1985 Company MegaTest - ColdWar3

 

Spotted this one when I was looking at something else on WargamesVault, and for only $13 thought it worth a punt.

Presentation

113 page full colour PDF for $14 from WargamesVault. Like 3rd Generation Warfare it's obviously written by someone very keen and reasonably knowledgeable on the subject. It does include all the stats you need, and there is a downloadable free 2 page QRS.

But..

Even more so than 3rd Generation Warfare lots of interesting facts and bits of detail get in the way of a clear presentation of the rules.

The rules are covered in typos. Some are consistent mis-spellings of military terms (NORTHTAG, reccee etc), but most are just simple typos. I chose a page at random and it had 12 typos on it - and that seems typical.

Worse, there are some factual errors (Chieftain with a 105mm gun?).

Even worse, some of the dice rolls and DMs are confused in sign, and different between rules and QRS. For instance the key "to hit" roll is 4+ for conscripts and 5+ for trained in the rules, but 5+ for conscripts and 4+ for trained in the QRS! The QRS in the back of the "updated" rules (issued today!) manages to miss Trained and Elite from the table entirely. Artillery to hit is based on the target team's skill level (just about makes sense with DF, but for IDF? And what happens if you have mixed targets under the template (which although mentioned lots I couldn't find), but then has DMs of +1 if target has gone to ground (so harder to hit) but +1 if using radar or airborne (which should make things easier).

Basically they are a mess.

Then I got a real sense of deja vu, with some bits of rules ringing bells. A quick check and I realised that this was basically Team Yankee. Google confirmed it, or at least that it is/was a "modern" version of Flames of War. Some of the vehicle/weapon stats are identical with TY, and all the core mechanics are the same. There are a few things streamlined (and generally improved), a few things made more cumbersome, and worse. But there is NOTHING that  I could see on the web site or in the rules that references this heritage even though both FOW and TY are mentioned (alongside other rulesets) in the introduction.

So had I known all this I doubt I'd have bought it.

And all this makes the "puff" at the start with a positive quote from an Army officer and lots of thanks to various military units and people even more embarrassing.

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

Given all the issues this was again a bit of an abbreviated test. A bit more play than 3GW since at least all the material was there and TY was playable, even though I had to keep referring back to TY to work out what CW3 was trying to do. One change from TY is that it had "to hit" values of 3+ for WARPAC and 4+ for NATO, whereas CW3 has 4+ and 5+ respectively. That said the Chieftains rapidly finished off the T64s (both have a ROF of 2), and then only had to dodge the Saggers to start picking off the BMPs. One Scimitar also made short work of a platoon of BMPs (ROF4!). The Russians did try and launch a ground assault, with no casualties on either side on one melee, and a Soviet win on the other.

Rules Impression

Trying to move beyond the presentation issues, and without repeating the TY comments there were a few positives:

• Direct fire was slightly streamlined, at least 1 step skipped I think
• The Morale idea was nice, randomly determine a target number at the start, then hit it with nD6, but n reduces depending on how bad things are
• Some nice weapon discrimination and lots of detailed weaponry (Firecracker rounds, beehive ammo!)

Oh and side order was not spelt out at all, it just says "taking turns" or "in turn" - does that mean by side or unit, and who's first. Certainly no friction.

Taking TY and adding in the better bits of CW3 would probably give a reasonable set of rules - but I'd definitely start from TY not CW3!

Overall

Disappointing on multiple counts, a pity given the author's obvious keenness and knowledge. In its current state its barely worth 3/10.