PBEM / MBX Wargaming

We should let everyone know that people who are involved in active wargames should not discuss the specifics of their activities here. This is to avoid compromising that ongoing game and/or letting something slip (even inadvertently) to the "enemy".

I've mentioned in Shore Leave that I would be using Avalanche Press's USN Plan Orange to do the operational part of their scenarios and use Naval Thunder Battleship Row to game out the tactical parts with a little more granularity. A Naval Thunder turn is about 4 minutes and each inch represents 500 yards. A quick step through this afternoon pitted IJN battleship Nagato vs USS Nevada (BB-36). Nagato's 16.1"/45's out range Nevada's 14"/45's so that at an arbitrary 35" (17,500yds) Nagato is firing at Medium Range (a +1 to hit) whereas Nevada is firing at Long Range (no mod). Nagato also has eight single tube 5"/40's that although can come to bear in this engagemen…

From the never ending battles over Thorpe Bridge, the following report is of a short skirmish using the GDW Assault (circa 1983) rules (as I describe as a manual TacOps). For those not familiar, the overall scenario was derived from a USMC Tacical Decision Game "problem found in the Marine Corps Gazette. The actual problem can still be found on the MCA's website. MCA TDG 99-4. Thorpe Bridge can be located on the center right of the TDG map. My hand drawn map of the environs around Thorpe Bridge is here. Hexes are 250m each. The bridge is centermass but partially obscured by flash on scotch tape..., damn scotch. Since Assault was US Army-NATO centric M…

From the you did what file...I participated in a traditional game of Kriegsspiel with a number of enthusiaists located outside of Kansas City, MO, by way of a mode that could never have been envisioned when first written in the "dark days" following the final fall of Napolean, the internet. The multi-player game is umpired, and double blind. The scenario brief is extremely vague, and was played on the long fought over map centered on the City of Metz, along the Moselle River. We, RedFor, (consisting of me and the force commander, an army officer currently stationed in Hawaii) were told that we had cleared the enemy of our side of the river, and the river line was b…

This looks very interesting. No known way to order it yet, but I will as soon as I can and report back. Zolfaqar's Blow

Here is a summary of a small Indian-Russian engagement started yesterday. It is not yet complete, but the Russian side needs to determine how to proceed from where it is now. Situation: Indian Ocean. INS Delhi (Type-15 DDG), and INS Rajput (Kashin- Mod DDG) are providing protection to INS Jalashva (former USS Trenton LPD) during movement from India to unnamed islands to the SW. A Russian naval force consisting of Admiral Chabanenko (Udaloy II DDG) and Burnyy (Sovremenny DDG) has been ordered to stop the Indian force from off-loading the LPD. The engagement starts out with Sea King Mk.42’s and Ka-27 Helix’s scouting out forward of their respective forces with a…

MY first post at this forum. Been playing H4 for 3 months now...solo. Absolutely love the game, but would like to have a live opponent. Does anybody know if there are any PBeM games to join? thanks

For the next PBEM, I am proposing a variant of the Red Star Over The Gulf - Divide and Conquer scenario from Naval Sitrep #48. The Soviet forces are two escorts and three merchants. Iranian forces are two warships and maybe a few aircraft. That means we could have 2 Soviet (blue) players and 2 or 3 Iranian (red) players. The scenario will take place in the middle of the Persian Gulf, with the Blue objective to run to Kuwait to deliver war cargo, and the Red objective is, of course, to stop them. We could build this scenario with Blue side selecting their escorts (within reason--from ships that were actually in the gulf at the time). This will be known to Red s…

Harpoon CPX Update Okay, the coin has been tossed and ... Dewayne has drawn the EU Peter has drawn the US You will each receive separate SITREP's and Order of Battle (OOB) information by private email. Your choices will be posted here later. Here's the basic premise of the scenario, which I've entitled "Terminus": Sometime in the not too distant future … The war in the Middle East during the past few weeks has been devastating, and has left military forces, political ties and civilian populations bruised and battered on all sides. One of the most tragic victims of the conflict has been the longstanding alliance between the United States and t…

As this was conducted as research for my upcoming RP, Carrier, I'm not going to reveal what the precise aircraft types were. All I'll say was that BLUFOR consisted of four 4.5th gen heavy fighters and two strategic aircraft, while REDFOR consisted of six 4th gen light fighters. REDFOR had bounced BLUFOR after hacking into the country's air defence system, but BLUFOR spotted the attack in time to take evasive action and pickle drop tanks, so neither side started with an advantage. In two turns, both strategic aircraft were down with only one REDFOR fighter, although the crews managed to escape. BLUFOR took its revenge on REDFOR, killing a total of three fighters an…

