r/hexandcounter

Just a simple recording of a couple of playing fully through a game would be enough, i love watching tabletop content but found a lack of it especially for the complex hex and counter games

Hello!, I'm brand new to the series, read the instructions, watched a couple videos, etc. Set up my first engagements and got ready to go .... and then drew a blank lol.

I keep seeing references to Army / Battle activation. The rules (as I am re-skimming) seems to be using it interchangeably - in the context of "that I (the player) will know which I can use."

But that's the thing. I don't.

Would some kind soul either explain when you can activate your entire army vs just a single Battle (which is what I thought was the only thing you could do)? It has probably been asked/answered before - so even just pointing me to an existing link(s) would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

PS in case it is relevant, I have the newest Tri-Pack and Norman Conquest. So the rules are the "newest."

Halo flogs a brilliant finale out of his shot-to-hell A10-A

I first read novelist and jet jockey James Salter's Burning the Days at 29, when I was dumb enough to think I could craft some personal recall as luminous as his.

Re-reading it at 56, I know I never did and never will.

But I re-read it to study his technique, re-experience those sentences that curl and glow like old paper in flame. Maybe he torched his journals afterwards and decided to name the book that way.

Thunderbolt Apache Leader is another private cavern of stories I refuse to forget. The new games can wait. I pull it out in April and run missions as a reward for getting steps done in preparing taxes, which is intrusive and undignified. 

I know I’ve done the right thing when I slot the new mission sheet onto my black clipboard and pick out a sharp new pencil. Here’s how it started:

Mission: Iraq

Situation: Cutoff

Craft and Crew:

• A-10A (Halo and Rebel)
• F-16 (Mohawk and Dart, Dart upskilled for 1 SO point)
• AH-1 (Freak and Grandpa)
• AH-64A (Rock and Shadow, Shadow upskilled at Rock’s expense)

Strategy: Iraq is a forgiving region in this game, but the Cut-Off situation bears some thought. I blow about half my Special Option points on a sampler platter of craft and two Scouts.

The A-10A and AH-64A are designed to be paired against the heavier battalions, with a better-than-average pilot for each craft. Or swap out the Apache for the F-16 if I need more payload to get it done.

I allot two pilots with the Fast ability for the F-16 and AH-1. As the Cobra isn’t very durable, I plan to use it in a hovering starting position at the beginning of a mission, hopefully with LOS on high-value enemy targets that haven’t had the chance to go to cover yet. “Dump everything in the mag and run” is my doctrine for keeping this little chopper in service for five days.

The F-16’s job is to roar in and hunt down choppers and the most dangerous surface-to-air units, with a couple turns after to hunt. The greeting card is a Maverick/GBU-16/Sidewinder mix so Mohawk can slice across the map once or twice and knock out their sharpest teeth before they can bite back. It’s always Mohawk, unflustered by all. His understudy, Dart, never gets a turn in the seat. 

I want to keep these visits brief as the F-16’s speed means it usually has to climb to high altitude and attract lethal Pop-Up Units — or else make a bunch of hairy ridge maneuvers all the time, which is not Mohawk’s deal. He was an enfant terrible in his gunnery courses, but he regarded finesse low-altitude flying as cumbersome and pedestrian. Falcons are only interesting at height and at speed, he reckons.

This is the first time I’m trying this approach.

I walk setup, taking my time with it. In its three years on my table, Thunderbolt Apache Leader is the most exempt from setup fatigue. 

Some say it’s fussy, especially with the terrain and enemy battalion setup and breakdown for each individual mission. They’re right, but it’s an additive, like the overture music you used to get in theaters when movies still had intermissions and scenes that bustled with titanic human effort.

It might be my favorite part of the game, perhaps something akin to what a D&D player feels when picking out their character or getting the dungeon map ready. I can happily spend half a morning on it, the ceremony is like a drum line slowly building in volume.

I am not efficient, but I am engaged and delighted.

The Action

Day 1: Shadow and Grandpa are dispatched to take a bite out of Mechanized Battalion 3A. I send the F-16 and the A10-A — Mohawk and Rebel in those respective seats — to hit Artillery Battalion 1S and prevent the game-long drain on my SO points from that unit’s persistent effect.

Neither mission fails. Both battalions are halved. Mohawk, chosen strictly for his itchy trigger finger, hits his marks and flies off, leaving Rebel enough loiter time to scour hexes in an attempt to destroy the battalion, but he could not capitalize on any in-hex cannon strike opportunities. 

The chopper jockeys fare a tad worse and would have failed had it not been for a single, shocking four-for-four Hellfire and BG-71 salvo from the Cobra. 

Generally mediocre gunnery clouds what could have been a banner day.

