Sabresquadron Playtest

As mentioned in the last of the CWO posts I decided to use the second half of the scenario to test Sabresquadron which I picked up at Salute, and which has been on my list for a while.

In the scenario there was a Brit platoon and supporting Chieftain in each of the central village and the southern wood. The village was attacked first by the T64s which took out the Chieftain for no loss, and then assaulted by the BMP platoon, the troops dismounting about 300m out. One section got wiped out on the way in, and the Brits kept the second one suppressed. But with no real A/T it reached the stage where the Soviets could just stand-off and blast the village with HE from the BMPs, or call in the 2S1s.

Against the wood it was a similar story. BMP Saggers took out the FV438 Swingfire team in an outlying farm, but then a BMP copped it from the Chieftain. Several misses on both sides til a T64 spared from the assault on the village drove across and took the Chieftain out. Remaining BMP sections deployed and went into the attack, and after a couple of rounds the facing Brit section was toast and I called game over.

It's odd, originally from what I'd seen I thought that Sabresquadron was going to be too complex (those huge data lists at the back?), but the core rules are very simple - possibly too simple for me. Now there are lots of rules for lots of special cases, special weapons, special scenarios and situations and so on, but it does strike me that the core rule set is missing some real essentials - decent spotting (a unit is visible as long as within a range and/or dependent on basic cover and if moved/fired, no roll), any form of suppression, and some impact of cover on to-hit (cover only comes in as a DM on whether a soft target is KO'd). The ranges seem over long for smaller weapons (e.g. SMG 4" vs SLR 12", x3 difference whereas its more like 25/50m vs 300m to my recollection), but movement distances seem huge (and complicated with the inches-per-step and steps-per-move calculation) . Add to that it's strict IGO-UGO (not even any overwatch) so you can motor your troops across the ground and fire before any enemy gets the chance to respond.

Oh, and not sure about the rules for tactical nukes as pretty much game over if they start to fly, quite apart from the ethical/moral side of including WMDs.

All-in-all then not a ruleset for me. There might be some nice colour bits lurking in there (drones and EW covered, but not sure well, and didn't try the pathfinder bit) but will have a better read in slow time.

Anyway only one quick play, but back to CWO for me.