6mm Skirmish wargaming (wait, what?!): Force on Force, Cold War

This is a blog about miniatures, and I almost always want my wargames to be as miniature as possible, (but there is a limit to how miniature you should make it). Today we played Force on Force by Ambush Alley Games. We learned that, yes, we can play platoon-level 'skirmish' wargames with 6mm miniatures, although it comes with some challenges and may not, in fact, be as good as in larger scales. Although some lessons were learned, I am not yet entirely convinced this is total folly.

Motorschutzen platoon with armoured support and AGS-17s (GHQ Miniatures infantry and T-72s, and CinC Miniatures BMP-1s).

Preparing 6mm miniatures for platoon-level skirmish wargames

The thing about platoon-level games is that they usually focus on an infantry platoon with individual men doing things, like gettin' removed as casualties.

An' the thing about 6mm individuals, see, is that they're tiny. So how're you s'posed to base 'em?

To handle this problem, and of course to use my 6mm modern figures already based for Team Yankee, I made and printed simple paper labels covered with sticky tape, with unit numbers and checkboxes for marking casualties in whiteboard marker. I stuck the labels under each infantry base, again with the tape.

Examples of labels for a 6mm Force on Force BMP Motorschutzen Squad, with Rifle and AT grenade team. The two elements operate together, but are separate per Team Yankee standards.

Since Force on Force tracks the health of its participants individually, the idea with the labels is to mark casualties on the checkboxes: lightly wounded with green marker, severely wounded with red, and dead (or otherwise just gone) with black.

Any other things to track such as Pinned, Rapid Movement, Overwatch, damage to vehicles or number of times a unit has reacted was handled with small dice and heaps of relevant markers for other games.

The Game

I commanded the East German Motorschutzen platoon, with two T-72Ms and a pair of AGS-17s in a fourth BMP-1 [TQ: D8, Morale: D8] while my opponent and fellow play-tester of 6mm skirmishes took his gung-ho but lightly-supported US Marines [TQ variable between D8s and D10s, Morale: D10s to D12s].

We laid out terrain on a 6'x4' (actually 2m x 4') table, decided on keeping weapons ranges and related measurements as inches and changing movement to centimetres (for added realism), determined the game objectives (occupy the village and secure a highway crossroads and two bridges), picked our forces and entry points and got straight into it.

Scene 1 - Sudden Encounter

The Marine platoon I was up against patrolled onto the battlefield along a river line while My Motorschutzen, led by a pair of T-72Ms, drove up the highway toward the village.

As the lead tank approached the bridge the Marines spotted it and opened fire with their small arms at the tank commander, who had his head out the hatch. A bullet caught him and he fell back inside, dead. The tank stopped and reversed back down the highway to take cover behind some bushes on the curb. The rest of the Motorschutzen platoon raced to spread out, 1 Section in their BMP-1 and second T-72M taking positions to cover the cleft, 3 Section's BMP pulling up behind the lead tank, and 2 Section and the AGS-17 support team going through the village to look for an overwatch position on a nearby hill.

The lead T-72M commander is killed by small arms fire.

(Paper roads by Wargame Print via Wargames Vault.)

Scene 2 - Pot Shots

As the Marines continued their advance, the second T-72M spotted a MUTT jeep with a TOW missile launcher leading the Marines and hosed it with the co-ax, completely destroying the vehicle (the crew were all left severely wounded). A failed reaction test on a natural '1' led to a roll on a Fog of War table and led to a pot-shot from an East German mortar landing among a Marine fireteam, inflicting casualties. The East German BMPs with 2 Section and their supports continued toward their hill, a shot from a Marine LAW hit the second T-72M and caused the crew to duck (a 'Suppressed' result). A further failed reaction test and Fog of War roll led to Motorschutzen's 1 Section discovering that they had a handle on this situation and got a quality upgrade [from D8 to D10: extreme bonus.]

1 Section had by this time dismounted next to their BMP-1 and began firing at the Marine's second jeep (with an M2 .50 cal). They showered the vehicle with fire, riddling the panels, shredding the tires and destroying the venerable M2 Browning while also killing or seriously wounding it's operator.

The Marines advance and their TOW-MUTT is destroyed by the second, faster-reacting East German tank.

Scene 3 - Flanking Attempt

Section 3 proceeded on foot, led by their BMP, in attempting a flanking manoeuvre off the highway and up onto the nearby ridge. However, upon meeting the Marines they were beaten to the punch and the BMP was knocked out with a SMAW. The crew got out without a scratch though, and return fire from 3 Section took down a few Marines.