Bouncing back and forth between the Airpower and AirStrike rules, I ran through Air Strike scenario G-12 at "Low Threat". Since it was solo, I rolled a d6 for the target map and the four surrounding maps, re-rolling for duplicate map numbers. The various targets were defended by one "A" and one "C" rated FCR assisted KS-19, one "A" and one "C" rated FCR assisted S-60 batteries, and four SA-14 MANPAD Teams. The attackers were two Su-25's carrying a DDS-A (10 Flares and 10 Chaff) and a small "Medium" rocket pod on weapon stations 1, and 10; and four 1100 BB on stations 2,4,7,and 9. Intially entering on one of the adjacent maps, the Frogfoots came in a T level…

This boxed game is supposed to be an intro to the Second world War at Sea series from Avalanche Press. I ordered it last week and was waiting for me upon my arrival home after being away for a few days. Nice components...eg counters tactical map, and two ajoining operation map segments. Series Rule book appears to be a decently prepared photo copy as well as the game specific rules/scenarios. Scenarios include two of the shorter "Battle" Scenarios - "Night Action" and "Convoy Defense". The Operational Scenarios call for a "Battle of the Coral Sea 1-10 May 1942" scenario of 60 Turns (Each Turn is 4 Hours), and the full blown "Coral Sea Extended Campaign, 1-30 May 1…

Currently on the table is an old gem called Air & Armor, by West End Games. It depicts NATO Brigades/Soviet Divisions, unit of maneuver is battalions, and regiments respectively. The system uses a "step" counter beneath a unit counter to depict anything from a company sized force, up to a nine step motorized rifle regiment. Oh, the fog of war. Time is two hours per turn First scenario I ran was Race for the Bridges. Soviet 20th Motorized Rifle Division racing through a screen of the West German 35th PzG Brigade, for theany undestroyed bridges across the Main river, in the vicinity of Wurtzburg. The Canadian 4th Brigade Combat Group arrives in turn 3 of 5 to …

First of all - No disrespect to the belligerents and/or victims of this current war between Georgia and Russia. Just using the situation to frame a viable scenario. Georgian Su-25 responding to ground units observing a Russian armored column advancing on their defensive positions. Russian armored column of 2x tank platoons and a mechanized infantry platoon. At a rearward position, covering a bridge crossing, is a solitary SA-11 launch vehicle. Su-25 enters the south edge of the map at T Level and moves up along the eastern side of the map. Turns 3-4, Su-25 effectively jams the SA-11 TTR with its AJM-A EW Pod. Turn 5 it is not jammed and the SA-11 lock…

This was done solo on the floor (I know the title is using the CIC Plotter, but there is more coming), with three minitures (only one matching an actual participant, an O.H. Perry FFG) and the rest being carboard chits. This run through began much in line with history as Joshan (Combattante II) responded to being warned away from the Sirri GOPLAT by firing harpoons, in this case 4, at the US SAG. Simpson (FFG-56) immediately detected three of the four inbound missiles and things went downhill from there. At medium range, Simpson fired two SM1MR - both missed. At short range, two SM1MR's accounted for one of the harpoons. At very short range Simpsons 76mm/62 fired …

This OOB data may or may not be accurate or useful, and is reportedly from a UK diplomatic source ... I post it here in case someone would like to do some wargaming (like Pete ) ...

I'm a newbie to Harpoon 4 and was looking a small newbie friendly scenario. Anything like this starting up or anyone interested in moderating one?

Flew Scenario S-1 Border Clash in a USMC F-4S versus a WP MiG23MF. It was guns only and the MiG used the Evasive Movement Table...to no avail. On Turn 6, I was able to dive onto him ending up on his 0 degree line point blank firing a 2 second burst from my external SUU-23 Vulcan 20mm gun pod scoring a cripple result thus 16 points. Always a good feeling getting your first "kill".

Using AirWar: C21 miniature rules, from Wessex Games and some 1/600 scale mini's today there was an F-105F leading two F-105D's on a Vietnam-era strike on an enemy POL site consisting of three POL tanks. The site was within the envelope of a defending SA-2b battery. The SAM site and wild weasel engaged each other the same turn/fire phase. The SAM battery volley fired three missiles at the WW, the WW let loose an AGM-45A Shrike. The next fire phase the Wild Weasel was able to evade, while the Shrike scored a hit on the SAM radar set, effectively suppressing and blinding them. Over the next two turn/phases the two F-105D's scored a single DP with an AGM-12B, and…

There are several huge topics for MBXing, and one of them is certainly the art and science of GMing. I am probably a newcomer to MBXs compared to others, having played in two (Global Thunder, with Rikki Tikki GMing, and War in 2010, with Bill Jennings GMing). What I've come away with, however, is a profound recognition for such a game's demands on a GM. Not only is there combat to model... in fact, that's the easy part. The GM needs to master several things. Perhaps we'll be able to get Rikki and Bill to join HarpGamer to share their wisdom. But in the meantime, here are several of what seem to be the key topics: - website design and maintenance - good picture-…