Tuesday Night in the City

Chris wants to revisit how NQM works for FIBUA at lower levels, what he would call "RSO", which is his regimental level game.

Chris was using his sort of ultra moderns. Men in power armour supported by Centurion tanks. Phil & I were attacking a town called Calcaneus which spans the River Fossa. We were the Catharians, Steve and Tim were the Tibians. I've got a couple of infantry battalions (near the camera) Phil has the same plus the armour. 

As with all urban conflict it's a bit confusing. There's not a lot of room in the hexes and Chris also wants to have multiple levels in the buildings.

Chris was fiddling with the rules a bit. Urban hexes can now only hold 4SPs instead of the usual 7, and he wanted to do something to up the body count once the street fighting started. He would describe these as "scenario" rules, because he sees NQM as a tool kit. I think of NQM as more like a template. For a tool kit approach you chose which bits of the rule book to apply, but here we are using "tools" not in the kit. The template says the game must have Recce, Bombardment, Movement, Fighting and Re-org phases, but what happens in them is flexible. This works really well as a framework. The only couple of rule mechanisms that are solid are the combat results table ("Table 12" as it is known locally) and the re-org mechanism that halves casualties and makes them permanent. For the Great War game we played last week I had quite a lot of scenario rules.

Anyway, the challenge when attacking dug in troops in NQM is how to overcome the differential caused by the defenders being in cover. You need a 3 or 4:1 superiority to have any chance of success. I quickly spotted that this had suddenly become easier. With only 4 SPs in a hex for the defenders (that's an infantry company and a support base = 2 dice, one light, one medium or heavy) two adjacent hexes with 7 SPs in each gives 3 dice per hex (two light, one medium or heavy) = 6 dice in total, or 3:1. On a "corner hex" with 3 sides exposed you can therefore get up to 9 dice, or more than 4:1. This worked for the edge of the city, and enable me to drive into the defences without any armour or artillery support.

I don't know if that was Chris' intention, but it worked for me. I was accused of being lucky, but I'd done the odds in my head before I started, and they favoured me.

Here's my "elite" Imperial Guards, moving up in their troop carriers.

They swiftly deploy and overrun the outer defences.

We soon have a foot hold. The key thing now is to attack from three hex sides as far as possible, as things have now evened up in terms of cover. Losing the "Post Outcome Dice Roll" now means the hits are immediately turned into casualties. Ouch! That's bloody.

Phil is infiltrating the armour into the far side of the city. Whilst it is effective, what is really working for me is the man portable anti-tank weapons that accompany the infantry, and give me bunker-busting ability in the built up area. The Tibia MG post on the top of the building is causing us problems.

Then the Tibians blew up one of the bridges. There's only two. We need to push on or we won't be able to capture the whole town.

I've got troops fighting up the main street, but I've also passed some companies round the outside, so I can get in a flanking attack.

You can see one of Phil's tanks nosing into the main town square, top right. I need some LOG units to resupply. We're running low on ammo, but we're keeping the casualties down.

Tim blew the last bridge, but I was permitted to pass infantry units across the ruins, and succeeded in forcing back the Tibians on the other side. I have more infantry moving up, and as the game closes down, both sides are claiming victory. But everyone knows we won.

The rule changes are working to a certain extent. If Chris wants truly attritional fighting in the town hexes then he has an issue with the smaller occupation limit, unless you get overwhelming odds from attacking from multiple hex side. With a 3SP infantry base attacking with Light dice against targets in Medium cover, you're hitting on a 5,6, with S1 Medium support weapons you add a 4,5,6 and with S1 Heavy a 3,4,5,6. Admittedly the higher numbers for the M & H bases are inflicting more than one hit, but you have to hit the target first. Rolling two dice with a a L/M combination you have 67% chance of at least one hit, with a L/H combo it goes up to 78%.  That compares with the defenders fighting against troops in Light cover hitting on 83% and 95%. As we were able to edge the hits inflicted with multiple simultaneous attacks, we won out in most of the post combat dice offs. That meant we weren't automatically converting to casualties and were able to rally down our hits, and they weren't.

Post game chat revolved around a number of issues but Chris i think is focused on how he makes the terrain work. I expect he will be back at the plywood or MDF with his fret saw over the next week or so to try something new.