Spotted this set of rules a while ago, so thought I'd buy them for the playtest as they were only £10 for a Lulu paperback.
Presentation
96pp black and white Lulu paperback - A5 sized, order from https://www.3rdgenerationwarfare.co.uk/. There's a wealth of information in there along side the rules, even an APFSDS penetration graph, and some nice B&W wargame photos. Some of that mixing in though does get in the way of a clear read through the rules or when you're hunting to find something. Well written though, and almost everything covered (incl ATGW, AA, Counter battery etc) although the mottled grey background to each page can make the text hard to read. Free downloadable QRS and 6mm mods. Not bad at all though, and the overall style is something I wouldn't mind emulating for my own rules when I publish them, hadn't thought of A5 and the Lulu print is pretty nice.
Set-Up
As previous, but now had the British coming in broadly across the East edge, and the Russian's coming in broadly on the West edge.
How It Played
I got as far as the opening tank duel before I realised that there were going to be some real problems playing it, so instead I abandoned the scenario play through and just went through the motions of trying some direct AT fire, AP fire, indirect fire and assault.
Rules Impression
I had a bit of a sinking feeling when I saw the 20x20 table for armour kills, but I decided to stick with it. Moved my units ready for the first T64 vs Chieftain, went to look up the AP and Armour ratings, and realised there weren't any. ALL the stats are in another £10 book! Now a £10 book I'm reasonably happy to buy on-spec, but £20 has probably crossed the threshold into a more deliberate purchase, and given that 20x20 matrix and a few other things I could see that this wasn't a rule set I'd play again. I guessed some values but found this put penetrations at 11+. Luckily there's a snapshot of the Leopard entry on a page on the web site, so I used that as a guide, which gave a more reasonable 9+, but really had to guess things like FV432s, Scimitars and BMPs. Then came my first infantry fire and whilst a "Squad" is given an FP rating all support weapons are in the extra £10 book, and its not clear from the rules is the Squad FP includes its GPMG or not. Indirect fire, same issue - FPs in the extra book. At that point I gave up.
From what I did manage to play:
- Seems like tank guns can fire 3 times, and move twice - which seems excessive on an IGOUGO game, so most Chieftains were out in the first round
- Infantry close range fire seemed cumbersome and then very ineffective. The process is:
- Sum the FP of troops involved (which involves rolling dice for some support weapons)
- Use a table to convert FP to dice
- Roll the dice, total pips = potential hits
- Roll dice for each potential hit against a To Hit value
- If target hit roll another dice for a cover save
- If fail the cover save roll another dice and cross reference with FP on a 6 x 20 table to see if just suppressed, fallback or destroyed (although also results for destroyed and suppressed, and destroyed and fallback!)
- Arty uses same tables as infantry
- There is a morale roll, but for most NATO its an automatic pass
Overall
OK so I didn't play a complete game, and perhaps shouldn't give a rating, but there should be a clear message on the website that you need to buy the data book to play it - or give a both books for £15 deal. What I did play though just seemed to cumbersome, and the multiple actions too powerful. Overall it would probably still be only 5/10 if I had all the data to play it.
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