Wargames that treat MGs as area weapons?

[darthfozzywig]

Bullets tend to go a good ways until they hit something. Lots of bullets tend to make an area unhealthy, but more minis games tend to treat them as "you can hit more than one guy in a squad, but just one squad."


Are there any minis games out there that treat automatic fire (LMG/HMG) as area of effect/template weapons? Squad Leader/Advanced Squad Leader had rules for MG like that. And Body Count (really old Vietnam rules) had area fire rules.

Anything more contemporary out there? (can be sci-fi, modern, wwii etc)

[Will Bailie]

I recall Contemptible Little Armies has an option for indirect MG fire as one of the possible artillery barrage types.  CoCking up the Great War (Chain of Command for WWI in the TFL 2014 Christmas Special) has an option for sustained fire by MG, allowing attacks on any troops moving 6" of a target point).  TFL's Through the Mud and the Blood has the same rule.  Both games also allow off-table machine guns to provide similar support (automatic attacks on any figures moving into the area of effect).

[carlos marighela]

Kind of depends on what you are trying to model and at what scale/ level of granularity. There's essentially two kinds of beaten zone produced by automatic weapons.

Grazing fire which may have a long but narrow beaten zone fired from a single gun. This is heavily affected by relative position and terrain. Few games that I know of attempt to model it and it generally gets lumped into an anything within 2"/4" or whatever of the target has a chance to be hit. You could easily develop a standardised template for a beaten zone at an individual level but quite frankly I'm not sure it would give you much more in the way of 'reality' because the variables involved are so.... er varied. Rarely are real wars fought on football pitches or billiard tables and rarely do enemies oblige by lining up their rifle pits in nice straight lines. We were taught that the section gun provided 80% of the section firepower (arguably not) and the focus was to attempt to fire in defilade from flanking positions where possible. In defence guns were typically staked and tied into mutual defence to obtain the maximum from grazing fire. Even so the emphasis was on the gun providing suppression.  If you were to model something along these lines you'd be wise to confine it to machineguns as only they really have the volume of sustained fire to merit it and not all are good as others in this respect.

Plunging fire, where the weapon is being fired in an indirect role or the relative position of the gun(s) to the target confines the beaten zone to a more discrete area as a result of the trajectory of the rounds. This has been more commonly dealt with. Over The Top, the WW1 version of Command Decision had indirect fire rules with a beaten one template. I'd argue that it was overly generous in terms of area but then the scale of the game was representing multiple guns, presumably set up for such fire with clinometers, aiming stakes and all the other associated paraphanalia along with shed loads of ammo.

Now plunging fire can be achieved directly although it's rarely the optimal use of the weapon and conversely you can achieve a degree of grazing fire firing indirectly, although in practice it's hard to do. If you wanted to go down the track of indirect fire, you would be sensible to limit it to SFMG and guns with the necessary equipment (tripods, clinometers, optical sights etc).

[fred]

Fistful of Lead gives automatic weapons the option of burst fire which can hit multiple, close, targets.

The venerable Operation Warboard had a splendid zeppelin shaped MG template. The higher you rolled on the dice the more of was hit by fire. We always played that a single roll of a 6 covered the whole template. But looking back I wonder if we should have been rolling to hit each figure based on that target number!

[Dubbya]

Clash on the Fringe by Nordic Weasel.

Looking, about half the weapons are area weapons (sub machine gun is 3" x 1" and infantry chain gun is 2" x 4" for example)

[SteveBurt]

Battlefront:WWw has an optional MG grazing fire rule which lets you treat an MG as an area weapon.

[Daeothar]

A scifi option; The overwatch equivalent in Infinity lets a miniature fire at anything within a  templated firing cone, making this very effective as an area of denial tool.

Also, the game has SMGs (Spitfires) that use a small teardrop template as its area of effect, hitting everything within it. Pretty short ranged though.

[robh]

The Vietnam rule set "Gi'ac My" treats all automatic weapons not electing single shot only as area fire. They have 2 options of zone fire: a 2" circular area centred on the aiming point or a 1"x 6" rectangle (actual eclipse) with the long axis down the line of fire. Hits are assessed based on the weapons firepower and the number of targets within the beaten zones.

[darthfozzywig]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. A few games I need to look at!

Kind of depends on what you are trying to model and at what scale/ level of granularity. There's essentially two kinds of beaten zone produced by automatic weapons.

<snip> Rarely are real wars fought on football pitches or billiard tables and rarely do enemies oblige by lining up their rifle pits in nice straight lines.

Great thoughts. And yeah, my question is mostly coming from thinking about city fighting where a well-placed MG can largely lock down a street. But that's also specific enough that you don't really want to design a game around it.

[Elbows]

Fireball Forward (WW2) has a fun mechanic where you can basically lay overwatch along a straight line (not wielding the MG 180-degrees and firing everywhere).  I don't remember exactly how it works, but you place a token indicating your line of fire, and any enemy units which cross it get shot at, or something to the effect. It's been 10-15 years since I played it, but I remember it being pretty cool.

Battlegroup has the suppressing fire mechanic, but it still only applies to one targeted unit.  It does give you an option which is "easier" than aimed fired - but won't produce casualties, just pinning results.

[Easy E]

Of a vague memory, I seem to recall the old Games Workshop Historical WWI game used a area of effect template for Machine Guns. 

That is pretty hard to track down now though.   

[darthfozzywig]

More good suggestions, y'all, thanks.

[syrinx0]

We still play the Reese, Tucker, & Gygax Tractics for WWII (yup we are old).  That allows either an area fire or individual focus.
There is a 'new' version of the rules from https://www.combatrules.com.

[SpaceCudet]

Not sure how much help this will be but the beta rules for Men Under Fire had a fire lane mechanism using pipe cleaners to mark them out. It actually made sense to put MMGs on the flanks to create crisscrossed fire lanes. One of a few mechanisms in the beta rules that unfortunately didn't make it to the final set.

[Shahbahraz]

Chain of Command has the concept of suppression fire, effectively you won't do any damager but you reduce the opponents ability to hit anything as they are keeping their heads down.