Chain of Command:The Abyssinian War army lists

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

Chain of Command:The Abyssinian War army lists go live!

Starting with an Introduction and sort of explanation about what’s in Chain of Command:The Abyssinian War, we discuss the various aspects of the period that need to be accounted for in the Interwar setting when using the rules. There’s a bit to cover and some notes for players to digest before wrapping their head around the way Interwar CoC works, which really is just like standard CoC but with some twists.

The Abyssinian War setting has enabled us to utilise WW1, SCW and WW2 concepts for Chain of Command all pulled together..so it’s a fairly ‘rich’ gaming environment. This post will lead the release of the upcoming 17 army lists that will cover all the forces of Italy, Ethiopia, Great Britain and France.

Players will be able to use these lists for historical clashes of The Abyssinian War or the counterfactual Abyssinian Crisis as explained on the TAC blog and elsewhere.

So, go find out what’s in store for all you interwar CoC players.

https://abyssiniancrisis.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/chain-of-command-the-abyssinian-war-introduction/


Cheers

Happy W

[kramsenoj]

Thanks for all the continued efforts. I've got the Espana set and looking forward looking forward to seeing how you create an Abyssinian atmos
in CoC.

Crikey there's a lot of troop types and units to choose from.The only problem so far is determining which forces to do.
Italians obviously for starters. However which flavour to build. After that who knows. A conundrum. However a nice one.

[commissarmoody]

Thanks for sharing. I am digging the all the attention that the Abyssinian has been getting as of late.

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

The Italians are ready! Follow the link to download the Italian Regno Esercito and CCNN platoon force army list for Chain of Command.

Included in this release are the Specific Rules and Playsheet used for play.

The initial release details were given the TFL official treatment here so pop on over and have a read there as well.

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=5221


Godere!

https://abyssiniancrisis.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/chain-of-command-abyssinia-italians/

[axabrax]

Awesome! Even better than I was hoping for! Very professional looking too. Who the heck actually makes that damn Fiat 611 in 1/56 anyway?

Looking forward to seeing the rules. I am a little surprised (and delighted) that the Lardies approved air support, as when I suggested it for the Burma lists I received a bit of a lecture on how it didn't make sense given the scale of the game. But I haven't seen it yet, so perhaps it's abstracted in an acceptable way like with those. I certainly would like to be able to paint up a CR.20 and fly it over the table.

On a side note: I had to request permission to access the google docs. Please make them public or approve my request!

Very excited for all this! Maybe this will inspire Empress to finish off  (or at least add to) their Abyssinia range? 

~ Steve

[Happy Wanderer]

Thanks axabrax 

...nice to know your efforts are appreciated 

We put in Random Air Support in the SCW lists and it's equally valid for this period. The thing is it's relatively ineffective compared to the truly destructive nature of WW2 ground support aircraft so in this regard interwar air support is closer to light weight artillery fire...and probably why Rich has no issue with it.

Sorry about the download restriction - I forgot to put it on public sharing...I've changed it now so there should be no problem getting the lists and special rules and playsheet to go with it all.

...the Ascaris will be up next!

 

[draxx66]

Excellent, We're running a 1938 VBCW campaign set in the Horn of Africa so this set of articles and army list is very useful.
10/10

[Arlequín]

I'm pretty sure we can satisfy your British and Colonial appetites with what's to come. 

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

The next army list in the Chain of Command:Abyssinia series is released.

This time it is Italy’s venerable allies, the Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali, the Eritrean and Arabo-Somali ascaris of East Africa. Get the list from the The Abyssinian Crisis blog.

https://abyssiniancrisis.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/chain-of-commandabyssinia-regio-corpo-truppe-coloniali/


Enjoy!

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

The next in the release of army lists for Chain of Command: The Abyssinian War is ready for download.

This time we take a look at Italy's mounted Ascari forces, the Penne di Falco and Zaptie Carabinieri troops, both of whom gave excellent service to their colonial masters.

