Thanks. This is one of our older videos, we've corrected that problem in more recent releases :D

Thanks very much! Nothing very fancy, just a fair amount of work in Adobe Photoshop.

Thanks very much, and glad you liked the video. We can set up another of these if you want, since you "missed" playing in the first one. I agree, trying to nail down the actual force compositions of these "battalions, regiments, and brigades" is very tough. On both sides, virtually all of these units have been in sustained combat for years. Frankly I'm surprised they've lasted as long as they have. Others are at hoc or informal units, from Ukrainian territoriam defense "brigades", foreign volunteers, Russian Wagner or Chechen groups. This is something I ran into while recreating this scenario. There's no way this game features anything close to a "brigade" on either side (27th Sep Guards Motor Rifle or 14th Mechanized). One more possibility, the "2iC" or "XO" or "adjutant" may hev been a battalion staff officer, perhaps filling in for a recent casualty. In the US military we call them S1 for personnel, S2 for intelligence, S3 for ops, etc. They're not USUALLY lieutenants, but you never know. Lastly, at least in the old Soviet model, ranks assigtned to different command levels were a little different. Jr Lts led platoons, companies were led by Sr. Lts, Majors commanded Battalions, with XOs as captains. I don't know if the current Russian or Ukrainian TO/Es are still set up that way, but they both descend from the old Soviet system.

Thanks very much! Indeed, the Ukrainians wound up with the center of the town, but outflanked on both sides and cut off from the rear. Could the Russians really have held that position, though, with Morale D (no commander) and both platoons of Ukrainian T-64BVs intact? Another two turns or so might have seen the tide shift again.

Thanks very much! Yeah, the Sound FX adds a little punch. I just try to keep it where it doesn't drown out too much of the gameplay conversation.

Well, also ... this table is 4 kilometers wide. At 1-100 (15mm) that's 40 meters, or about 140 feet. I would love to play on THAT table, but I wouldn't want to set it up!

Thanks very much. I used to try and explain all these rules and systems verbally. Made for VERY slow game play, irritated my players, and resulted in 4-hour videos. SO nwo I just run the game, recording most of the decisive bits, and try to get into the details in the text overlays you mention. Also helps me correct all the rules mistakes I make! Thanks very much again for the kind words!

@@JamesJohnson-wq6bs I'm coming back to PL after a 50-year absence. It's very cool to see how the game system has evolved & thrived thanks to dedicated gamers like you. Please keep up the good work!

@@bmen6401 Thanks very much. But honestly guys like Alan Arvold, Byron Henderson, Pat Storto, Greg Moore, and Brian Train (and many others) helped keep this game alive through the 80s, 90s, and early 00s ... long before I got seriously back into it.

Good afternoon, No, not a video game, just an old Avalon Hill tabletop game I've adopted for virtual play. Quite low tech, actually.

@@JamesJohnson-wq6bs How do I implement this? I want to try and recreate this for myself

I've replied to this a coupletimes now, I don't know why RU-vid keeps deleting it. It's just an MS Excel spreadsheet with maps and counters made in Adobe Photoshop. I could send a link to file if you join our Discord (link in the description) - whenever I include a link in a RU-vid message, RU-vid deletes it.

Thanks very much. I see you've joined our discord. I'd tagged you in the discord with links that I hope answer your question, Thanks again!

@@SITREPPodcast ah yes got them! thank you good sir!

@@popeofthesmurfs No worries! Part two comes out this weekend!

Yeah, some of the episodes over there have been incredible. Perhaps the most astonishing in those early days was the Russian elelctronic warfare used against Ukrainian communication efforts. Well, it deafened the Russians as well, so theyr commander had to start using consumer-model iPhones "off the street." Ridiculously easy to to triangulate, which lead to HOW many Russian generals and senior officers killed in those frist few weeks? Hell, street-level drug delers knew enough not to talk on cell phones back in the 1990s.

Actually, it's just a board game we have virtualized to the point where we can play over Skype, Zoom, Discord, that kind of thing. Recorded in OBS for video.

Thanks very much! Apologies for the audio issues, we did our best to smooth it out. 😅

Thanks very much. I have a few typos to fix on some of the counters (some of the "A" weapons classes need to be updated to "A*") and I need to add additional support vehicles, BMDs for the Guards Airborne Assault brigades, MTLBs, etc.

