Green Vs. Tan: We’re Not in the Sandbox Anymore…
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 theyre 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 wasnt 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 Peoples 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 6x4 table with the objective of slaughtering the opposing force.
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.
To start with I chose a Light Tank (which seems to represent a Bradley IFV) that I used an old armored car for. Im 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-7s 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 didnt think it would stand a head to head engagement with Brads 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.
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 theyd taken.
However, I ran into a mechanic I hadnt counted on, which is that a unit cant 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 RPGs free to hit the tank for a couple points, and taking some reload markers. As Brads general advance continued, my second squad fired at the tank, again with a small result and taking on reload markers. Brads general attack with M16 rounds began to whittle down riflemen from my forwardmost grey squad.
On my left flank my light tanks 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. Brads 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.
The much reduced grey squad continued to lay down supporting fire, blowing up the M60 with their last pair of RPGs 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).
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. Were 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.