Woods and Streams

[Smokey]

I cannot find anything about movement through light or heavy wood.  Nothing about crossing streams.  How far into the woods can someone outside of them see? How far can you see out of the woods? How far can see within the woods? How close to the edge of the woods do you need to be to see out of them?

[Stuart Harrison]

The same terrain can be played differently game to game, this is why you have to discuss terrain before the game with regard to effect on LOS and effect on movement.

“This area of trees is a thick forest, it’s dense terrain (LOS) and rough ground (movement)”
“This area of trees is an orchard. It’s soft cover, rough ground for vehicles and artillery, open for infantry”

“this creek is an obstacle for infantry, rough ground for tracked vehicles, impassable to artillery and wheeled vehicles, no LOS effect”
“The muddy part of this river is shallow water, the blue part is deep water. We’ll play it as per Marianas and Palau movement in water rules”

“This patch of rubble is just rough ground with hard cover”
“This patch of rubble is rough ground and dense terrain with hard cover”

Rules for dense terrain are on p52.

[Smokey]

I get it. You want the players to work it out before the game. I can understand, for example, working out whether a section of wood is heavy (dense) or light (?) but the actual rule which governs how the wood affects movement and LOS should be standardized within the rules.  At least in my opinion, it should be. I have a historical scenario that states a large section of wood is light. You should be able to look at the rules you are using and find the definition of light wood and its effects. Which should tell you how far you can see into light woods and how close to the edge you must be to see out and how far you can see within the woods. The players should not have to write the rules to play them.  This isn’t the same as indicating what the rubble is. Woods, streams/creeks, and rivers are quite common and are defined in all the rules I play except Bolt Action. Last week we must have spent a half hour just defining heavy woods. So as a GM, I am going to have to write out rules for woods and crossing streams for various vehicles and foot infantry. I can do it but I shouldn’t have to.

[invisible officer]

The problems with woods in games are old, as old as modern wood farming post WW II.  It starts with wrong ideas about woods being a light problem for movement and vision.

 

Modern men are used to the cleaned industrial woods of today.  Hardly any undergrowth.  Like city parks.  WW II was fought in old style woods.  Some thick undergroth was normal. The edge of such a forrest was like a wall. No way to look into it. And the trees closer to each other.

And in WW II there had been woods that had been even more xxx. Like the Reichswald in Western Germany. Allied soldiers, that knew the jungls of Far East, had been astonished about that European Jungle.  No way to move away from the paths and zero visibility.

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Another wrong idea is the idea of woods giving cover. In fact HE bursts on trees have a much increased effect on human flesh.   So to do an ambush at woods edge (like that on Irish Guards in A bridge to far movie) is a stupid idea.  Worse, the edge of  a forrest is easy to range in by artillery. So German AT and infantry  units would have taken a camouflaged dug in position   in front of that wood.

 

In Reichswald they hacked paths with vision cover on top, giving access to bunkers built to control the bigger paths.

 

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I like the BA ways to give the gamer wide options.   Not reducing the gamer to slaves of mechanics.

 

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