Thanks very much again. Since we started as a "modern" wargaming channel, we've always come up against the "sensitivity issue." Just some games we gotta take a little more seriously, and not approach the topic "beer and pretzel" style. Games like Mogadishu, Fallujah, Benghazi, things like that.

Thanks very much for thre great support as always! Yeah, I wanted to get back to moderns at least a little. We've been hitting WW2 really hard lately with all the summer 2024 80th anniversaries lately. Summer of 1944 was a rather busy season, it seems, from Kohima / Imphal to Anzio / Monte Cassino to Normandy to Bagration, etc.

No worries at all. Yes, you were originally lined up as one of the participants in this game. But there are PLENTY of battles in these early weeks to pick from ... Ivankiv, Skybyn, Hostomel, Moshchun, Irpin ... smaller figths like Bucha we might do on the tabletop instead (I think my friend Mark want sto run that one). I've got one more scheduled in miniature for August but we can ALWAYS do another one of these if you want. That's not even getting into mid-war stuff like Bakhmut or Adviika (a battle we "predicted" a year BEFORE the Russian invasion even happened). I take your point on the World War I comparisons. I might add the relative broad strokes of movement in the initial phase, almost like the Germans in 1914. But once it bogs down, it becomes almost a trench war like we'd see in 1915-17. Who knows if we'll see a 1918-esque loosening up and return to operational movement, perhaps driven as much my economic collapse and political upheaval as the situation on the actual battlefield? Kinda unlikely I fear ... the sanctions against Russia aren't anything like the blockage against Iperial Germany ... and the arrival of 2.5 million Americans in France won't be repeated in Ukraine.

Awesome. Thanks very much! Gald you liked the video. We have part two (conclusion) rolling next week, hopefully.

Thanks very much! Glad you liked it.

Thanks very much! Yeah, we’ve been doing a LOT of WW2 with all the recent 80th anniversaries (summer of 44 was a busy season). So I wanted to pivot us back at least a little to Moderns.

Hold up, sir. We have an LAV-ITV (Improved TOW Vehicles) at 1:44 . I did not forget the TOWs. 😅

Thanks very much! 😃

Agree 100% on how FoF handles asymmetrical warfare, it's just about the only miniatures game I've tried that actually does it "right." A key element is scenario design - making sure the two sides have different victory conditions that aren't mutually exclusive, both sides can "win" or at least "claim victory" (as we see in the news on a near daily basis). Glad you liked the episode!

Thanks very much. Force on Force definitely does the best job (with miniatures at least) when it comes to modern asymmetrical warfare. Hope you like Part 2!

Totally agree on the game balance. I told everyone we'd wean off the naval gunfire support, the plan was to wean it off starting Turn 2 ... but Marine losses were SO BAD on Turn 1 and even Turn 2 with the second wave ... I kinda chickened out. Turn 3 got a little better, and I took it down in Turn 4, but that was too late for the Japanese. Also, the way support fire works in general is being re-done. In this game, it's mortars get 6 dice, air strikes get 12 dice, naval gunfire gets 15 dice, all of which get rdistributed and rolled against all tagets in AOE. Well, when only one target is in AOE, it gets ALL the dice and is annihilated. Thus, tactical dispersion has the exact OPPOSITE effect it should have. So I'll have a "kill rating" for different classes of AOE weapons, then all targets in AOE will roll against that. This way even a battleship strike will never kill EVERYTHING in AOE, and defenders who spread out under such fire will suffer greatly mitigated effects.

Thanks very much! Indeed, Saipan the historical battle deserves a lot more attention than it gets. But between Normandy in France and the Battle of the Philippine Sea (Great Marianas Turkey Shoot), it tends to get overlooked. Glad you lined the content and thanks again for the positive comment!

Yeah, he got a little hypered up when he saw the Marine flamethrower teams rush in. 😅

Hell yeah!

Absolutely. For Japanese land forces, pretty much any battle after Feb-Mar 1942 ... maybe late 1942 for Burma ... near 100% annihilation is usually the result - whether you're on attack OR defense. Thanks very much for helping us put on this event!

