Do you feel your respective Nationality is Represented Well?

[Jim McLeod]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]The most shocking thing about the paras v MARINE morale level debate is noone seems to notice the vacuum in which it takes place. Taking an individual component of a squad type's factors and trying to base any sort of conclusion on the whole, without taking the unit's entire capabilities into account, is sketchy at best, misleading (and agenda-driven) at worst.

Bottom line: the MARINES were in existence long before the paras were laying the groundwork of their reputation. The MARINE way of war and the Army way of war are/were completely different. If you can't discern that...:whist:[/QUOTE]

Fair enough Fezz', however ...

When you talk about airborne soldiers in WWII, you are talking about a doctrine that had never been tried before; that is, jumping out of an airplane, likely behind enemy lines and w/o the promise of immediate reinforcement, and fighting on foot. Aircraft had been in existance for 36 years when the war started. I will hazard to guess that the first plane ride for the majority of those para's was the one they made for their first actual jump.

Paratroopers also jumped at what, 500'? 400'? And to add a little fun to it, the jump would quite possibly be made in the face of enemy fire and when you landed, chances are it would be in a field where you would make a very nice target for enemy troops.

Or how about at night just to mix it up a bit.

And those guys volunteered for that!!!

Nope, a morale level of 8 is right for any airborne formation of any nation that fielded paratroops in combat in WWII. I say that based on the fact that the guys who willingly volunteered did so knowing full well what they were getting into.

Jumping out of an airplane under fire behind enemy lines.

That takes balls, all 8 ML of them.




=Jim=

 

[Pitman]

With the release of Code of Bushido and Gung Ho, the system was stretched almost to the breaking point by the addition of the Japanese - units which by and large operate according to their own rules. The oft-debated "problems" with the Marines in ASL are for the most part simply a response to the stress put on the system by the Japanese. Pete Shelling is, essentially, entirely correct in stating that the Marine ML is a play-balance factor. The Marines needed to be 7-6-8s in order to have a chance when swarming the beach at Tarawa, digging the Japanese out of cave complexes on Peleliu or assaulting Nishi Ridge on Iwo.

You are right that it was done for play-balance. Problem is, it was done the wrong way. There should be special rules or SSRs to account for amphibious invasion morale factors--as, for example, there certainly will have to be for any Omaha Beach or Salerno game. The Marines were engaged in all sorts of not-so-fierce combat in World War II, as well as occasional episodes of fierce combat.

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

Mark

I like you and I enjoy your scenarios, BUT! You have just showed your complete ingorance on the Marine Corps. I was shocked that someone with your intellegence would actually say this above. I respectifully request that you take some 'real' history courses on the Marine Corps.

Ab-so-freaking-lutely correct. Anyone who thinks the MARINE way of war was just hopping out of landing craft has a huge void of knowledge in regards to how the MARINES fought. Amphib operations were a part, but not parcel, of how they fought. Even to this day, MARINE and Army doctrine diverge from each other in substantive ways.

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

The problem, IMO, is that the game was designed and calibrated for Russian v. German battles - 4-4-7s versus 4-6-7s (which is also why, IMHO, the Russian v German scenarios are the best). As the system was expanded to include the Americans, it started to "reach" a bit. American squad morale (6 unbroken/8 broken) is the ASL interpretation of the old Squad Leader "Americans-do-not-suffer-DM" characteristic, which was an attempt to address the vast psychological and doctrinal differences between the American soldier and his European counterparts. The current argument, like thousands that have preceeded it, follows from this early Squad Leader interpretation of the nature of the American soldier.

SL included German, Soviet and US troops.

Everyone seems to forget the psychological and doctrinal differences that the 6/8 ML of Army troops represents. I've always thought the nationality distinctions one of the best pieces of chrome in ASL; one that forces you to play each distinctly different than the other, completely unlike the more bland games that homogenise the forces of all countries into a amalgamated blob of similarity.

With the release of Code of Bushido and Gung Ho, the system was stretched almost to the breaking point by the addition of the Japanese - units which by and large operate according to their own rules. The oft-debated "problems" with the Marines in ASL are for the most part simply a response to the stress put on the system by the Japanese. Pete Shelling is, essentially, entirely correct in stating that the Marine ML is a play-balance factor. The Marines needed to be 7-6-8s in order to have a chance when swarming the beach at Tarawa, digging the Japanese out of cave complexes on Peleliu or assaulting Nishi Ridge on Iwo.

