Last year I slapped a rules set together, loosely based on Epic: Armageddon called "Combat Team." After playing tons and tons of the game in my basement, I eventually gave up on Combat Team in favor of "harder" rules sets like the Battlegroup series, Panzerblitz, etc. (My combat team games were well documented - just do a search on this blog and you'll see some of the games).
I was thinking about Combat Team 2.0 where instead of "section" stands (representing multiple squads like in Battlefront WW2), a stand would represent a team of infantry, much like Flames of War. One plus to that is the MTOE information is readily available and I can digest it without too much trouble.
One down side to that will be the size of my games will be much smaller, with me fielding companies instead of battalions.
This would allow me to introduce the "blast marker" suppression system just like in Epic Armageddon, which is one of the hallmarks of that game. I think many of the other aspects of Combat Team work really well and I don't want to mess with them too much (AT/AP To Hits, Strike Values for Armor, Barrage Point based artillery attacks to name a few things that I like).
Rolling to activate formations was a great aspect of the game and added alot of tension and all of that would obviously remain as it was part of Epic: Armageddon.
Anyways those are my thoughts from the "mad scientist" department.
I have always been a big fan of E:A so think this would be a very interesting approach. I main advantage of going that way though would be to field a battalion sized force so going to teams would seem to preclude that.
ReplyDeletePaul,
DeleteIf you're interested I can send you the original rules. There are some really neat concepts in them and the games played very quickly. Each stand represented a handful of squads with their organic weapons sections.
That would be great!
DeleteCoincidentally, I was chatting to a gamer friend today and he said he was thinking about doing something similar for 1980s Cold War so he could use his recently acquired mass of NATO and WARPACT troops to play some Fulda Gap style games using EA rules. Something else to consider perhaps!
I made a Cold War variant of Combat Team but haven't played much of it yet. I had a problem with the tank gun "strike values" and armor protection increases and making the system compatible with the WW2 version. That was a problem.
DeleteThe EA rules are really a neat system and worth taking a hard look at. I'm surprised they never got the recognition they deserve. It was a big surprise coming from GW and it's a shame specialist games went belly up.
R&D, my friend, R&D. This sounds quite interesting. I'll be following it closely.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you're still interested in my painting, e-mail me at Grenzer7@aol.com
John,
DeleteR&D is the order of the day then! I'll keep you posted. Oh and expect an email from me regarding the other thing soon!