Days 2-4: I am spellbound and neglect my end-of-mission notes. But the plan works on the whole. There were two Command units with persistent negative effects; one I hit hard enough to stop the SO point drain, but the other pushed the Assault and Support units at me top-speed for the duration of the campaign. 

I did well by keeping a pile of SO points in reserve for the five-day drought, but that meant flying light sorties that were rarely able to KO a battalion on the first try, necessitating mop-up runs. While the enemy bulk was modest, what was there moved quickly and threatened me with a mission failure at the end.

I’d lulled myself into complacency a bit; never before had I hit Day 4 of any mission with pilots and craft in such good shape. The end-of-day assessment jars me: I was down to fewer than 5 Special Option points and three Assault units, even the battered ones, had pushed into the Friendly Rear band.

I calculated that I had to wipe two of them to survive the Special Option penalty if the remainder moved at all — which they were likely to do, as I’d left the Command unit that coordinated their rapid movement undisturbed for the entire campaign.

Day 5: Grandpa and Shadow (my first-ever in-game promotion to Veteran) are assigned the remnants of a Reserve force that will gain the base unless removed.  An MLRS barrage and a brisk flyover by the whirlybirds breaks them.

This leaves another “must destroy” job for the jets against a halved, but still substantial, Infantry force. Mohawk does what he’s done the whole game and leaves. But the battalion is still at functional strength. It all falls on Halo again. The last path through and out is a three-hex canyon gauntlet, including three Pop-Up units summoned by Mohawk’s glib, high-flying ways.

Halo acquires and smokes the most dangerous Pop-Up Units, but the ground fire is withering and none of those intrepid strikes count against the battalion goal. The penalty exacted by the HUD damage sends Halo’s secondary volleys wide.

By the time he limps to the exit hex, all the loaded munitions are gone and his nervous system is just about on tilt. The A-10A has sustained two structural hits as well as damage to the engine, HUD, pylon and controls.

The math says I’ll destroy the battalion if Halo can use his nose cannon to pop a lone APC in his exit hex. He moves to the one-way exit side of the hex on his nearly exhausted fuel tanks, fires a burst. Nothing. 

That leaves one shot if he opts to fire before moving on his next and final Loiter Turn. The roll is heavily penalized and I imagine him trying to eyeball it in his cradle of noisy alerts on the last circle-back he can afford to make.

The die displays an 8 before serenely scooting an extra millimeter off my table. I don’t want to look at it as I pick it up. It rolled a 9 after hitting the floor, surely siphoning off the last good fortune from whatever bank holds these reserves.

I pitch it again. An 8.

Halo tacks to the base en route to a promotion of his own. The Cut-Off conditions that award SO points for killing battalions give me the cushion I need to absorb the penalty when the surviving enemies head for my base.

All told, I earn a Good rating with 16 net VPs.

Here’s Salter talking about his childhood reading and re-reading of Kipling’s “Ballad of East and West”:

>I did not invent any games for the poem or pose before the mirror as one of its figures; I only stored it close to my heart. In the end, I suppose, I found the poem to be untrue, that is, I never found an adversary to love as deeply as a comrade, but I kept a place open for one always.

>Of the cardinal virtues, it was fortitude the poem held high, perhaps with a touch of mercy. Fortitude, I saw, was holy. My life was too meager for me to know if I possessed it. I was white-skinned, sheltered. In the street I ran from gangs of toughs. Tunney, Dempsey’s most famous opponent, soaked his fists every day in brine to make them invulnerable, my father had told me, to toughen them, and it was in some sort of brine that I hoped to steep myself.

Halo took a good soak in that brine on Day 5. This is etched somewhere in gold leaf that fades as the disorder of my home and all the other undones come back into focus. A voice mail from an old friend that has to be listened to. Preposterous.

It is the first of many transmissions of the age that erase the magic, truer world, bleach that particular color of triumph from the page and the sky.

Wrote a brief series overview for one of my favourite series for TTB!

Hi. I've always been fascinated by hex and counter war games and want to buy my first one.

From watching YouTube videos I like the look of the Next War games.

Would they be a good starting point for someone with zero experience of hex and counter?

Or would you suggest somewhere else to start.

My main interest is WWII.

Thanks Thank you for all that kind info. Im gonna go with Holland '44 Gmt and Sicily II and Luzon from MMP. Hope to be able to become more experienced like you guys and give advice in future. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Good Day Grognards!

Strange question and maybe I’m crazy…

I was going through my social media and noticed a lot of my fellow hex and counter wargamers have birthdays this month (May) including myself.

Does that apply to anybody here? You don’t have to be specific, but are there other Taureans among us? Anywhere close?

If you aren’t I’d be curious to know as well to get an idea of the proportion.