Horrendous losses in PBI

Greg and I tried another game of Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI) using 28mm models in place of each ‘group’.

Since my Russians are not done yet we needed to substitute something so the game took on a non-historical StarGate 1900 feel when we pitched WWI era Germans back at them. Forgiving this silly matchup, and just working to understand the game rules, we found a number of interesting things.

This time we used the full rules instead of the Quick Start. This included the pre-game reconnaissance, rules for suppressing fire, and the full rules for hand to hand assaults. Combat was just as bloody, perhaps more so, but the addition of suppressing fire gave us more options.

As it turned out Greg’s attacking WWII Germans arrived on the table with everything except one heavy machine-gun. They advanced boldly and caused apparently easy casualties in my WWI era German defenders. However, once he closed and tried to assault he was bloodily repulsed. In fact the platoon was eliminated. With only one platoon left and the game clock running out (another PBI method to find the game end) Greg conceded. Total playing time: around, or just over an hour.

PBI again felt right for a WWII minor Infantry tactic game. The results felt correct. The covering fire, move and assault sequence seems right. In every way it seems to model the high rate of fire, high lethality environment. However, as I watched the players die I asked myself, ‘where is the place in this game for the story? Where is the narrative angle?’ I’m still not sure. The rules are sound and solid: absolutely perfect for a convention or invitation game. But can they be used to model the kinds of story-telling skirmishes we want to play? Can I, in short, play out a scene from The Dirty Dozen?

More test plays to come.

In other news, I have decided that since 28mm miniatures are scaled 1/56 in height but 1/48 in solidity (they have oversized, childish heads and hands) a correctly scaled 1/56 tank will look small (incidentally GW model their WH40k vehicles on 1/35 scale parts). Therefore I am going to use 1/48 scale armour for this WWII gaming effort. If nothing else, the range is much larger.

Brutal house to house slaughter

Some years ago Simon expressed an interest in playing Company level WWII infantry games. At the time Flames of War (FOW) was new and the interest this stirred up seeped through to us as well. A little research revealed that while it was a good, sound system, it did not really model the kinds of movement and action that Simon was after. For example, FOW asks you to put your Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) on the same stand as your riflemen. For a game simplification this is fine. However, in reality there is no reason that they should be co-located.

Further research threw up Crossfire and Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI). Both seemed good, though Crossfire seemed to reward bunching your troops together in order to get maximum firepower. However, in reality you try to disperse your troops to avoid their slaughter. This left PBI. Straight away I was impressed with the elegant design. I have heard it described as ‘like a board game’ because of the way the board is designed and the nature of movement. But is this such a bad thing if the system works?

So I dutifully built a company 15mm in order to play against Simon. And we never have. In the end I told him to take the lot, both sides, and get back to me  if he ever gets around to playing.

Since then I have moved exclusively to 28mm. The recent experience of Jurassic Reich rekindled some interest in this scale (company, infantry) and in WWII (though I still cannot bring myself to play any campaign where my father may have actually served).

PBI can easily be played on the same sized board using 28mm by modelling each ‘stand’ or ‘group’ with a single model. Everything else plays out exactly the same.

The pictures show just such a game that Greg and I played. It appears full and busy, very personal, and very bloody. Games lasted no more than a hour.

I am now in the process of painting up some Soviets.

PBI Progress

It seems as though these fellows have been sitting on my painting bench accusing me for a very long time. But now they are done: a Fallschirmjager platoon, and a pair of PaK 75′s. Both are Flames of War models and bases, but the basing system is for Poor Bloody Infantry. The specific difference is the separation of LMG and rifle groups onto different stands. More images to come of my complete force.

Now if only Simon would complete his side of the equation, we can battle.

4′ x 4′ board – finished at last

At last: my four foot by four foot board is finished. My gaming needs are now fulfilled.

Some background: I’ve been playing wargames for the last 25 years or so. I remember when I was young piling books on the dining room table and then throwing a sheet over it to get pleasing hills. Then we’d drive too many Airfix 1/72 Tiger tanks all over it. I bought Hinchecliffe figures, one at a time, by sea mail. In my youth a never managed to build a complete Ancients, Napoleonic or pike & shot army because of this practice.

I’ve seen and played on many playing surfaces and the one thing that strikes me again and again is the juvenile belief that bigger is better. A bigger table. A bigger playing mat. 6′x4′ not big enough? “We play on 12′x’6′ ” Oh yeah? I’ve seen games on this sized arena. The figures still interact in a zone roughly 4′ wide in the centre anyway, and where there are sufficient figures to fill a very wide zone the game either takes tooooo long (too drunk after 3 hours play, me), or it is a multi-player affair. In which case your particular command zone is this restricted area anyway.

