Curious, impact of military history on your play style?

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**wuestenfux**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
vipoid wrote:
wuestenfux wrote:
Banville wrote:
wuestenfux wrote:
Military history is very interesting.
But when it comes to table top, not very much you can infer from military strategies.
The best one is the Lanchester square law!!!

If you can pull it off, the ol' refused flank does actually work.

What I actually meant is the law that doubling the number of tanks means four-folding the number of anti-tank weapons.
This law was heavily used in WWII.
It particularly works well in small pt games.

Could you explain this one to me?

The Lanchester Square law models basically says that if you have A soldiers with an ability to kill the enemy B, fighting Z soldiers with ability to kill the enemy Y, then the forces over time can be modelled as dZ/dt = AB, dA/dt = ZY. The greater takeaway from this is that numerical advantage has a squared effect.

There's also the related 3:1 rule, which stipulates that, as a rule of thumb, the attacker needs three times the local power to succeed. It's frequently misused, since it refers exclusively and explicitly to the tactical level, and I'd question it's applicability to 40k. That said, concentrating your force on the attack in a narrow attack, which is the take-away of the rule, does apply. You can use 3x cost as a general benchmark for how much firepower it takes to knock out a given unit, but that's not hard and fast, and not really an application of the 3:1 rule [it's constructed, GW could change that number at any time]

Indeed, the Lanchester square law has an explanation in terms of ordinary differential equations. But not everybody is used to it.

The 3:1 rule is rather common among military experts. It comes in effect when you can overwhelm the enemy say at one flank.

**DeathKorp_Rider**

I try and incorporate Soviet style tactics into my armies. They were the best fighting force of the 20th century after all.

**wuestenfux**

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I try and incorporate Soviet style tactics into my armies. They were the best fighting force of the 20th century after all.

Certainly not the Russians. Ask the Germans and the Jewish (Israel).
I remember in my class on Cryptography it was said that the Russians in WWI were not able to use anything more complicated than the Caesar cipher.
You find this and a lot of other anecdotes in the great book of F.L. Bauer.

https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783540245025

**DeathKorp_Rider**

Considering they liberated Europe and defeated Germany, we'll agree to disagree

**wuestenfux**

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
Considering they liberated Europe and defeated Germany, we'll agree to disagree

It has nothing to do with being defeated or not.
It has to do with the motivation of the soldiers and the army, and here the mentioned armies have had the highest motivation standard. The Russians? Certainly not.

**DeathKorp_Rider**

They couldn't have been more motivated, they were repelling a hostile force invading their land

**Bookwrack**

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
Considering they liberated Europe and defeated Germany, we'll agree to disagree

Not sure if trolling, or just lacking a basic education

**Elbows**

Yeah, let's not go down the rabbit of hole WW2 dick measuring...

**vipoid**

Elbows wrote:
Vip,

Yeah for the deployment cards the army is allowed to deploy any of the coloured zones which are his/hers. We also have a deck of 6 or 8 three-person deployments, and a deck of post-game storyline cards which are used to "suggest" future games (though these are new and we haven't used them yet!)

You can see I'm a game tinkerer/game designer as a hobby so I enjoy this gak more than playing the game sometimes

I have to say, I applaud your work on those cards. They look really professional.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

Uh oh.. I'm not sure if this is a conversation I want to touch.

However, the USSR's Red Army was probably the second most effective, beat only by the USA's, organized military force during the later part of the 20th Century [that is to say, from WWII to the dissolution of the Soviet Union]. A combination of technical superiority to their counterparts and impressive logistical capability [some of out courtesy of the USA], as well as a generally superior level of high-level operations planning during the latter phases of WWII, would probably secure them my vote for #2.

It's notable that the Soviets did a lot of learning during WWII, and you can see this as their strategic competence developed.

**Karol**

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
They couldn't have been more motivated, they were repelling a hostile force invading their land

That is not how we remember it.

**wuestenfux**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Uh oh.. I'm not sure if this is a conversation I want to touch.

However, the USSR's Red Army was probably the second most effective, beat only by the USA's, organized military force during the later part of the 20th Century [that is to say, from WWII to the dissolution of the Soviet Union]. A combination of technical superiority to their counterparts and impressive logistical capability [some of out courtesy of the USA], as well as a generally superior level of high-level operations planning during the latter phases of WWII, would probably secure them my vote for #2.

It's notable that the Soviets did a lot of learning during WWII, and you can see this as their strategic competence developed.

Not sure about this.
Both US and Russia didn't improve their reputation after losing badly in Vietnam and Afghanistan, resp.

**ccs**

wuestenfux wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Uh oh.. I'm not sure if this is a conversation I want to touch.

However, the USSR's Red Army was probably the second most effective, beat only by the USA's, organized military force during the later part of the 20th Century [that is to say, from WWII to the dissolution of the Soviet Union]. A combination of technical superiority to their counterparts and impressive logistical capability [some of out courtesy of the USA], as well as a generally superior level of high-level operations planning during the latter phases of WWII, would probably secure them my vote for #2.

It's notable that the Soviets did a lot of learning during WWII, and you can see this as their strategic competence developed.

Not sure about this.
Both US and Russia didn't improve their reputation after losing badly in Vietnam and Afghanistan, resp.

Embarrassing defeats for sure. But both still #1 & #2 of the era.

**wuestenfux**

ccs wrote:
wuestenfux wrote:
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Uh oh.. I'm not sure if this is a conversation I want to touch.

However, the USSR's Red Army was probably the second most effective, beat only by the USA's, organized military force during the later part of the 20th Century [that is to say, from WWII to the dissolution of the Soviet Union]. A combination of technical superiority to their counterparts and impressive logistical capability [some of out courtesy of the USA], as well as a generally superior level of high-level operations planning during the latter phases of WWII, would probably secure them my vote for #2.

It's notable that the Soviets did a lot of learning during WWII, and you can see this as their strategic competence developed.

Not sure about this.
Both US and Russia didn't improve their reputation after losing badly in Vietnam and Afghanistan, resp.

Embarrassing defeats for sure. But both still #1 & #2 of the era.

USA and Russia spent a great deal of money to improve their military in opposition to say Germany which spent less and less and now its only 1.3% of GNP. It supposed to be 2% in 2025 but they will heavily miss it. Trump is right here claiming that Nato countries should spend more.

**The Riddle of Steel**

I love the narrative and military history aspect of the games. The only games I play are in long-running campaigns with my brother. We’ve been playing Horus Heresy primarily for the story and narrative elements, although we also like the aesthetic of the models better also. We use a lot of the scenarios that recreate battles from the lore, although we change them to fit our armies and our campaign. We build our armies based on what fits.

**Marshal Loss**

As an actual (ancient) military historian, I fall firmly into the "fan & narrative gamer" camp.