You can grab the lists from The Abyssinian Crisis blog as usual.

Cheers

Happy


https://abyssiniancrisis.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1873&action=edit

[Happy Wanderer]

Gents,

The next army list starts to detail some of the tribal forces of The Abyssinian Crisis. There were long standing feuds and inter-tribal warfare amongst the Eritrean and Somalian tribes that inhabited the Horn of Africa. They fought as much amongst themselves as against their Ethiopian neighbours and many warriors flocked to the Italian colours to serve, but more likely, settle old scores.

These forces include, but are not limited to, the highly regarded Somalian Dubat forces, the opportunistic forces of Sultan Olol Dinle, notable Azebo Galla cavalrymen and the Spahis di Libya, led by the enigmatic Amedeo Guillet.


These warriors start to give a look at how Chain of Command:The Abyssinian War handles irregular forces which adds a distinctly colonial feel to the period and provides much variety for those Chain of Command players fielding otherwise conventional forces up to now.


Grab the Eritrean and Somali Irregulars army lists from here...

https://abyssiniancrisis.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/chain-of-commandabyssinia-eritrean-and-somali-irregulars/

[axabrax]

Love all of this! Very cool and interesting. I guess my only comment at this point is a practical one: you might think about some way to add a few of these troop types as support choices rather than separate army lists. Many of these troops will require conversions and my guess is that most of the players (at least in our group) will probably gravitate toward lists with better firepower and more variety (and less work.) It's much easier to add an exotic colonial squad to my pre-existing Italian, British, French force rather than buying and painting an entire platoon of new Askari.

Whereas, if you allowed a support squad of irregular scouts/cavalry they'd be much more likely to actually show up in a game rather than as an interesting historical document. We actually proposed something similar for the Axis in a Tunisia CoC campaign wherein--given the ad hoc nature of the battlefield, you could choose from a pool of Axis or captured allied equipment within historical limits. I'm sure it's not as realistic,  but it's probably more fun to collect, paint, and play. YMMV.  Part of the fun of historical gaming is always balancing playability with historical accuracy.

~ Steve

[Arlequín]

Cheers Steve!

By and large the more exotic troop types do appear as support choices in other lists (with some exceptions)... but there are always those few folks who want to be different and do indeed want to create a whole banda of Dubats or what have you. As we have the organisation details to produce them as 'support', it's not too difficult to do a full list for them.

The main problem with CoC in terms of mixing troop types though is that the core force is usually a platoon, within a company, within a battalion and so on, so usually there's enough going on in the parent force to exclude everything else. The odds of a 'foreign body' being on the same small part of the battlefield as the core platoon are pretty remote, the odds are heavily in favour of other units from within the parent body.

The Platoon Force Rating system supports this too and assumes additional units are of a similar type, or more importantly a similar experience class. So for example, if you field a platoon of 'regulars' and add a tribal group, that group is treated the same as the regulars, i.e. benefits from the same force morale and command dice etc. In WW2 it would be like having a platoon of British Paras and adding a squad of raw recruits... the recruits would suddenly become 'Paras' with the same morale etc... instead the Paras support comes from other elements of an airborne company/brigade/division which are of similar status and ability.

Some forces on the other hand do operate somewhat solo in small groups, often in conjunction with some diverse auxiliary elements, so these are the ones with the more colourful additions and special rules to enable the disparate types to work together.

  

[Happy Wanderer]

Hi axabrax,

Your comments and encouragement are always welcome - thanks. You make some very good points and not without good reason…and I must say, we have tilted toward allowing a little bit of spice in other lists just as you suggest, where historically justified. We take the ‘play the period’ part of the Lard mantra to heart and the lists are better for it IMHO. You must off course remember one very important point - you've only seen but 4 out of 17 army lists!! When we said we were going to deliver you the entire period that’s what we meant!   By the end of it there will be so much choice your head will spin!