This I completely disagree with. I don't think COB, GH or the addition of the Japanese strained the system one bit. The rules for some of the PTO terrain peculiarities, well, that might be a little stress there. I do not now, nor ever will buy into the "MARINES need to have an 8 ML to stand up to the Japanese" as it is a bunch of half-baked hooey (damn internal editor!).
To wit: I have played -and won- US 666 v IJA scenarios, as have many others with no detriment caused by the 'inferior' US morale.
Kakazu Ridge. Where are the 8 ML US troops digging those Japanese out of their caves?

The Japanese are a formidable foe, but are not supermen. Who first showed the free world that in those darkest days of WW2?

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

Nope, a morale level of 8 is right for any airborne formation of any nation that fielded paratroops in combat in WWII. I say that based on the fact that the guys who willingly volunteered did so knowing full well what they were getting into.

Perhaps...much of what you say is true (and applies equally to MARINES), but homogenising ML based on merely jumping out of (quoth the Gunny a perfectly good airplane goes against the grain of ASL. US paratroopers as depicted in ASL are a dangerous foe. I used to waffle on thinking there should be a mix of 667s included in their OBs, but have settled on that underlined 7 FP and 4 range factor. Understand them and you understand paratroop usage. I have no issue with the 7 morale; it is the ASL standard +1 to 1st line morale level, making them more temperate than their first line brethren. Comparing them to another nationality's units is flawed and purposely misleading in that it conveniently ignores the whole of the squad's capabilities. Paratroopers, as depicted, have proven to be quite capable of ASL success, capable of standing toe to toe with Germany's best. Yet, to say they rate the same morale as "X" without any more empirical justification than " the wistful alternate reality history of the US paratroopers" is baseless.

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

Jumping out of an airplane under fire behind enemy lines.

...which was nearly always done as part of a larger operation. So, while they intially were fighting alone, the promise of reinforcement was always an implied part of their mission. Didn't make it any easier, granted, but it isn't like they had to carve out a beachhead under fire and move inland to give breathing room to follow-on echelons. MARINES are shock troops, paratroopers are not. There is a big difference in the two...

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

You are right that it was done for play-balance. Problem is, it was done the wrong way. There should be special rules or SSRs to account for amphibious invasion morale factors--as, for example, there certainly will have to be for any Omaha Beach or Salerno game.

I disagree. As previously mentioned, an 8 ML is not the golden bullet to facing the Japanese. Nor is there an absence of amphib invasion morale factors-as you well know (G14.32). The 'play balance' rationale many ascribe to has become to be believed simply by the repetition of it. Yet, even in the day, MARINES were held to be the elite of US forces, and not just by themselves either. Certainly Col. Ichiki learned the hard way his elite force was no match for US MARINES, didn't he?

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

The Marines were engaged in all sorts of not-so-fierce combat in World War II, as well as occasional episodes of fierce combat.

WHAT A THROW-AWAY COMMENT! That could be said about ANY unit in ANY war in ANY time period of history! I also find a disturbing lack of objectivity in the use of "occasional"

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

The Marines needed to be 7-6-8s in order to have a chance when swarming the beach at Tarawa,

CORRECTION: The MARINES swarming the beach at Tarawa are 668s (with a few Scout-Sniper 768s present), NOT 768s. Nice of the resident thorough, OBJECTIVE historian to correct that oversight...

 

[Jim McLeod]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig] Paratroopers, as depicted, have proven to be quite capable of ASL success, capable of standing toe to toe with Germany's best. [/QUOTE]

Fezz', don't forget that we are talking about ASL here, a game system. Our choices are limited.

When you say that in a scenario featuring the SS and US Para's, the Para's are capable of standing toe-to-toe with the SS, that situation has been wrought through the playtesting of that scenario. The parity of the forces in the scenario is somewhat artificial in that that state has been reached by way of adding a squad here or removing a MG there.

As a very general comparrison, if you were to take 6 6-5-8 SS squads and put them agains 6 US 7-4-7 squads, with each side having a 9-1 leader and an 8-0 leader, my money would be on the SS. That difference in ML is enough to give the SS the significant edge. Give those Para's a ML of 8, and then you have a scrap on more equal footing

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig] Yet, to say they rate the same morale as "X" without any more empirical justification than " the wistful alternate reality history of the US paratroopers" is baseless.[/QUOTE]

Again, we are working within the confine of a game system that allows us to pick from only three ML's for MMC; '6,' '7' or '8'.

Not much choice given the extremely wide range in terms of quality of soldier in WWII.

