Ozerekya Breakout (OzB) CG

Tim Niesen

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Thanks George, I missed that since I have not actually used the TP chart. I am the umpire and ASL teacher until the Germans arrive. Both of the players are relative novices in ASL. We should start by next week. Don and I are studying the air rules, which I have very seldom played with. Bill Smith and I have only played ASL only a couple times a few years ago, but despite his inexperience he won our first scenario. (The Citadel.) Despite having recently celebrated his 80th birthday, the crafty old Vietnam soldier is not to be taken lightly as a war gamer. Tim
 

Sully

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Excellent AAR - thanks for taking the time to take all those notes and pull them together for us.

I'm playing this now and have to concur that this CG is the ASL equivalent of Quest for Fire. The ASL Fire rules do not play well on this dense terrain. You were lucky in that the blazing woods didn't play too large a role as the fighting moved beyond them for the most part. We were not so lucky. NOBA created a flame on the first turn and the rest is history. For us it completely shut down any attack along the western edge.

-Sully



<rant>
The Fire rules work pretty well for a typical scenario and the time scale a scenario represents. But the are out of whack for a CG, IMHO. Using OzB as an example which is on the scale of a couple of days, if either of the forests on the hills burned down, it would too darn hot to go over that terrain at all for at least a few days. But in the Consolidation phase, blazes just make the terrain open ground for the next TM. In all fairness, that is how the CG was playtested and any major changes now would change the balance and require another set of playtesting, etc, etc.

I think it would be in the best interest of the hobby if we developed a set of fire rules that could apply to CGs, and be modified as needed based on the time scale of the CG. For example, in OzB, I think an SSR which drastically makes it harder for flame to blaze or a blaze to spread would have greatly improved gameplay. And in Consolidation, ALL Blaze terrain would be come Rubble (not just buildings) to show the difficulty of moving through the terrain that was just literally on fire! For CGs of smaller scale (like Bloody Buron), I would just keep the Flames and Blazes where they are and pick them up on the next TM (Bloody Buron is 4 dates which encompass a single morning). Just some thoughts.

Again, the Fire rules work great in a scenario to deny some terrain that was available and spread some SMOKE around, but in CGs, Fires have a much different effect that IMHO needs to be managed.
</rant>
 

=FC=Gorgon

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What's the trick to uploading a file/image? I keep getting an error.
Thanks for the kind words, Dave. AFAIK if you want to include an image it must exist somewhere on the Internet and you provide the URL to it. In my case, I put the images on my webserver and gave the URL via the icon in the editor the looks like a landscape. Not sure if you can upload images any more. :(
 

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There is a rather simple "fix" to the "it makes the Cg a series of "Advancing FIRE Phase" DRs that become, frankly first annoying, then simply a buzzkill from scenario to scenario. Let them burn as normal during each scen - then simply put them out between scenarios, rather than allowing them to continue to burn as massive conflagrations on one or both hillsides. When we questioned George about this just after its release - George responded "yes, massive conflagrations did break out in about 1/3rd of all the play tests - but it was not deemed sufficient to incorporate a change to end them between scenarios", even though they did kill the enjoyment factor of the game due to so SO MANY DRs ever single ADV Fire Phase - and god forbid a gusts or mild breeze starts once a fire is burning in those woods.

We decided any replay in this HASL requires a house rule (shudder) to end the fires in between each scenario - they break out easily enough anyway, with so much fire-making capability on both sides. (FTs, NOBA heavy guns, MOL-Ps, DCs). You can always re-light them if you REALLY want them burning way merrily.

Without that change, for me this CG goes from Oz Breakout to Make a Fire Breakout.

JMHO.

Jon H
 

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The following errata was added to the Lone Canuck errata page sometime back, possibly after you already began your game.

Tactical Mission Special Rule - OzB D5.18 Flames/Blazes/Burning Wrecks: For each Flame counter on the map make a dr; on a 1-4, extinguish (remove) the Flame; and on a 5-6, turn over each Flame to become a Blaze and place a Pin counter on it. Extinguish (remove) any non-pinned Blaze; if terrain in an extinguished Blaze hex is a building, cover it with the appropriate Rubble counter. Cover any non-building extinguished Blaze hex (eliminating any Fortifications in the hex) with a Shellhole counter and treat as Open Ground. Remove Pin counters from any Blazes.

NOTE: This modification is meant to reduce chance of forest fires raging across the map.
yes. the fix required - :)

regards jon
 

Tim Niesen

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George, Are the roads unpaved in this area? Maybe I just missed it. Tim
 

Sully

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Ha! Image uploading appears to work now.

Behold the conflagration! And behold my retched Romanians losing pretty much every piece of equipment they own. :sick:

Capture.JPG
 

Tim Niesen

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The Soviet commander asked me to ask ofvthe lend lease Stuart's have canister?
 