Absolutely. This scenario and rules set were designed to be savage. It certainly delivered on that measure. 😑

Totally agree on the naval gunfire support. I told everyone we'd wean it off, but didn't tell them WHEN, leaving me the option as referee to keep the game more or less on track. The plan was to wean it off starting Turn 2 ... but Marine losses were SO BAD on Turn 1 and even Turn 2 with the second wave ... I kinda chickened out. Turn 3 got a little better, and I took it down in Turn 4, but that was too late for the Japanese. I also think airpower was a little OP. I'm reading Marine accounts now of how they flat out screamed to the Navy to "fuck off" with the close air support, as they were bombing their own people as often as not. Finally, the way support fire works in general is being re-done. In this game, it's mortars get 6 dice, air strikes get 12 dice, naval gunfire gets 15 dice, all of which get rdistributed and rolled against all tagets in AOE. Well, when only one target is in AOE, it gets ALL the dice and annihilated. Thus, tactical dispersion has the exact OPPOSITE effect it should have. So I'll have a "kill rating" for different classes of AOE weapons, then all targets in AOE will roll against that. This way even a battleship strike will never kill EVERYTHING in AOE, and defenders who spread out under such fire will suffer greatly mitigated effects. Agree about the Pacific. ASW was further ahead in the Atlantic, tanks were definitely further ahead in the Europe, and even further ahead in Russia. Power projection was much further ahead in the Pacific, strategic bombing was further ahead in the Pacific, amphibious warfare was ahead in the Pacific (can you imaginge LVT(A)-4s on Omaha Beach?) But yeah, for tanks there definitely leagues. The M3 Lee/Grant started off in Russia where they called it "a grave for seven brothers." It lasted a little longer in North Africa, until Sept 42 when it was surpassed by the Sherman. But the Lee/Grant went on to great service until the very end of the war with the British in Southeast Asia, where it was still "apex predator" effective against the shitty little Chi-Ha and Ha-go models the Japanese were puttering around with.

@JamesJohnson-wq6bs Thanks for your great reply, Oriskany. I'm a firm believer in the larger the army, and fewer small details are required. While the smaller the army, the more small details are required. Has the village been taken vs. how was the village taken. Your home brew rules are very well suited for large armies. Like all rules, it will require some tweaking until it's good for all battles. Let's face it. The only way to make this scenario more complicated would be to add an assault by air. As it is amphibious assault is tricky enough. There are so many rules for it has been written for it since the 1960s, with none of them nailing it. When you add play balance to the mix, it becomes very complex indeed. Should the defender be allowed to shoot at landing craft. Then, is it fair for the attacker to lose 2, 3, or more platoons from a few good rolls from the defender before he's even hit the beach. What about sea currents and weather. As far as I'm concerned, let history decide the last two are balanced by how much burden the players see as good fun. This is problematic when young players are involved, as they only turn up to win. As writers of enjoyable scenarios, we have many demands on our plates. Completely agree with your analysis on the WW2 warfare comparison between Europe and Asia Pacific. That's why I kept my statements tied to land base warfare. Very few things are straightforward. Even with the Osprey tactics books, l like so much for US ambitious tactics that they produced 2 books. 1 for Europe and the other for the Pacific. We have a saying,'Things will go south the moment you start believing your own bullshit.' This is particularly true of imperial Japan of WW2 and earlier. During the wars with the US and other European militaries of the 19th century, they were still using flint lock muskets that were obsolete well before the Napoleonic period. The Japanese repeat this error many times. When they decided they were superior, they did so, mostly with their eyes shut. They did realise sea warfare was going to be very important, and realising they were inferior turned to the British to rectify this. Yet on land, they had held to their Shinto Feudalism as being better without studying what was happening in Europe. So, going into WW2, most of their tank designs were just larger FT-17s. On the other hand, the US closely watched the 1940 battle of France. They decided they needed a medium length barrel 75mm mounted in a turret. They found this technically difficult, so they went for the M3 as an interim design before producing the M4. The US was trying to keep up by studying the current situation while the Japanese, for the most part, stumbled forward, unaware of what they needed. Admittedly, their training was first class. They were fanatical but fell back on medieval methods when frustrated and finally had no respect for individual life, costing them dearly in experience. This would have been sufficient for an earlier war but not for WW2, but they were incapable of manufacturing the numbers required, and they had not developed logistics at all expecting their armies to survive in the field. Modern yet medieval at the same time. This outlines the issues I see when studying Imperial Japan as a military power of WW2.