As a very rough rule of thumb we may assume that Green/Inexperienced/2nd Line troops receive a ML of '6' (the glaring exception of course being US 1st Liners but then again they are ML '6-ers' with benefits, that BS ML of '8'), Regular 1st Liners have a ML of 7 and Elite troops have a ML of 8.

The above ML groups are then tweaked by way of ELR to fine tune how we think our card board squads should be depicted in ASL.

In terms of design, so much in this game system is subjective and open to bias. There will likely never be an occasion when everyone will be happy with decision made in terms of rule decisions or design. That is the way it is.

What we can do is use the tools we have to create the feel we, as designers, believe best fits the game model that we create.

In the case of the US Para's, use the existing 7-4-7, but make them fanatic. That is as good a compromise as we can expect at this time.

BTW, I would also use the 6-6-7 for US Para's.

I also use 5-4-8's to represent the infantry of the 12th SS in a Normandy scenario pack that I am still hammering away on.

We will have to agree to disagree on tha matter Fezz'.

How about those crappy Minor squads? Those guys should have been given a FP value of 3 for their 1st Line troops and the Elite could have been given a FP value of 4.




=Jim=

 

[Jim McLeod]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]...which was nearly always done as part of a larger operation. So, while they intially were fighting alone, the promise of reinforcement was always an implied part of their mission. Didn't make it any easier, granted, but it isn't like they had to carve out a beachhead under fire and move inland to give breathing room to follow-on echelons. MARINES are shock troops, paratroopers are not. There is a big difference in the two...[/QUOTE]

Fair enough, however, being able to function as a combat soldier when alone behind enemy lines with hostile troops all around requires a certain type of soldier.

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]...MARINES are shock troops, paratroopers are not. There is a big difference in the two...[/QUOTE]

I'll beg to differ with this statement.

The OED tells us that "Shock Troops" are troops trained in carrying out sudden assaults.

In not giving the enemy a great deal of advance notice of their impending arrival, I would hazard to guess that an airbornes assault can be termed as being 'sudden'.





=Jim=

 

[Pitman]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]Ab-so-freaking-lutely correct. Anyone who thinks the MARINE way of war was just hopping out of landing craft has a huge void of knowledge in regards to how the MARINES fought. Amphib operations were a part, but not parcel, of how they fought. Even to this day, MARINE and Army doctrine diverge from each other in substantive ways.[/QUOTE]

What Army and Marine Corps doctrine may be today is pretty much completely irrelevant to this argument, as would any development after September 1945.

As for the pre-1946 era, I think you may be imbibing the heady aroma of Marine Corps mythology more than you are drinking from the fountain of historical accuracy. Before the 1920s, there was no such thing as Marine Corps doctrine. The Marines were used as ship’s troops, as security detachments, and as occupation forces for the Caribbean. During World War I, Marine forces fought alongside the Army with no distinct tactical doctrine.

It was only a relatively short period of time before World War II began that the Marine Corps, for the first time, began to develop any doctrinal differences from the US Army, centered on amphibious warfare.

Following World War I, a few Marine Corps officers, notably Robert Dunlap and Alfred Cunningham, began exploring the efficacy of amphibious operations. However, they were in a minority, and Marine Corps HQ was slow to accept the notion; they bought into the USMC’s traditional roles.

However, in the 1920s, this began to change, largely due to Commandant John Lejeune, who wanted the USMC to have a distinct wartime mission that could survive Congressional budget cuts in peacetime. He began to claim that the “real justification for the continued existence of the Marine Corps” was to “accompany the Fleet for operations ashore in support of the Fleet.” Accordingly, in the early 1920s, Earl Ellis, working off of War Plan Orange, began to develop the rudiments of an amphibious assault doctrine.

Meanwhile, in 1925, Lejeune pushed for a distinct USMC role in the 1927 plan “Joint Action of the Army and Navy,” in which the Marines would not only be used for service with the Army, but would also assume responsibility for “land operations in support of the fleet for the initial seizure and defense of advanced bases and for such limited auxiliary land operations as are essential to the prosecution of the naval campaign.” However, it did acknowledge that the Army could do this, too.

Despite these concepts, amphibious warfare made little progress in the USMC for lack of funding. In practice, its main duties continued to be its traditional ones of ship’s guards and service in the Caribbean. According to Allen Millett, the noted historian of the USMC (and my Ph.D. advisor), “The Marine Corps barely kept the study of landing operations alive…amphibious warfare doctrine remained primitive.”