Tim Niesen

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Thanks, Don Deibler confirmed that by looking at my Russian Stuart counter, but he noted that no Russian account that he has ever seen of using canister. Has anyone seen a Russian account of such usage?
 

witchbottles

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Thanks, Don Deibler confirmed that by looking at my Russian Stuart counter, but he noted that no Russian account that he has ever seen of using canister. Has anyone seen a Russian account of such usage?
an interesting concept - one I find worth researching! Great thought! I'm gonna page in Paul M. Weir, resident doctor of AFV-ology on the GS Forums. He's likely to be in a good position to find any answers for this that might exist.
 

Tim Niesen

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In this campaign game, the engineers get to replenish their FTs with juice, is the same true for special ammo or not? I think not, but just asking.
 

Paul M. Weir

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I'm gonna page in Paul M. Weir, resident doctor of AFV-ology on the GS Forums.
Hi all, Jon just alerted me to this thread, possibly to no avail. I have no idea whether the Soviets got canister with their M3s. Quite honestly I have no idea which ammo types and in what ratio they got other than they got 37mm ammo.

OK, I'll try to construct a chain of events, could very well be wrong, but my best attempt at sense.

While some M3s might have come from UK LL stocks, especially early on, I believe/suspect that most came from straight from US stocks. That would very strongly suggest that they would come with US type ammo loads, unlike the British who did not see the importance of HE early in the war.

That reminds me about AP ammo. The M6 gun on the M3/M5 series had 2 types, the M74 AP-T and the M51 APCBC-T (Armour Piercing Capped Ballistic Capped - Tracer). The M74 could only manage about 40 mm (one figure gave 36 mm) at 0° at 500m while the M51 managed about 60 mm (61 mm). Whatever about the exact figures which vary a bit by testing conditions, that would equate to an ASL TK of 9 and 11 respectively. You could legitimately use a 37LL TK of 9 for early M3 usage. I think this is what is somewhat reflected in SSR 7 in U2 "Sweep For Bordj Toum Bridge". I have read comments that the M6 gun was inferior to the British 2lbr and ones that it was superior. Both would be true if you allow for the strikingly different performance of the M74 and M51 rounds.

The Soviets did produce Canister for many of their guns, especially their smaller guns, so was canister would conform to their doctrine. As I said, most M3s were likely from US stocks and thus likely have US ammo loads.

Now let us look at the ASL counters. The US M3A1 (Yanks 2) has C7, the Soviet M3A1 (HP) has C6. I maybe misremembering, but the RB said that Special Ammunition numbers should be reduced by 1 when used by an allied nation and the Soviet M3A1 follows that pattern. So it's not a simple copy of the US vehicle and I deduce from that that the back room Rule Book people definitely did intend for the Soviet version to have canister. So whatever about the Soviets in real life getting canister, ASL Soviet M3A1 definitely get canister.

So if you are concerned with the game representation, then Yes, with history, then Maybe. :oops:
 

Tim Niesen

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Don looked at the rules better than I did. Special ammo is replenished. Still the issue of the roads. Don notices that that the roads have two different colors. Does this mean that the roads near the little village are paved and the roads to the coast are not? This makes sense. Col. Bill's wife slipped on the ice and his participation has been delayed, so there is no hurry on these questions. Tim
 

Tim Niesen

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Paul thanks for your imput. One comment before Don Deibler responds: is not the inherent reduction of the C7 to C6 take care of this reduction for allies? The armor stuff is beyond my ken.
 

Paul M. Weir

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Paul thanks for your imput. One comment before Don Deibler responds: is not the inherent reduction of the C7 to C6 take care of this reduction for allies? The armor stuff is beyond my ken.
As far as I can figure out the printed reduction has taken into account that allied reduction, I would not make any additional reduction (to an effective C5). The purpose of the allied reduction rule was to allow for the use of one nation's coloured counters by another nation. For most of ASL's lifetime there were no Soviet coloured Matilda, Valentine, Churchill III, M3A1, 75mm M4A2 counters and we had to use British coloured ones. Now that we have them in Soviet brown, I would stick to what is printed on the Soviet versions verbatim *.

* I look at the APDS for Soviet Churchill III (D6/7) with disbelief. It's not that the British might not supply APDS but that the Churchill was only supplied in small numbers in '42 and '43. I believe about 50 Churchill II (use a Churchill I but a 2 FP BMG replacing the 76mm SA) and 150 Churchill III/IV. I have not read of any combat use of the Churchill II, that's not to say it didn't happen and the main reference to Churchill III was during Kursk. There would have been few, if any in combat by mid '44, just too slow for advances and too few in number anyway. I would hazard a guess that any Kursk survivors were relegated to training. So I can hardly see the Soviets even asking for APDS for those, nevermind getting any.
 
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