Ruins of Warsaw mass combat?

[Grimace]

Seeing as this was one of several books I never managed to get, can people tell me if the mass combat system provided in this book is worthwhile? Does it actually do what it touts, and let's you resolve "battles involving hundreds of men and vehicles...quickly, easily and realistically"?

I have noticed that they, in the Return to Warsaw module (another one I don't have) provide a different version of mass combat, one related to the combat system provided in "The Last Battle". Does this mean that the first version found the Ruins of Warsaw wasn't as good? Or was it just a reworking to try to tie in to the Last Battle board game? (And yes, I do have the Last Battle, but I never liked how it diluted some things)

So what do people, who have played either one of these two versions of mass combat, think about them? Is it worth the effort?

[Jason]

The mass combat rules from RoW are not that strong. I have run that module about three times, but I have only used the mass combat once. It does have potential, and you will need a hex map, but as I remember things, Last Battle was better.

The largest problem is the lack of focus on the PC's, who quickly get lost in the action and bored as you sit there and fight out multiple large firefights. It could be useful for more organized GM's who could take time prior to the gaming session to work out some of the rolls, and then run the battle as 'scripted' while maintaining some level of random chance.

I found it alot easier as a GM to make some random abstract rolls (such as rolling a single attack die for each unit and doing a simple comparison to determine casualties etc.) while keeping the action on the PC's

[kato13]

We had two previous threads on this which might be of interest to you


Macro combat?

Mass Combat Resolution

[Earthpig]

My group are all Wargamers, so I would just let them play the "good guys" and I would take on the Barons forces. The hex map in Ruins of Warsaw is a little small so I would either make an enlargement or make something up on hexpaper with larger hexes:) I would also convert the unit stats to the "Last Battle" system (make each ROW unit into two half squads for LB).......or just play a small part of the battle using th PC,s and give them fragmentary reports how the rest of the battle is going.

[Grimace]

Ah, so the "Last Battle" rules, or at least a derivative of those rules, is probably the best thing to use for mass combat in a Twilight setting then. Okay.

I just hadn't seen the RoW rules, and when I played Last Battle I wasn't overly impressed with the way it worked. Yes, it did some things pretty good, but like Jason mentioned the PCs could fairly easily get lost in the overall action. I guess I'll have to tweak or whatnot to get it to work best.

Thanks for the info.