Post AAR thoughts about my CDS game

Now that some time has pass since my CDS game and I am not the foul mood I was in that weekend due to all of the various things that went wrong then, I have had time to reflect on some things that occurred in the game that troubled me and how I want to improve on them…besides my lack of combat packing everything to go to a con or a shop. 

First thing was that I finalized a sheet that tracks your hits, shock, action dice, Big Men status, command radius, and general notes for each company.  I actually created it a long time ago and was planning to have them available at the game, but I left them out of town.  I am pretty happy with what I created, but I want to add some more things to it on the backs, sort of a cheat sheet of what you can do with your Big Men and squad’s action dice.  I finished one for each of the different infantry companies, except the US Army mechanized infantry and the USMC, but will eventually later.  Once I finish them, I will see if I can post them to blog or maybe create a Dropbox or something similar for anyone who wants a copy can get one, plus I will add on the outline of how to do a US Army’s operation order (OPORD) for anyone inclined to add that level of realism to their games.  What I will do with the company status sheets is to laminate them and give out wet wipe markers or grease pencils to the various company commanders in a game so they can keep track of their status. 

The second thing was that I was allowing the US players as well as the VC to bunch up and get a full fire effect for squad fire (if you look at my pictures from the blog entry, you will see one stand in front of another).  After thinking about the ground scale, I will not allow that any more.  If the squad is not in a line, then they will only get half the effect for firing (i.e., if you use three action dice to fire, you still roll for the number of chances, but you half that number).  However, I will allow for players to place one infantry stand slightly on top of another infantry stand to show that the player decided to ignore the suggested 3-5 m spacing between men and cram them in like cattle into a small spot so he can get full effect on firing.  Of course, this means that any fire they take will increase one column better for being hit.

This also got me thinking about squads in Indian Files firing forward.  I think only allowing one die max for firing.  The SOP for contact in an Indian File was for the point man to unload his full magazine at the target while the rest of the squad dropped to cover and start moving to form a line or withdraw. 

The third thing is that I allowed the squads to spot and engage in a 360 with full effect.  Well, I am not going to allow that again.  Basically, in the real world you can only view things in front of you and off the sides.  Yes, you can turn around, but only so many men in a squad/section can change their facing to face a new threat without a major repositioning of the squad.  So in the future, a squad can only fire to their front 120 degrees (30 degrees off of their left and right). But I also want to encourage standard tactics for forming a 360 with a squad / platoon for a defensive position.  Because of the way the figures are mounted, you can’t make a circle.  So, if it is a squad, the two bases are placed back to back facing outward and they get 1/3^rd (360/120 = 3) of their fire in any direction.  Plus they can spot all around and not be outflanked in melee while in a defensive circle.  Only support weapons would need to be specifically placed for its arcs of coverage.

Anyways, that is sort of what I think that I will add/change for infantry combat in the next game.  We did not do artillery in the last game.  The US players had it available, but never got to use it.  So, I need to play around with that in a game some time.  Eventually I will be doing the second game and I am looking at adding in the vehicle rules next with maybe a M48 or some M113’s.   I might look at also adding some of the random events that I created in my ArtsCow playing cards for CDS.  I will be posting sometime later what the cards mean and where you can order a set yourself (I make no profit on them, I made them available for anyone to print them off.)

http://www.artscow.com/user/joe-collins-1121474

Until later, remember to watch your step and never use the same path twice, because Charlie owns the night!

Sapper