Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

This isn't a Tekumel question, but it was funny at the time.

We were playing Tractics. I was one of the Americans and Tom was one of the Germans. I'm pretty sure you were the referee, because we had a boatload of infantry... like, a company each.

(In Tractics, if you have time you can set up "ranging stakes" for artillery and then direct your fire by calling range off the stakes.)

We had set up range stakes, and as Americans in late 44 we had God's own lot of 60mm mortars. For those not familiar with Tractics, the 60mm mortar has a 1/2" burst radius. You have to be very accurate or very lucky.

Well, Tom advances a company of German infantry well dispersed, but still close enough to support each other. A really nice advance, frankly.

But, you see, I'm very, very good at estimating ranges.

At the end of Tom's movement I opened up with all my 60mm mortars. And even though his infantry were 2 or 3 inches apart, I proceed to slaughter them. I was so accurate in my fire that I was literally dropping rounds onto individual German soldiers' little punkin haids. I could have been firing 60mm round stones and I would have been braining the troops; I didn't even need the shell fragments.

At the end one turn of fire as poor Tom stood there with his mouth open, there was one squad left out of an entire German infantry company. ( I miswrote one number.)

Good times, good times.

Anyway, do you remember any more about that battle? My memory ain't what it usedta was.

Very late '44, Hurtgern Forest. Tom was being his usual self, i.e. an I'm better then you snob, and wanted to prove that he could beat the great Gronan in any game possible. So, I set up a very straight infantry meets infantry in the forest game, with a couple of vehicles in support. Nothing too heavy; this is going to be a straightforward infantry fight, which was a little unusual for us at that time. In theory Tom has a huge edge, due to each German squad having an MG34 or MG42, so he has a really good chance of winning if he fights a historical battle and defends his position and lets the Yanks come to him. The Americans have less firepower in the squads, but the US company does have all it's organic support units - like the mortars. The Germans also have theirs, but Tom was famous for using them as line infantry and getting them killed off for no good reason. The Germans had 81s, I think, vs. the US 60s, so Tom should have had an easy time of it.

But, then, there's me. I set up the game so that Tom had the better troops and gear, to make up for his - shall we say, - lack of tactical ability, and Gronan had the weaker troops to compensate for his greater tactical abilities. I also wanted to keep him from getting bored - making sure that everyone, including the GM / Referee, stays engaged and challenged.

As Gronan said, Tom got et for lunch. Nice advance, right out of the book, but he never got his mortar section set up and into action, or his machine guns. he walked his company right into the kill zone, and Gronan politely killed them for him. I ran out of cotton balls to mark the explosions with.

All of this - and here's the Tekumel connection! - is why I included estimating ranges in my miniatures rules for the artillery. It made for much more fun games, especially when the player missed and the rock / bolt went 'elsewhere'...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

D. Ming or Qing China. Lots of officials, and everything gets done in quadruplicate - one copy for each of the Four Palaces. Images? Let me think about this, and get back to you; I lean to classical China, myself, as they are pretty formal and 'disciplined' in their architecture. I'd do a Google search for 'classical Chinese architecture', myself.

Uncle,

Might you be so kind as to make recomendations for the other Empires...? We may have gone into it in the past, but my skull is thick. Besides, we must keep our elders busy...

Much Thanks,

H;0)

PS These kinds of posts, I find most helpful!!!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

All of this - and here's the Tekumel connection! - is why I included estimating ranges in my miniatures rules for the artillery. It made for much more fun games, especially when the player missed and the rock / bolt went 'elsewhere'...

Oh, ain't it the truth!

I sometimes worried that it wasn't realistic. A chap here in town is a former US Marine, and he was telling me about one of the guys in his squad who was a dead shot with the modern 60mm mortar with the trigger. As in, first round on the target every time, at 1000 to 1500 yard ranges.

So estimating ranges by naked eye is more important than I thought!

Comes in handy in "Don't Give up the Ship," too; Mike Carr has complimented me more than once at GaryCon for my ship handling.
(For those not familiar with DGUTS, range estimation is used in movement, not fire. But when I tuck my frigate in behind the enemy at point blank range for a rake, it pays off.)

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Gods. What part of "commercial product for sale" do they not understand?

Three parts: the front part, the back part, and the part in between.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

As Gen. George Pickett remarked when somebody asked him why his attack that hot summer day at Gettysburg had failed, "I always thought that the Yankees had something to do with it."

That quote must annoy the heck out of the romance of the lost cause guys.

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Uncle,

Might you be so kind as to make recomendations for the other Empires...? We may have gone into it in the past, but my skull is thick. Besides, we must keep our elders busy...

Much Thanks,

H;0)

PS These kinds of posts, I find most helpful!!!

So do I.

Tsolyanu - Mughal India, with a strong dash of the Byzantine Empire;
Yan Kor - Powerful clans, many city-states: Scotland or Afghanistan;
Salarvya - Many feudal families that have trouble getting anything done: Medieval France, Italy, or Germany
Mu'uglavya - Powerful officials, very formal: Ming or Qing Imperial China
Livyanu - Powerful temples, theocracy: Ancient Egypt - see also R. E. Howard's Stygia, which may have inspired Phil.

Does this help?

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I'm not good with these genre names it seems.
I meant games with a mix of ancient and future tech (like Gama World for example).
=

Ah, gotcha! I'd rate "Gamma World" at the 'high end' of the genre, as the emphasis is on the hard SF elements. Barsoom would be next, with high tech but with a less strong emphasis on same; Tekumel is a lot softer on the hard science - it's there, but not something that the common people would see or deal with. That's the job of the people adventuring, which is why the clans / temples/ etc. send them out in the first place. If you hand out with the Undying Wizards, like we did on occasion, you wind up using a lot of high tech like spaceships, aircars, and energy weapons. We have no idea how the stuff worlks, or how to fix it when it breaks, but that's the way it is.

Does this help, at all?

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Oh, ain't it the truth!

I sometimes worried that it wasn't realistic. A chap here in town is a former US Marine, and he was telling me about one of the guys in his squad who was a dead shot with the modern 60mm mortar with the trigger. As in, first round on the target every time, at 1000 to 1500 yard ranges.

So estimating ranges by naked eye is more important than I thought!

Comes in handy in "Don't Give up the Ship," too; Mike Carr has complimented me more than once at GaryCon for my ship handling.
(For those not familiar with DGUTS, range estimation is used in movement, not fire. But when I tuck my frigate in behind the enemy at point blank range for a rake, it pays off.)

Same here; I knew an artillery Lieutenant who was a dead shot with a 105 howitzer, at anything from 2500 to 7500 meters. If she could see it, she could hit it, and hit it with all the guns in the battery - she could do the offsets and corrections in her head, call the numbers to the guns, and you'd see six rounds all land in a group that was maybe ten meters in diameter. Her gunners adored her, and she and they never got thirsty. They were the preferred battery of choice in the brigade, and were always being requested by other units.

So - how do you simulate this in a game? More rules? Or just let the players learn how to do it?

Back in Ye Olden Dayes, we just learned how to do it. These days? My perception is that you'd have to have a 200+ page rules set, with lots of supplements and special dice. And yes, I'm in cranky old man mode, today.