It was Commandant Ben Fuller in the 1930s, who finally claimed that the primary mission of the Marines was to seize and defend naval bases. In 1932, the Joint Board finally agreed that this was its war-time mission. This resulted in the creation of the Fleet Marine Force in 1933.

The first doctrinal manual was created in 1934, the Tentative Manual for Landing Operations. It was subsequently revised in 1938 and adopted as Fleet Training Publication 167. It was only in the late 1930s that the Marine corps actually began to regularly engage in landing exercises. It was in the plan Rainbow 2 that the Marines finally had a full role for an upcoming war with Japan: the Fleet Marine Force would form two divisions for amphibious assaults in the Pacific.

So when you talk about Marine Corps doctrine, you are talking about something that was basically first formally created in 1934 and finalized in 1938. In the context of World War II, there was no long and illustrious history of USMC separatism. It is probably worth keeping that in mind in these discussions, rather than relying on a “from the heart” argument.

 

[Pitman]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]I disagree. As previously mentioned, an 8 ML is not the golden bullet to facing the Japanese. Nor is there an absence of amphib invasion morale factors-as you well know (G14.32). The 'play balance' rationale many ascribe to has become to be believed simply by the repetition of it. Yet, even in the day, MARINES were held to be the elite of US forces, and not just by themselves either. Certainly Col. Ichiki learned the hard way his elite force was no match for US MARINES, didn't he?[/QUOTE]

The list of Japanese units that got their ass kicked by American units is a long one, and the list would not be dominated by Marines, but by the U.S. Army, with the Australians and Indians coming in close behind. So I don't understand your rhetorical question.

I am sure that the Marines held themselves to be "the elite" of US forces, but there certainly never was, nor is, any consensus outside the Corps to that effect.

 

[Pitman]

[QUOTE='Ol Fezziwig]...which was nearly always done as part of a larger operation. So, while they intially were fighting alone, the promise of reinforcement was always an implied part of their mission. Didn't make it any easier, granted, but it isn't like they had to carve out a beachhead under fire and move inland to give breathing room to follow-on echelons. MARINES are shock troops, paratroopers are not. There is a big difference in the two...[/QUOTE]

It would be hard to come up with any definition of "shock troops" in which Marines would somehow qualify but Paratroopers would not.

 

['Ol Fezziwig]

In the context of World War II, there was no long and illustrious history of USMC separatism. It is probably worth keeping that in mind in these discussions, rather than relying on a “from the heart” argument.

The seperatism betwixt Army and MARINES goes back to WW1. Having to do as much with the well-greased USMC PR machine as with their stellar performance afield, it was at times quite acrimonious.

 

[Tater]

I seem to recall that Napoleon received at least passing marks in this regard...

Which would matter if Napoleon was actually French. Nappy was a Corsican of ethnic Italian blood.

 

[Robin Reeve]

Nappy was a Corsican of ethnic Italian blood.

I would tend to consider that this describes many Americans too...:laugh:
Eisenhower, Schwartzkopf would then be German and JFK Irish, and all Americans, excepted native Americans would be British, Spanish, etc.

 

[Gen. blunder]

Did not Turkey take part of Greek Macedonia during the German invasion in 1941?

Frank

I really don't think so , greek Macedonia seems to be pretty far from the Turkish -Greek Border , the region of Greece that borders Turkey is called Thrace i believe.

 

[Gen. blunder]

And for the French, well, we did lose the war in '40, didn't we ? So I guess the game is fair, as long as Free French are represented by english troops.

We can also say that the french where equipped with a mix of french , american and english weapons and fighting equipment so it seems that the reprentation by Engish troops seems to be a compromise for simplification.Not counting on the fact that the free french that fought in Tunisia and Italy were mainly colonial troops from the 'armée Françaises d'Afrique' and that when the free french landed in France the De Gaule gouvernement started to recruit men from the 'metropole' (France) to built new units .(1er et 2 iéme division blindés).

 

[Schrapnellls]

it's difficult to represent FFL's troops b/c the equipments were very differents.

The first combats in AFN (French North Africa) against the Axis troops were did with the old French Equipment (MG, Lebel Rifle, but also D1 Tank and Old Laffly ACs with others Somua or british Valentine).

The Assault Fire Bonus in 1944 is generous, I think. The french troops were mainly equipped with M1903 rifle (or MAS 36 after the "Libération"). The M1 Garand was rare (the 2è DB used it probably) and the French didn't use the BAR (excepted in the 2è DB too!)

Schrap