Moving Ground Fire

**Bobit** · 12-10-2012 02:40

I tried a fun scenario with moving ground fire

. I know what you're thinking:

. But, I rigged it so that they move only half as slow as planes (not sure how that works, maybe mounted?), and it was very fast paced action! It needs only the Burning Drachen set. Try it for yourself; the rules are as follows:

Just before the phase when landed planes move (if you're not playing with landed planes, that'd be before the second maneuver), one player (randomly selected) can choose a plane to "manage" meaning do one of these things:

1) Entrench (if mobilized): Remove all blank/useless counters from the ground fire. It acts like normal ground fire.

2) Mobilize (if entrenched): Add a blank/useless counter to the ground fire. While it has this counter, it takes twice as much damage (represented by altitude counters) and can only fire as a trench does (if it is C-firing AA, it doesn't fire or reload at all).

3) Move (if mobilized): Move as if it was a landed aircraft (see Burning Drachen rules).

4) Charge (if mobilized): Move up to one ruler in a direction in which the ruler is parallel to the shorter sides of the card.

5) Do nothing :embarass:.

The selected plane must not have been "managed" this turn. Then let the other player do it, then you can do it again, then they can again, and so on until all ground fire have been managed. You cannot move ground fire onto other ground fire unless otherwise is specifically mentioned in the scenario rules. Ground fire can shoot at other ground fire. Managing does include option #5

The setup is the same as the "Lonely Sentinel" scenario with altitude, with the following exceptions: The Allied player does not receive rockets, but instead receives

3 trenches, 2 B-firing AA-mg's, 1 A-firing AA-mg, and 1 C-firing AA. He may line these up at his edge, but not overlapping. Yes, all ground fire can move. The German player get his Albatross immediately. Everything else is exactly the same, including the fact that no points are rewarded for silencing trenches or AA. Let the battle begin!

So that's it! Be sure to play it

, give feedback

, and promote me to post more stuff on forms

.

**diceslinger** · 12-10-2012 08:23

This looks interesting...Sort of a ground war going on under the planes. The speed of the ground forces moving at half the airplane speed sounds awfully fast for the scale. If the planes are going 120 mph, the ground units are moving at 60 mph. But I can also see that if you retard the ground units too much it ruins the fun of it.

What if you start out with double the MG tokens on the board? Let them move as you are proposing, at half aircraft speed, but when an enemy plane comes within shooting range the token is revealed to be a dummy or a real MG, controlling players choice. Half of the total placed counters can be real MGs, and half must be chosen to be dummies. If it is chosen to be real it is placed, and can't move for the rest of the game. Perhaps this keeps the unpredictability from the movement, but justifies why they move so fast?

Thanks for a thought provoking idea, nice idea for your first post!

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 12-10-2012 12:10

I was thinking of moving my truck mounted AA guns at about 30 mph.
Rob.

**wargamer** · 12-10-2012 12:37

You might be able to move that fast - 30 kph on the roads of the day, maybe even 30 mph inside major cities like Paris. But on a battlefield? Please. Keeping up with infantry is almost impossible for wheeled vehicles of the day, tracked just slightly faster. Think 5 mph for infantry, 4 for wheeled, 6 for track. Railroad units move fastest because of the tracks set up and ready to go. Other than that, it is fantasy.

Even behind the lines, think small farm field, normally with stone fences that border the road (still those would be mud tracks in the rain), fields that have stones, potholes, and other lurking traps that the vehicles of the day would break on. In no man's land and around a mile or so behind, you have craters, trenches, wire and other obstacles.

Best idea would be use a hex map (1 inch hexes or smaller) for your battle mat, and for the ground units, and let the ground units move one hex every other turn or so. Upon coming to an obstacle, they would have to spend an extra turn to try to overcome it. Perhaps automatic for infantry - just waste one turn. Each turn the wheeled unit tries, they can move if they roll a 1 on a d6. For tracked the same except 1 or 2 on a d6.

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 12-10-2012 13:10

I may be wrong Al but I think that would totally destroy the effect Bobit was aiming for. I don't think he was going for authenticity so much as for fun. But let us wait to see what he has to say about our ideas. Even my 30 mph may be too slow for him.
Rob.

**wargamer** · 12-10-2012 16:19

Oh, well, wonder how it work if you combined wings of war with space 1889?

**Bobit** · 12-11-2012 03:04

I don't know anything about the history or these games really. I just thought it would be fun to try, and it was except that the defender was destroyed because with the rules I was playing with the one time I tested it, the plane didn't come into action until the 3rd turn. It was pretty simple and fast paced, that was kind've what I was aiming for.

@ Wargamer I personally think the hexagon is always a little bit choppy. And I have no clue what this space game is. Sorry.

@ Flying Officer Kyte That wouldn't work for this scenario, but probably for most other scenarios. I'll try that once I make another one, like a bombing thing which also gives the attacker army forces.

@ Diceslinger That would work if I had that many tokens XD. Anyhow, that doesn't work for this scenario because they would not actually be able to attack the balloon, and I don't really get how that justifies it. Could you explain?

**diceslinger** · 12-11-2012 07:59

Originally Posted by Bobit

@ Diceslinger That would work if I had that many tokens XD. Anyhow, that doesn't work for this scenario because they would not actually be able to attack the balloon, and I don't really get how that justifies it. Could you explain?

Yep, I was under the mistaken impression that the ground fire was defending. I missed the part about the balloon. I was concentrating on the game mechanic I guess.

**wargamer** · 12-13-2012 20:20

Space 1889 was the basic roleplay system, that then included Sky Galleons of Mars and other sets for miniatures....

**Archidamus** · 12-14-2012 01:04

I must admit that, as I also play a 15mm based Martian Empires game and a 6mm pre-dreadnought based Martians on Earth game, I have thought of trying to integrate WoW and one or the other (obviously, doing so for either would require some creative thinking

)

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 12-14-2012 02:06

I remember getting sucked into a game of this somewhere down south when we were putting on an AWI Demo game many years ago. Chaps kept gettin drawn away from our table with the phrase "Got to go and bash the Martians".
Any of you chaps remember it?

To answer Brians comment. Sails of Glory had better watch its six.

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Rob.

**csadn** · 12-14-2012 15:47

Originally Posted by wargamer

Oh, well, wonder how it work if you combined wings of war with space 1889?

Ten steps ahead of you. :)

I did a _Space:1889_/_Richthofen's War_ crossover many moons ago (scenarios centered around German aerial gunboats and transports using artificial liftwood invading southern England). The main problem I found was the weapons: WW1 acft. flat-out could not carry any weaponry which would do much more than scratch the paintwork of an aerial gunboat -- even the weakest-armored hull or turret would stop MG and light-cannon fire. In essence, acft. against aerial gunboats turned into single-use bomb or aerial-torpedo carriers (think "_Battlefleet Gothic_ small craft rules", and you're there).

_WG1_ is not an improvement on that score -- no amount of 0.30-cal. fire will do any more than harm anyone stupid enough to be outside the armor during a battle. Even C and D draws would be mostly ineffective. The only way for acft. to harm aerial gunboats is the same as how they defeated the Zeppelins historically -- bombs (or aerial torpedoes). So it really doesn't add anything to the game, unless one is a huge fan of _Burning Drachens_.

_WG2_, OTOH, does allow for a bit more entertainment -- picture an aerial gunboat going up against a flight of B-25G/Hs... or, god help us, a B-17 with a 105 in the nose.... >:)