killing Merkavas now. Short range only. Or maybe even you have to do some sort of close assault to place one. Give the tank gunner a chance to mow you down. Cross Cultural Wierdness: Sitting in a local Scots Pub on St.Andrews day. Used to seeing fairskinned folk a plenty, mostly fair or red-haired. Piper shows up (like me, dressed in the good black jacket, the high collar white shirt, and a lovely kilt and sporan) and is a very dark black skinned gent with a brilliant white mop of thick curly hair. Had quite a Scots accent too as I think he hailed from Glasgow. Now, as Alan said, this kind of thing shoudn't be all that surprising... but it was nonetheless. Nice guy, I bought him a single malt... that lad could pipe! And lastly, you lot have made me decide I must now rent (and possibly later buy) Iron Giant.... I hope you're happy.....;)