Platoon Leader after action report

[seldon]

I've been looking for a crunchy set of rules for a while. I want something to play small actions with 15mm that involve about a platoon of infantry with a couple of vehicles and support elements.

I like rules like Stargrunt II a lot. They have lots of hard sci fi elements, but the vehicle part in start grunt was always a bit abstract. Of course there are many options, using dirtside II, using Gruntz 15 which is a fun game but a bit less "hard" sci fi than SG maybe. One think I always like from SG was that it was hard to kill infantry, normally you would pin them down and then have to assault them. There are so many alternatives these days.

So finally I decided to give Strike Legion: Platoon Leader a try. They are not an "easy" set of rules. They have lots of nuances and details to remember, but at this point I was looking for something like that.  Looking through their downloads I selected some designs that would match the infantry I have and then took some time to design my vehicles according to some concepts of weapon design shown in Hammer's Slammers the crucible ( another fun game but less infantry oriented ).

Last Sunday we finally gave it a try..

The Table



Nova Republick or New Ukranian forces



Good regular infantry, with good fire power and anti tank support



Their tanks are an early generation of tanks. They have basic standard armor and as soon as they started facing enemies with energy weapons they added energy reactive armor as a cheap way to improve their odds.
Their main gun is a 9cm rail gun, a high velocity kinetic weapon and their secondaries are 1cm rail guns that have an assisted AI to help them shoot down incoming missiles.

The federal forces



Their infantry are more heavily armored and have good morale but their squads are smaller and with less firepower.



Their tanks are more technologically advanced, they have stabilized energy guns, ablative armor and they are grav thanks

Setting up


There were three terrain objectives counting as 2 victory points each and each unit eliminated granted another victory point.

In the first turn the infantry moves in, the vehicles would enter on the second turn



The New Republik forces quickly took control of key buildings and managed to capture the northern woods. While the Federal forces moved towards the center and the southern flank





Federal troops early faced un uphill battle when they realized the superior firepower that the Republik fire teams can deploy, but their high morale allowed them to endure.

Armored support arrives on the table.. Quickly federal anti tank teams open up on overwatch




Armored vehicles on both sides engage on firefights where federal forces leverage their superior tanks





Supported by their tanks the federal forces where able to capture the center of the table. Despite tremendous amount of firepower coming from the other side there courage held and after capturing the lower flank's objective and suppressing the nova republik infantry the odds were favoring the federal foreces.

At this point we had to call it. Clearly being the first game it took longer than expected, but the objective was mainly to test the rules and we managed to test all the elements. Infantry, mecha , flame throwers, mortars, anti tank missiles...  It was a lot of fun..

Now with this experience I'll recalibrate the forces a bit and we'll start doing games more often.





Khursasan minis tanks

Here some other pics:

A Nova Republik infantry squad supported by a Valkiria and observed by their commisar





Khurasan Miniatures infantry, old heavy gear 1/72 mech


AT-GM ambushes a federal tank


Micro Panzer infantry, Khursasan Minis tank




Looking forward to our upcoming games

cheers
Francisco

[Elbows]

Looks excellent, nice crisp set-up and table.  Very much how we play our games!  Well done.

[Predatorpt]

Man, this is one excellent set-up all around - nice scenario, nice miniatures...I'm official envious of you guys!  Great work!

[Daeothar]

Wonderful setup and game!

Who makes those modernist, mirrorfaced highrises? they look perfect for use with Dropzone Commander too...

[seldon]

The building with the mirrors is 4ground



By now they make many in 15mm too, but I'm using the 10mm line because for thse "larger" actions they fit better with the ground scale. All the little accessories and power towers are also 4ground. They are all indeed for dropzone commander originally. I need to get the power plant... again they make it in 15s but I'm leaning towards getting it in 10s...

Then you have some team yankee terrain and a dropzone commander cardboard building.

[Dentatus]

Good looking game there. Well done.

[Driscoles]

Great looking table and wonderful pictures !
Thanks

[steders]

Nice setup, the buildings look great.
The rules may be too in depth for my liking.

[seldon]

Thanks guys...

Yes the rules are pretty detailed. They do flow seemly once you get the basics but there is a lot of chrome in there, which is why I liked them and why some other people might find them too much.

Overall I've been using:

Gruntz 15, good fast play rules, lots of options for unit design and suitable for more casual players

Victory Decision Future Combat, upgrade chrome a bit, easy to build forces because there are basic archetypes

Platoon Leader, lots of chrome, very involved design system to match that chrome, gameplay very reminiscent of StarGrunt II

I feel that having all 3 covers all the spectrum of players I might face ... nevertheless... of course if a new set of rules I'll get them quickly.. because... I'm a wargamer, we accumulate lead and rules !!

cheers
Francisco

[dijit]

Would you mind saying a bit on the mechanics of Platoon Leader? How do the dice rolls work? What makes the game so crunchy as you describe?

[Conquistador]

Would you mind saying a bit on the mechanics of Platoon Leader? How do the dice rolls work? What makes the game so crunchy as you describe?

This, please!

[YPU]

Love your setup, something to aspire to for many of us.

I'm also curious to the rules. I always avoided their rulesets, I've tried their 6mm stuff but it uses two separate defence stats, armor and shields, for kinetic and energy weapons. This always felt very prone to unbalanced encounters. If one side only uses kinetic weapons, and the other has a high shield rating that's a lot of useless point value. Just from the stat cards, this doesn't appear to be the case in this game.

[seldon]

Sure.. let me talk about the rules..

First.. yes, there is the possibility of shields and armor.. there is  basic armor, ablative armor, active armor , shields and finally sharmor ( shields and armor combined ).
I cannot talk to balance, I haven't set up any games where each side created their own force. What we usually do is one player creates the forces  and then we play them switching sides.  That is why in the game you saw I did not include shields. In the fluff that I was creating the less advanced guys had basic armor plus reactive armor, the other guys abaltive armor and the next generation of tanks will have shields ( besides having armor ).

