Re: DSII Question- Obstacles

On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Paul O'Grady was heard querying:

> Has anyone come up with a genric rule regarding the use of
barbed/razor
> wire as obstacles for DS2 ?  What about WW2 "Dragon Teeth" type tank
> obstacles ?
> 
My gaming group had a scenario a while ago in which a firebase was being
attacked by infantry, and and armoured force was trying to fight thru to
relieve the firebase. The scenario started to go strange when the enemy
infantry simply overran the firebase the first turn, with little the
firebase commander (hi Neil) could do. After the game, we were talking
about some sort of wire/tank trap idea for DS2, rather like what you've
got here...

> My inclination for DS2 scale games would be that they automatically
stop
> movement when advancing into contact with the obstacle (and they are
NOT
> allowed to then fire), but that the infantry units attempting to cross
may
> continue moving in their next turn.  This would simulate the use of
> bangalore torpedo type weapons and the effect of checking movement and
> making them a nice target for the defenders for a turn.  Dragon Teeth
would
> be impassable but may be blown by sappers simialr to building
demolition.
> 
> Any comments/suggestions ?
> 
> Paul

This looks good - and provides people with a pressing reason to get
engineering troops out onto the field. The demolition-by-engineers rule
could apply to wire as well, maybe - making commanders choose who gets
machine-gunned whilst mucking around in the wire, your regular infantry
or
your engineering inf.

Dragon's teeth and wire could be, in points-based defense battles,
bought
- say 75pts for 6" of wire, 100pts/6" of dragons teeth? (purely off the
cuff costs - but I'd say that 600 meters of wire is worth as much as a
standard APC, no?)

Otherwise, scenarios would specify the amount of wire/teeth available,
and
maybe where it is set up (eg Defenders get 18" of wire; at least 6" must
be within 400m (4") of FireBase X...)

Actually, instead of dragon's teeth, just call them 'anti-tank
obstacles'
- covers teeth, ditches, roadblocks of various sorts, etc...

How about in-game deployment of wire/teeth? (mostly wire, or only
wire...)
Say 6" of wire takes 2 turns to deploy by regular infantry, or 1 turn w/
engineers; takes up 8 cargo spaces; cannot be deployed by units under
fire; cannot be deployed by engineering vehicles, only inf;
etc...Coupled
with the existing rules for fast entrenchments, you can produce a fairly
secure firebase in two or three game turns - maybe too fast?

Enough wire could make things very, very nasty - imagine trying to close
to close-assault troops entrenched behind two or three lines of wire,
out
to about 4-6" from the trench-front...can we all say 'WW1', kiddies?

Wire/teeth rules would need to have wire-vs-tank rules and
wire-vs-arty/DFO rules - what happens to a razor-wire line when a group
of
Size 5 GEV panzers cruise through or a battery of medium artillery drops
a
converged sheaf load on it? (Teeth would be unaffected, I'd think - for
fairly obvious reasons...) Don't forget what tanks were originally made
for - wire-busting (at least in part)...WW1 again...

How do other, historical micro-armour games handle wire/teeth? Could
those
rules just be plagarized and dropped straight into DS2? (for house rules
only, of course, copyright being what it is)

I'm just throwing these ideas off...feel free to hack them
up/critique/hate them/love them...esp. the last :)...

Brian (burger00@camosun.bc.ca)