Arlequin is quite right in saying the allocation of too may 'add on' troops is somewhat less than historical and distorts the CoC core mechanic of a platoon force rating designation and how its troop quality and command dice effects game play. Arlequin's example of brit paras with a squad of raw recruits hits the nail on the head.

However, these are the wilds of a semi colonial African campaign and even the more conventional forces did and could have some local attachments at the platoon level. So these you will see pop up, but they will pop where historically appropriate, not just to make a 'game-able' list. You’ll note the Italians are the most regular and organised of all the European forces in theatre; they’d prepared long and hard and their multi faceted force structure reflects that i.e. they have few ‘local variations’ to their core army elements as they have organised colonial forces already in the form of the Askari and, in this case, Somali and Eritrean tribal forces.

Thus the Eritrean and Somali allies list is a good case in point. It emphasises the small Raggruppamento aspect of Italian doctrine by attaching, in this case, army elements to an irregular force platoon much as what happened in Graziani’s southern operations. This is why you see the ability for a Dubat platoon to be supported by Italian armour and air support, however the core force is still a Dubat platoon and not an Italian army platoon. Somali Dubats are not regular forces and there were battalions of them and they need to be represented as their own lister…like any other specific SCW or WW2 list would be.

To do otherwise essentially turns each list into the same list but with just slight trait variations if a player can always use the same force mix with only minor variation in troop types. What you end up with is the core platoon not truly reflecting what its make up and components are that make it unique. You can also end up with attached elements behaving unhistorically because of the way they ‘lean’ on another platoon types PFR ratings and command dice.

One key aspect of TAC was the usability of troops from other past projects. This was a key incentive in getting players to tinker with the many interesting ideas TAC has to offer. Thus a player that has Spanish Civil War CTV figures can use them as French North African Zouaves or Tirailleurs in winter dress or a player with Sudan forces from their 1885 war-game project can press these into the field using the Eritrean allies list so no new painted figures required. These lists allow you to play with all the historical force organisations but we don’t think you should have to go out and buy 60+ figures for every list. Having all the lists does however open up alot of double-duty use for other figures you might have and the CoC games will be like nothing you see in WW2 either.

For example, those new Perry Vichy and Senegalese French will cover a whole host of forces and serve you well in WW2…so with your existing collections the lists will provide you with historical variety. This is one reason why you’ll see the default condition for mounted forces being dismounted. Fielding an entire half squadron mounted is not usually within easy reach of many players, but you can if you want because historically they did! And if you take them mounted as a support list choice you can then dismount them and gain the cavalry deployment benefits..so you still end up using dismounted figures!

There is alot going on here in Ethiopia and to get the full sweep of the action with all these distinctive and diverse forces listers are needed to accurately reflect the historical vastness of the subject matter and forces at play. This is like all of WW2 on the Eastern Front in Chain of Command in one go!  As I think I said in a previous post, there is a lister for everyone here. If you have nothing but Copplestone Somali warriors from a Mad Mullah campaign sitting in a box then you have a forces for this period and not an European in sight! They can be fielded against a guy who has collected Italian for the SCW or a mate with Italians from a WW2 North African army..and so on.

So fear not, as the lists get released you’ll start to see creeping into the British and French lists particularly the slightly more ad-hoc nature of their force deployments and local ally allegiances they need to field against the massive Italian army and their African allies. By the end of it you’ll have 17 lists and over 60+ pages of hard core data on the interwar period for conflict in Abyssinia..merry xmas indeed!

Happy W

A Sudanese warrior facing off Gordon in Khartoum…not quite…likely his grandson. He is a Cunama Lowland Warrior from NW Ethiopia near the Sudan border who fought during the Italo-Ethiopian war c 1935….use those Sudan warriors straight out of the box!

[Kommando_J]

Question do the Italian officer and ranking senior leader replace the senior leader if taken r count as separate models?