Green Vs. Tan: We’re Not in the Sandbox Anymore…

The green army spread their numerous units out a bit more.

By Glenn Van Meter

I was recently asked to try out Strategy Wave Studios’ Combat Storm system. I was excited to hear that a gaming company had decided to put rules to the plastic toy soldiers I grew up playing with. My friend Brad came over to help me give them a go. We quickly reviewed the rules together. In this system, each individual pose represents a different type of soldier such as a rifleman, grenadier, or sergeant, and they’re grouped in units of 3-12. Special weapons troopers like AT specialists and grenadiers still carry the standard infantry armament of their faction besides their limited ammo special weapon. We were pretty impressed with the depth of the rules. It wasn’t the beer and pretzels type system either of us had been expecting.

The army lists currently published have the green force playing the US Army and the tan force playing the WARPAC weapon-armed “People’s Coalition Front”. My plastic toy soldiers are actually a mix of green, tan, and grey minis. Brad picked US Green and I decided to organize my PCF force in color-coded squads.

The rules also come with a wealth of printable paper scenery with a modern desert city theme and it all looks really good. Unfortunately I lacked access to cardstock and a printer. Brad and I decided that a more Vietnam jungle village table would work well as long as we had enough terrain on it. So we had a dirt road going diagonal from corner to corner, through a village with a bunch of plastic toy soldier sandbag emplacements, and a lot of jungle patches around that. The mission would be an encounter, with both forces starting on opposite short sides of a 6’x4’ table with the objective of slaughtering the opposing force.

The tan army focused their few units toward the center of the table.

We decided to play the recommended “small” game of 800 points. We then also decided to ignore the warning about limited forces for the first game and we included a tank on each side as a known factor, which increased each force by about 200 points to 1100 total.

The tan army “light tank” takes aim at some distant green army snipers.

To start with I chose a Light Tank (which seems to represent a Bradley IFV) that I used an old armored car for. I’m not very imaginative, and from there began making squads of troops that roughly mirror what I know to be a Soviet mechanized infantry squad. A Sergeant, 4 riflemen, 2 grenadiers, 2 AT specialists with their RPG-7’s and a Support trooper with a PKM. 10 soldiers in a squad, with a squad in yellow and a squad in grey. I was surprised to find out this maxed me out on points already, but with the numbers and organic heavy weapons I felt my force would be able to handle whatever it needed to.

Brad went a different route, trying a bit of everything in small units. He started by taking the hulking M60 model as a Main Battle Tank (think Abrams), and then set about creating a lot of small specialist squads. Four 4-man squads each had three riflemen and a grenadier, an AT specialist, a sergeant, or a supply trooper. A fifth unit was a pair of snipers, and his final unit were three special forces troopers – a sergeant, demolitions expert and rifleman.

After we set up, Brad started the game by moving a unit toward the village. Despite long weapon ranges (which is why we deployed on short edges), the interposing village and jungle terrain meant there was no Line of Sight for the first couple moves. I responded by moving some infantry forward. I moved my Light Tank off the road into the jungle paths, as I didn’t think it would stand a head to head engagement with Brad’s MBT. My plan was to move up as fast as I could, and seize the village. I would then have the RPG troops begin rocketing the MBT, as they were the only infantry who could deal with it.

Both forces advanced on the village as quickly as possible, with the tan unit arriving first and taking up a firing position in the village center.

When Brad moved his fourth unit one of my strategies began to play out. In Combat Storm you take turns activating units until all your units have been activated and then reset your units and start your cycle over again. In round 4 my force of 3 units got to begin moving again. In fact, with him having 7 units, I would begin my third round of movement before his men would even get a second. This did enable my troops to rush into the village and take up firing positions to defend the ground they’d taken.

However, I ran into a mechanic I hadn’t counted on, which is that a unit can’t split fire unless it had already eliminated its target before the weapon in question got to shoot.

Luckily his snipers were the leading edge of the attack, and concentrated AK and PKM fire brought them down, leaving my RPG’s free to hit the tank for a couple points, and taking some reload markers. As Brad’s general advance continued, my second squad fired at the tank, again with a small result and taking on reload markers. Brad’s general attack with M16 rounds began to whittle down riflemen from my forwardmost grey squad.

On my left flank my light tank’s MG and 25mm cannon continued to deny area to advancing troops. Meanwhile Brad brought his lone AT soldier up and prayed for a miracle hit to knock it out. Brad’s SpecOps squad made a valiant charge into the lower section of the village, but a lot of lucky shooting by yellow squad and some very unfortunate saving throws meant that they got wiped out in a very gory turn.

Green Spec Ops manages to flank the grey unit and take out a couple riflemen.

Green Spec Ops are mown down by concentrated and particularly lucky fire from the tan unit.

The tank goes down and a desperate firefight begins between the advancing green MG squad and the remains of the grey unit.

This firefight came down to the wire, and by the end only the grey MG man was left.

The much reduced grey squad continued to lay down supporting fire, blowing up the M60 with their last pair of RPG’s and the PKM eating into the infantry coming up with the tank. The green grenadier was able to approach and launch a grenade, but his aim was off and his whole squad was wiped out for their trouble.

Finally the fight came down to a few Green remnant squads including their AT specialist hunkering down behind a hut and bravely taking on the Light Tank head to head. Though the first shot went home for maximum damage, the second and final shot by the AT specialist missed. As he and Sarge from another squad were the only remaining Green troops on the field with only M16s between them, we decided to call it a night (plus, local wildlife began to interfere with combat operations).

The only green AT specialist fires his last round at the light tank… and misses.

The light tank takes aim at the AT specialist for his troubles.

In the end we really enjoyed playing Combat Storm. They have some interesting mechanics, which Mitch . The major notable problem that we had was that many of the minis in my collection had rather oddly shaped or placed “bases” and liked to lay about on the job instead of standing their place in line as they were supposed to, so it may be helpful to attach small cardstock squares or some other base to assist your plastic army men in staying vertical as appropriate. We’re looking forward to playing it a few more times, and both agree that it would make a good multiplayer game for our club for a less serious evening at the FLGS.