While under fire, one Marine reassured his comrades: "don't worry if you get hit guys, I'm basically a Corpsman!" (He wasn't a Corpsman, but he had been training for it before he was booted from the medic school for some reason). Unfortunately while he was yelling he was not firing his weapon at the enemy, and neither were the other Marines he was distracting! [the fireteam rolled a '1' again for their reaction test and Fog of War indicated one of their member was a 'skilled medic.']

Another Marine fireteam moved along the ridgeline and shot at the BMP crew, wounding one, before they were stopped by covering fire from 3 Section.

The 3 Section BMP is destroyed and the crew attacked, while the section return fire to hold the Marines at bay. Here you can see the 3 Section RPG team's unit label with one severely wounded loader marked.

Scene 4 - Various Exchanges of Fire

By now, the AGS-17 team had taken up an overwatch position with its BMP-1 on the chosen hill and rained down grenade fire at Marine infantry that showed themselves from the treeline on the opposite ridge. 2 Section's BMP-1 was on it's way around to take the narrow road bridge objective. Effective fire from both 1 Section and the second T-72M was continuing to take a toll on any Marines in sight. Additional random mortarings of Marine fireteams had little effect but kept their heads down.

1 Section took several casualties (two dead and one lightly wounded) but kept it's head and pulled back into the village. Two AGS-17 loaders were also lightly wounded.

AGS-17s in overwatch prepare to crump the Marines.

Conclusion

The Marines had taken a real battering. One of their fireteams had been wiped out and several others were down to a few walking wounded. They'd lost one jeep and had another made basically combat-ineffective, a tripod M60 team was down to a single man and many of the killed and seriously wounded had been Squad or Team Leaders. Overall they'd probably lost about 15 men.

The Motorschutzen were in a pretty solid position with comparatively few casualties (three dead, one severely wounded, four lightly wounded and one BMP-1 destroyed), and were poised to take most of the objectives.

With a 40K tournament brewing, and friendly people starting to look at all the weird tiny miniatures no larger than a Space Marine's toe, we called it a victory for the National Volksarmee.

The battlefield at conclusion, with the tools of the trade visible top right.

Lessons about platoon skirmishes at this scale

As mentioned, we had a bit of fun and there were plenty of memorable moments. However, at the end both myself and my opponent agreed that we wouldn't play Force on Force in 6mm again.* Force on Force and games of a similar format would definitely(?) be better played in larger scales where the individual figures can be moved (including into and around buildings), where different weapon systems and equipment are more easily distinguished, and casualties more easily marked and removed.

*I have just now reconsidered my decision. There are other ideas for basing and casualty management and other platoon-level skirmishes I haven't tried in 6mm yet (like Chain of Command). Probably nobody else will want to share in this folly, so I might have to just experiment on myself.

The label system worked, but was probably too small to get at with whiteboard markers and may interfere with the table aesthetic if it were any broader. My opponent also prefers games where the individual can readily be distinguished as an individual, mainly for narrative purposes. Certainly removing a figure from a squad is more meaningful than putting a dot in a checkbox.

The choice of sticking with longer ranges for weapons (kept in inches) and shortening movement distances (changed to centimetres) - this we did not regret. It gave a realistic feel to the game, taking this ruleset designed for house-to-house urban combat and translating it to large, more open space where the table was about the maximum effective range of an AK wide and that of a SAW across.

And about the scenario

While it is fun to win, I think the scenario we cobbled together was overbalanced in my favour. Remembering games I'd played long ago (where I played as the ISIS fighters) Troop Quality, Morale and sheer numbers seemed paramount, so I underestimated my Motorschutzen and gave them too many vehicles in support. 

And about Force on Force, the ruleset

Force on Force what do I think? To quote my opponent on this day: "There's a really great game in here somewhere."

I played Force on Force years ago and found it too confusing to get into. The rulebook is hard to read because key mechanics and rules seem to be scattered or buried in long paragraphs of context and explanation and are often not arranged in an order that makes sense (to me).It also seems easy to get wrapped around axles on actions-and-reactions, although that should resolve with practice.

This time round, although I re-read the rules in a cramming/speed-reading session, I think I understood the game much better and could appreciate it's qualities. Force on Force rewards fairly realistic (AFAIK) tactics, has elegant and engaging skill-based reaction and combat mechanics, opportunities for developing a theme (e.g. Fog of War cards/tables**), and potential for interesting scenario creation and immersive campaigns.

I will certainly play Force on Force again (in slightly larger scales) to find that great game that is in there.

**Having mentioned Fog of War, you'll be surprised how many '1's you can roll to fail reaction tests, so they should not be too powerful an influence and should not be one-sided (I got almost all the benefits from Fog of War in this game, and getting a TQ upgrade to D10 meant my 1 Section was OP (OverPowered).