Air unit counter design

Old design:

new design:

Design process update

The rules are ready to go out to my two proofreaders.
The map is final.
The order of battle is finished.
The design of the markers and the ground & naval units has been redone and is final.

As the project has moved forward very fast the past few weeks I decided to spend some more time on the air unit counters and came up with a brand-new design that is IMHO awesome. It will take a lot of time, but it will be worth it.

Counters - Air Defence Network - Map

The graphics for the ground units have been modified to enhance readability and to make it easier to see from which country the unit is.

The map is updated with new port and airport symbols. Easier on the eye.

The Air Defence Network sub-system has become nice and easy. Now my hopes are that it will work out fine. The radar stations and sector operating centers are counters to keep the system flexible. Although I don't like too many counters on the map but I do like rigid systems with overcrowded maps even less.

I have thought about giving the game a strategic map like in Gulf and Aegean Strike, but I think it's better without it.

Orbat - counter design - rules

I have received a couple of books that made me rectify the Orbat of the German Democratic Republic forces. Some other books I only now received make me review the whole Warsaw Pact Forces. I'm still looking for an orbat of the Czech forces, the only detailed one I found was in czech :worried:

I have also started on a new design of the counters for the naval forces. The first test prints were not what I expected. Well, the western forces are great but I have to find a new design for the WP.
The air units are all finished and test prints were conclusive. Ground unit counter design will probably undergo some minor design changes to comply even more with official NATO symbology and to enhance readability.
The marker counters will undergo a major overhaul as the number of markers made the handling and appearance a mess. I'm gonna streamline the design elements for markers of the same group of effects. For example markers with effect on movement will be totally different than those with effects on combat.

The rules are final but when I read them a couple of weeks ago I decided to edit them layout-wise. I'm nearly through and I'm happy that I have redone them. Now it's much easier to use them.

Thanks for asking about the project, I'll try to keep my blog updated in a more regular way.

take care

WP Order of Battle - Ground Units

New informations about the East German Army made me redo my already finished orbat.
A forum post about the polish Army was so exhaustive that I had to include those infos too.
I never thought I'd find so many details about those armies. Unfortunately the same is not true for the CSSR. I'm still stuck with a basic orbat. Still searching.

On the other hand all counter values are finished and the counters could get a "go" if it wasn't for those czech units that seem far too generic now.

Before doing the WP counters I'll finish the orbat for NATO.

Air Defence Network

Much of the past weeks have gone into research of the Air Defence Networks of both NATO and Warsaw Pact.
As there were no rules in the underlying game system covering this matter I had to become very creative. ;-)
I have re-read the rulebooks of some games covering the subject. A very good german book about the "Bundesluftwaffe" gave me worthy informations and most of all the website of www.usarmygermany.com really helped me to get the picture.
Now I know what NADGE, GEADGE, 421L and such stands for. Implementing it into a rule was not such a big thing as I thought of in the beginning. Of course the rule has to be playtested but for now I'm quite happy with it. It's simple yet renders the impact of ground based air defense nicely.
Remains the HAWK and Patriot missile units. I would hate to cluster the map with fixed missile-sites and would hate even more to put more counters on the map. I'm playing with the idea of abstracting that part of the air-war.

First impressions

It was on Saturday 21st of February: I showed my ongoing project to my wargaming buddies at my "local" wargame club in Pontoy, France. Philippe is the regular host of the wargaming days and events. Great job Philippe, many thanks!
To my great pleasure I got some very encouraging feedback and some constructive critiques.
It seems that I've got it right on the graphical side. That's nice, but above all the game has to run smoothly. As the graphics and counters are reaching final status I start to plan ahead for playtesting.
A picture taken at the occasion:

...and the Strategic Cards are done.

I'd like to add that playtesting will of course alter some (hopefully not too many) features.

Oh boy! Not only did the holidays come in my way, it seems the whole world allied against me since I started this project ;-)
Since the last post, time was the rare resource I missed most to work on the project.
Nevertheless some huge advances have been made:

• the map is 99,9% finished. I finally found the right graphics for the airbases. Only one off-map box is missing (Murmansk and Arkangelsk ports) and then it's done
• the research for the Naval Order of Battle took a tremendous time as I had to use different sources which were sometimes very divergent. So I had to do some extrapolating while giving the most credibility to Polmar's Guide to the Soviet Navy, 4th edition
• counters for the Navies are in the work and looking great IMHO ;-)

• the rules are 99% finished, the only missing rule is the one on rail-movement.
• the cards are completed +-30%

So still a long way to go, but the hardest part is done.