So I have concluded that 4′x4′ is all that you need. Or at least: all that I need. You please yourself. It allows defense in depth, and about as much lateral space as experience has taught me you ever use anyway. Now, naturally, this may depend on your scale of figure. But I swear, if you have really big armies in 28mm so that when you lay them out they occupy a table footprint wider than 4′, then half your luck.

So anyway. Here is a phot of the finished board, cut in four 2′ squares and then screwed to baseboard. It is marked in an 8 x 8 grid, suitable for Poor Bloody Infantry, for example. But even if they are not used to regulate movement, they give a nice and immediate visual appreciation of the relative position and distances of the playing pieces.

First draft data card for More Escarmouche

So this is what I’m thinking for More Escarmouche. Every figure/character is paired with a data card. Data cards are arranged in front of you, in the order that they will be subject to shooting attack. That is: the first guy in your row gets attacked by bullets first, then the next, and so on.

The board is squared, 8 x 8 like Poor Bloody Infantry and Guerra Floridas.

Range is in squares to target sqaure. All muskets can shoot out to five squares, but not everyone is a good shot, so the factors differ. Pistols can shoot to three.

To shoot, you add up the factors for the characters at that range, then derive an average attack value. This attack value is applied to the characters in the target square up to the number of figures shooting. That is: if you have five figures shooting at five figures then each target gets hit once. If you have three figures shooting at five figures then the first three figures get shot at. If you have five figures shooting at three figures then the first two figures get shot at twice and the last figure is only shot at once.

So anyway, one at a time, you shoot at each figure. You take the attack value and roll two FUDGE dice, adding or subtracting factors till you get a final number. This number is then compared to the target character’s own damage capacity indicator along the bottom, and the effect applied. Heroes will be harder to kill and wound, of course. Ordinary men will be more likely to run. The scale is at this draft stage seven places long and with four possible outcomes (no result, run, wound, killed) so there is very reasonable scope for personalisation. When wounded, a card is truned over to show a different capacity indicator.

Hand to hand fighting is very similar to Guerra Floridas. Movement into an occupied square constitutes the initiation of melee. Figures are paired up into scraps. Scraps are resolved one at a time, but simultaneously for the two sides. Two FUDGE dice results are added to the range (0) comabt factor. Both sides are impacted straight away – so both figures fighting could kill each other, in other words.

These are my thoughts so far.

More Escarmouche, squad level action

Like every gamer that has ever lived, I have become fascinated with periods, researched them, bought the figures – usually in more than one scale – experimented with several rule sets, and then moved on to a new interest. My shelves are stocked with rule and reference material for many periods. My storage drawers are overflowing with unpainted and only half based figures, and graveyards of terrain in a multitude of scales.

The most recent frenzy of activity concerned WWII, a period I’ve always considered to be in bad taste because of my personal experience of the direct cost in my own father. But with his passing the idea has become more palatable. My friend Simon was the driver for this. He decied to do this period and dragged me along. For some reason I found myself with a German company, and I could not help looking at the 15mm figures and wondering which of these little voodoo men had taken pot shots at my father and uncle – particularly since I had constructed a Fallschirmjager company of the sort that bitterly contested Italy.

But anyway, to cut a long story short: after this flush of enthusiasm in which I built the requisite force and decied that Poor Bloody Infantry was by far the best rules to play with the usual shift of interest occured. For a start, Simon has never suggested that we play in this period, so my assumption is that he has moved on leaving us both with a pile of untried lead. I decided that what I’d really like to play is French. Primarily because I am disgusted with the way these all-too-human people have been maligned for being steamrolled.

Then I looked over my colonial 15mm figures, where I had built a respectable force of French colonial and their desert opponents – Foreign Legion romance, I admit it. These had been based in perparation for Piquet and I did play a few games with those rules. But Poor Bloody Infantry now seems so much better. So I began rebasing to play colonial with those rules.

But all of this had become forgotten as I decied to create a new incarnation of Escarmouche for my 30YW gaming. 28mm pike and shot skirmish forms the cornerstone of my interests. Escarmouche was for five or six figures a side and was one small step away from role playing. Now what I wanted was ‘squad level’ action, even though the term is anachronistic.

Another friend, Greg, recently introduced me to Up Front, that classic from Avalon Hill. And so the circle was closed. Squad level WWII action. Now I have many clues on how to create the rules I want for More Escarmouche, squad level pike & shot wargaming. But it has also sent me back to 15mm WWII and then to colonial gaming as well. Just when I thought I had come to the point where I could sell some of that stuff off as I would never play it again…