The Gamers/MMP Tactical Combat Series (TCS)


Battalion Morale Displays

The large multi-boxed company morale displays from the older games are a waste of space for placing the rare battalion morale markers, so I started doing my own battalion morale displays for the pre-3.1 TCS games. The following are charts for all the pre-3.1 games except Omaha (under way) and FEW, in JPG or GIF format for now. Bloody 110, Objective Schmidt, GD '40, and Matanikau.

Detailed Opsheet Graphics

Below are the playtesting opsheet graphics for Hunters from the Sky, A Raging Storm, and GD 41 kindly sent to me by Perry Andrus. I have scanned the map parts of these opsheets (Perry already had done so for GD 41, so doing your own opsheets using them should be no problem. Simply print the map at the desired size onto a sheet of paper, draw the organization/notes/failure boxes in by hand, and photocopy the result (copying at the lightest setting is recommended so the hexgrid does not come out too heavy; if it's just grey it's best for drawing).

The reason to make these available is twofold. Hunters from the Sky had no opsheets at all as published since it did not use the TCS command rules. But the opsheet is very useful if you want to play the variant published in Operations, which is also available from the The Gamers TCS Webpage.

The A Raging Storm and GD 41 opsheets are for those who (like me) prefer detailed opsheets to the simpler ones introduced to the series with Black Wednesday. The simple opsheets avoid the darker background that made previous opsheets hard to use but make it very hard to plan your moves while away from the table (and without staring at the relevant points on the map, possibly giving your intentions away), use terrain features for orienting yourself while drawing, or drawing up more accurate opsheets for night attacks. In my opinion, a detailed opsheet without background color (perhaps a light grey for hill tops the way it's done now) is the best of both worlds. Perhaps they TCS games from MMP.

I assume that other games (Black Wednesday, Leros, A Frozen Hell) had similar playtesting opsheets. Hardcopies of these opsheets would be appreciated so I could scan them and add them to the page. If you are the owner of such an opsheet and are willing to share it, please contact me (email address at bottom of page).

Ready-made opsheets (provided by Edmund Hudson)


3D Maps

These pictures show my 3D versions of some maps in the TCS, in various states of assembly. Note: You can get larger versions by clicking on the images. More photos to come, but still have to be scanned in.

This is the map for the Semper Fi No Name Ridge scenario, shown several turns into the morning scenario. It was the first TCS 3D map that I finished. The North Koreans are stacked in the background, holding the ridgeline, and in the valley on the right. The Marines are only fuzzily visible on the hills in the foreground, with two stacks down in the valley, one near the center of the map, and one, half hidden by the Marine stack on the hill in front of it which is crowned by the dark brown North Korean Good Shot artillery marker.

I chose No Name Ridge as the first map because it was small (therefore quick to assemble) and has very hilly terrain. My reasoning was also that if it was possible to play on this one, it should be possible on any other one. As it turned out, playing was not really a problem, although we will use tweezers for the stacks down in the valleys the next time around. However, assembly was a bear. Despite the small map, it was very hard to align the different pieces for assembly, since the lowest terrain level is divided into several independent sections.

More photos

Follow the links below to see more photographs of the maps. Since the earlier ones are taken from 35mm slides without a slide scanner their quality of most leaves something to be desired. Note that the grainy and fuzzy images sometimes actually exaggerate the 3D effect (especially in the Hunters from the Sky photos), since the glare makes the styrofoam layers appear thicker than they are.

Notes on 3D map assembly

Don't the counters fall off? (No, they don't)

Overall 3D map status


Other links


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Last modified 27.2.2002