Helping The Soviets

[vince hughes]

I've played many people either ftf, PBEM or Skype Voice Chat and one theme that many opponents bemoan is just how hard it is to command Soviet troops and keep their cohesiveness despite their usual numbers.

PG avoided the ASL 'Beserk' status and I think rightly too. Its inclusion of Penal Battalions/Platoons was cool and personally, I'd like to see more of them than the few scenarios they have turned up in.

Now I'm not advocating the following as a rule change, but think that it would be a sometimes neat inclusion as a scenario special rule (SSR) by some of the scenario writers. It is also a very small game change with minimum impact, but would give the Soviet player something to look forward to when rolling recovery.

This is what I thought would be nice:

14.43 "A demoralised unit or leader immediately returns to good order (skipping disruption) on an unmodified recovery result of '2' (double 1). However, Soviet units achieve this with an unmodified rolled result of '3' or less."

Not much of a bonus but it would add to their own national characteristic and kind of give them that odd bit of fanatacism (eagerness to rally to the cause) beyond that of other nationalities ?

Just a thought and perhaps a discussion point. :-)

[Shad]

Not much of a bonus but it would add to their own national characteristic and kind of give them that odd bit of fanatacism (eagerness to rally to the cause) beyond that of other nationalities ?

Leaving aside the impact on the game for a moment, I must ask: were they eager to rally to the cause?

This is a topic I know very little about. What historical basis would this have for Soviets and not, say, for Japanese or Gurkha or whathaveyou?

My gut reaction is that very few of them were eager to rally for anything, but we can safely assume this view is heavily biased by years of Western anti-Communist propaganda

[vince hughes]

'Rally To The Cause' was more in gaming terms. That said, "For Mother Russia" and the like you see and hear lots of Soviet veterans talk about. One of the reasons for their heavy casualties, even when in the ascendency was their strange willingness to push forward, whether it be for patrotic reasons, beserk reasons or NKVD MG's behind them, who knows ? But yes, they were very persistent buggers.

Put it this way. If I had a platoon of Americans and a platoon of Soviets that had to charge recklessly ahead regardless of the situation and danger, I'd know which ones I think I'd get more unquestioning obedience from.

[Shad]

Put it this way. If I had a platoon of Americans and a platoon of Soviets that had to charge recklessly ahead regardless of the situation and danger, I'd know which ones I think I'd get more unquestioning obedience from.

Well clearly it'd be the Americans, followed by the Soviets, with the British sitting around in back smoking "fags" and checking the pleating on their "trousers"... or at least that's how the American schoolbooks always told me it went.

The internet tells me that odds on 2d6 are:

2 - 2.78%
3 - 5.56%

...so that's giving the Russkies et al. an 8.34% chance of full recovery on every morale recovery attempt - not insignificant!

The only issue I have with your idea is this:

The reason the Soviets are often so damn hard to do anything with is because they're running around with 7/6 or 7/5 morale, making them very difficult to rally. It's hard to get my head around the idea of a soldier that continuously pisses himself and then jumps back up full of passion for the Motherland!

Maybe if the proposal only applied when rallying with the aid of a leader?

[vince hughes]

Well you'll have a nice surprise to come when my scenarios for the East Front come to fruition ! hehehe.

The trouble with a basic morale number is that it becomes inflexible. ASL had some things of interest and a good example was its treatment of Americans. In PG, they are generally 8 moraled so that you have a chance of getting them to do what you want to try and do with them. This 8 morale compares with the best (heck US Paras are bloody 8/8 !!). Yet in ASL, they were often a point lower in morale than the other big nations BUT had the ability to rally quicker in game terms with a higher number AND did not suffer from DM (desperation morale).

In PG terms, that for example might equate to putting them as '7' morale, but have them recover from disruption with a rolled 7 rather than the "1 less than your morale value" as per other nations. No DM might be no compounded demoralisation or indeed only on 4 higher rather than 3 higher .....

The Soviets recovering from DEM is not really that significant given how many times in a game you actually roll for demoralised units. I rarely achieve the double 1 (rightly) so a 3 or less might give 1 more unit per game if that. Also, for them to then continue forward (in combat movement), the recovered platoon would still need a leader with it anyway.

I just think its fun to toss around a few national characteristics (the Italians have the surrender rule as strangely do the South Africans ?). You also forgot to mention about us drinking Tea, but we only did that when our German cousin were munching down on their wurst !

[vince hughes]

Hey, who put the 'House Rules' tag on my thread. I didn't suggest it as such but as a possible SSR in some scenarios ?

[Matt W]

I actually think that the best simulation would be provided by using the Komissars more often. The willingness of the Soviet soldier to die for Mother Russia typically had more to do with the fact that, if they decided to run, they would die even more surely at the hands of the NKVD. It wasn't until the initiative had changed hands that the Soviets stopped shooting their own soldiers with machine guns placed 400-600 yards behind the jumping off point. At that point the likelihood of surviving the combat had risen substantially and the idea of being on the winning side helped out.

As re: the Americans I believe that the usual morale is 8/6 (at least when I'm not playing with PARA or the Nisei). I think this works well as American troops became especially shaky when losses were taken as the American soldier did not take kindly to being shot at. The propaganda they had to swallow suggested that their firepower made them invicible. It was only when their personal experience taught them otherwise that they were happy to go to ground. Just try to recover from a demoralization with a reduced INF on an 8/6 morale (a 1 in 6 chance).

I don't mind national characteristics if they are not able to be modelled by the game system itself. More Kommissars in 1941/1942 for the Soviets are probably the best answer. The surrender rule is still an odd duck in my mind but I can work with it as a game mechanic. Otherwise the morale ratings seem to cover most of the situations that I would expect to see and cover them well.

[Shad]

Hey, who put the 'House Rules' tag on my thread. I didn't suggest it as such but as a possible SSR in some scenarios ?

It was I, your benevolent dictator, trying and apparently failing to categorize the discussion!

[Shad]

The more I think about it the more I really like the idea of nation-specific base morale rules. It seems like there is a lot of unexplored flavor there for a minimum of pain.

Do you think it would work for all periods though? If you had to use 2 or 3 morale rules for one nation depending on it being early, middle, or late war I think that would be rules complexity above and beyond the comfort zone of PG.

[Matt W]

The base morale rules already permit that as German units can be seen to move from 8/7 in the early war to 8/6 in 1943 to Volksgrenadier 7/6 or 7/5.