I tend to use the systems more for reflecting fluff ( hammer slammers in this case ) than meta games.. so I cannot say much about balance if you build armies competitively.

The basics are straight forward. Alternate activations but the little subtle details make it interesting.

1) units can have different number of activations depending on their motivation.. most common is 2 but more aggressive units may have 3 ( 1 through 4 ).

2) When units go on overwatch they can react based on the actions they had left when they went on overwatch, so not just once. Plus after normal activations are done units in overwatch can activate. So you could activate a squad, leave one of the teams of the squad in overwatch, fire with the other team if the target is pinned assault with the team you left in overwatch..  

3) The shooting system is smart in that it uses pairs of dice to get the very desired curve of results rather than a uniform distribution. But you don't need to roll "pairs of dice" you roll an experience die for the teams firing, based on their eperience ( standard troops being D6 experience ) and you add 1 weapon die per model based on the weapon of the model.. then add the result from the exp dice to each weapon die, each total 1 or 2 points higher than the defense of the enemy gets a pin, each result 3 or 4 higher causes an enemy model to be wounded ( reducing his effectiveness going forward ) and also adds a pin marker and each result 5+ higher is a kill plus a pin marker.

When the a unit activates they must roll morale, modified by the pin markers. This can result in pass, losing some of ther actions or getting broken needing to attempt a rally test next activation or leaving the battle..   Because the results are the sum of two dice pins are more common than wounds and wound more than kills, hence.. low casualty ratio and more morale driven results.. ie. pin them, then assault the position.

4) part of the crunchiness is given by the actions available to units... move , fire , assault, crawl, double time, overwatch (3,2,10) , advance firing, assault firing, armored assault ( combining infantry using vehicles for cover ), dig in, sustained fire..  As you can see many tactical options with different pros and cons

5) the other element of crunchiness is the amount of design options... mortars, smoke, stun ammo, AT missiles ( ballistic, guided self acquiring ), flame throwers, different levels of armor, jump packs, assisted movement, power armor, laser designators, scouts , personalities ( commisars, tacticians etc... ) , medics...  It is a very versatile system... Some weapons might have depletion numbers...  Teams in a squad could have different coherency ranges based on standard coherency, comm systems, detached attributes..  

There are lots of alternative attributes to make special units such as snipers or other particular elements, tank hunters, etc...

Leaders can be platoon leaders or squad integral leaders depending on how you are designing your force... they can help rally, they can direct fire, they can regroup teams, they can coordinate actions among squads.. all through the use of their leadership points..

Maybe that give a glimpse of the system ? To me it feels like what maybe a Stargrunt III could have been ?  Or the next step if Fast and Dirty had expanded ... lots of elements to represent particular universes.

As I said, I don't know if it is balanced if you and I build armies and fight.. so I build the army units and then I give them to my players to select units from the armies available to them...

I am having lots of fun.. I hope to use their micro armor rules with 15mm to do a large convention game in December.. I think those are easier for a convention.. platoon leader is tough to pick up in a convention game.. is the game that you'll start understanding how to use after 3 or 4 games...

any other doubts or questions just ask...

I don't think I need to say this, but I am not affiliated with the rules.. I'm just a fan, and I've noticed there are not many other reviews out there for this system..

Great fun if you are ok with multiple dice types and rules with this amount of options...

PS. glad you guys liked the pics...

cheers
Francisco

[Mr. Peabody]

Thanks Francisco, that's very helpful.

Sounds like it would be fun to explore.

[KJdidit]

Seldon has provided a pretty good run-down of how Platoon Leader works; I thought I'd add my nickel's worth about the Strike Legion series in general.

What the Strike Legion Series is not:

• They are not tournament-based games that one can expect to buy an army book and play armies 'out of the box' and have a somewhat balanced game.
  They're not mechanically complex, nor is it difficult to learn the game mechanics of each game in the series.
  They're not tied to a particular miniatures franchise or fictional setting.

What they are:

• They are capable of representing a wide variety of unit types and equipment, from bows and spears up to high-energy pulse weapons, from leather skins up through gravitic shielding, and from pedal locomotion through grav drives, with each weapon or system having its own, unique impact on how the games unfold.
  They play fairly quickly once players become comfortable with the rules (1.5 to 3 hours for each game in the series when each player fields an average of about a dozen units per side).
  They're a great way for players to create their own units, or emulate units from nearly any fictional setting with some semblance  to their described sources.

Each of the games includes a large number options for constructing units so as to allow for any number of potential future conflict environments; the additional rules verbiage for uncommon game elements allows players to play the games using these elements without needing to create a plethora of house rules to cover less common gaming situations.

As to YPU's concern, Seldon's post covers this in a reasonably fair manner (which is also addressed in the introduction to the unit construction sections of the books): discuss what you'd like to include or omit with your potential opponents before having a serious go with the game (or have one player create all the units). As with any game in which players can stat their own units, there will always be some items that are less useful than others against particular opponents - but a technological mismatch didn't stop Cetshwayo's men from stomping Lord Chelmsford at Isandlwana, though, did it?  And, in most cases (including the mentioned shields/armor), the point costs for defenses aren't a huge addition to a unit's overall point value when viewed as individual components.

TL;DR:

• Want to fight grav tanks against natives with swords and armor, or see how over 200 unit options stack up against each other? Can do!
  Want a perfectly balanced tournament-style game? Can do, but requires advanced preparation to achieve a semblance of balance.
  Want a game that makes everyone happy? Can't do - but, then again, neither can anyone else, so I'm in good company.