That was a helluva blolodbath coming out of the water, but once the Marines got a toehold ... yeah, things go downhill for the Japanaese fast.

Whoa, that IS a crazy coincidence. I had no idea that was happening, much less at Saipan. Damn, of all places, eh?

Thanks very much as always for the kind words and positive feedback! I'm in Fort Lauderdale Florida myself, personally. Sadly, I don't think we're going to Historicon. Something didn't line up the the coordination with HMGS / event coordinators, etc.

​@JamesJohnson-wq6bs hi ok sorry you will not be making it. Look forward to meeting you guys at a Con. God Bless from Dave in Virginia.

@@grimdesaye6534 Yeah, they confirmed at the LAST minute (less than 3 weeks out) - waaaasay too late at least for me and Marty. Not sure if Bill is still trying to go. But its very last minute and very awkward.

Thanks! So the table starts flat, obviously. Actually three 30" x 72" tables. The original plan was to just "lift" these second two tables by stacking old magazines under the lels of the second two tables to provide the "beach and progressing inland" elevation. Didn't really work, so I had to use some light foam panels stored at the club and then lay our "battle mat" cloth over top. That was a blue first for the sea, desert battlecloth for the beach, and finally woodland battlcloth for the jungle. Real beach sand (cleaned) was then used to smooth out the transitions so it wasn't so perfectly straight, and gave us the effect of the gradual rise you see at the beach, rising out of the sea.

Bazookas, flamethrowers, shotguns, MMGs, BARs, 60mm mortars…. 😅 Yeah, it gets bumpy from here!

You definitely had the toughest beach historically. I think you lost at least one stand though, but it might have been to German naval action. 25:19

Hey, he also shouted some encouraging compliments!

Very true, the 9th ID fought at El Gerttar alongside the 1st ID featured in this game. Thanks for the sharing and the great comment.

Wow, thanks very much for the very positive comment. Yes, I agree that the logistical planing, sealift capacity, and Marine/Army doctine and training were incredible here in the Pacific campaign. By comparison, the Overlord Normandy landings went across 90-100 miles of water, the Marianas invasion went over 1500 miles. Glad you like the history part of the intro, as well! Thanks again!

@@JamesJohnson-wq6bs Would love to see more Pacific wargames! The Battle of Edson's Ridge is a much smaller engagement, but played a pivotal role in the Guadalcanal campaign. Just a suggestion!

@@markhenderson6389 - I agree, the Pacific needs more attention in World War II gaming. I think I actually tried an Edson's Ridge scenario once, using Barry Doyle's Valor & Victory system. Wasn't a game that went up on our channel though. What we're seieng so far with this video, however, is that Pacific scenarios often aren't as popular, and don't get the best view count, sadly.

Yes, Tarawa was smaller (two regiments of 2nd Marine Division AT FIRST)… but probably even worse than Saipan “per capita.”

Nice! Two artillery regiments. Definitely made a huge difference once set up and deployed for the inland engagements of Saipan.

Yeah, the Japanese Army in World War II (in my opinion) has a bit of an inflated reputation. Despite their undeniable resolve, not just in combat courage but "operational courage" (fight and march on a handful of rice a day) ... their officers, training, and especially equipment and weapons fell well short of the mark. As you say, more in a 20s or early 30s level ... fought of course starting in 1937 but in China, hardly a technological or industrial juggernaut in those days. And yes, the low "damage effectiveness" of AA is because I expected those 25mm batteries to do more work against Marine GROUND targets. So to keep the game simple and avoid having two numbers to hit, I kept the same number to hit for both ground and airborne targets, and just a tougher damage number for aircraft. An abstract solution, but as you know I'm one of those game designers that DOESN'T read "abstract" as a dirty word. Thanks for the great comment

Yep the Discord link is in the description of the video. I see you found it! Awesome!