- Orig JTS Press Release
- Planning Maps
- Reading List
- Game Documents & Misc
- What's Different in the Falklands
On April 2, 1982, Argentine Marines and Special Forces troops landed near Stanley, the capital of the Falklands and the largest community, and took control of the islands, establishing by force Argentina's historical claim to the islands. However, Great Britain's response was not what Argentina expected and a task force of naval ships and troops set sail on the 8,000 mile voyage to reclaim the Falklands setting the stage for a clash of the old and new worlds in this remote area of the South Atlantic.
Map Designed by: Eric Gaba (source)Click to Enlarge Squad Battles Falklands lets you recreate this short, but sharp war between Great Britain and Argentina over what boiled down to little more than national honor. As the British player you can command some of the finest troops in the world, including the SAS, SBS, Paras and Royal Marine Commandos as you try to return British sovereignty to a part of the Commonwealth. Or as the Argentine player, your command includes Army commandos, paratroopers and the conscripts who fought with pride for the love of their country. The wind-swept, barren hills of the Islas Malvinas await you.
You can read more about the game including a brief history of the war from the Designer Notes.
Click to Enlarge Scenarios
- 54 scenarios covering actions such as Operation Rosario, Grytviken, Coronation Ridge and Goose Green.
- Scenarios range in length from 6 to 36 turns and cover actions from small firefights between a handful of men to hundreds of men battling it out for key strongpoints on a variety of battlefields.
- Close quarters urban fighting, hostage rescues and a variety of remote terrain fights are modeled.
- 2 linked scenario campaigns.
Click to Enlarge Features
- Players control squads or fire teams of men, individual leaders and individual vehicles in a variety of conditions.
- Based on a tried and true turn-based platform using 40 meter hexes and an intuitive interface allowing players to use a combination of mouse clicks, menu commands and hot keys to control their units.
- Views are in two levels of 2D.
Click to Enlarge In addition to the stand alone scenarios players may also choose to play the "campaign" format where they will play a series of scenarios centered around a particular figure. As long as this person survives each scenario they continue on to the next battle, but if he is lost the campaign game will end. For players who enjoy "sandbox" features of wargaming a wide array of editors is included - scenario editor, OOB editor, parameter data editor, DAT editor and sub-map editor. 7 "full" maps are included for use with the sub-map editor, which allows "chopping up" of a map to create a new smaller one to represent certain actions. These maps range in size from 76 x 58 hexes up to 778 x 240 hexes (the entire Port Stanley peninsula) - ample ground to make many custom scenarios.
Click to Enlarge Credits
- Project Coordinator: Rich Hamilton
- Scenario Designers: Jeff Conner and Joao Lima
- Scenario Maps: Dave Blackburn
- Campaign Maps: Mike Avanzini
- Playtesters: Dennis Suttman, Phil Driscoll, Nik Butler, Alan Florjancic, Bill Havice, Abram Harrison, Craig Forest, and Chris Perleberg
System Requirements
Windows XP, Vista, or 7
Processor: 1 GHz
Disk Space: 1 GB
Memory: 1 GBThis wargame is for sale at The John Tiller Software Store
Planning Maps (click for full-sized images)
Goose Green: 22.3 mb gif Port Stanley: Click image for small size 850 kb
(*Click here for full size 80.5 mb image)
South Georgia: 3.14 mb gif
Pebble Island: 7.99 mb gif Rio Grande Argentina: 4.39
mb gifFanning Head: 3.08 mb gif
Click here for larger sized thumbs
Reading List
-Primary Sources-
Fitz-Gibbon, Spencer; Not Mentioned in Despatches; 1995
Fowler, William; Battle for the Falklands (1) : Land Forces (Men-At-Arms Series, 133) ; 1982
Ramsey, Gordon - Editor; Falklands War Then and Now; 2009
van der Bijl, Nicholas and Aldea, David; 5th Infantry Brigade in the Falklands War ; 2003
van der Bijl, Nicholas; Nine Battles to Stanley ; 1999
-Secondary Sources-
Adkin, Mark; Goose Green (Cassell Military Classics) ; 1992
Badsey, Stephen; Havers, Rob; and Grove, Mark - Editors; The Falklands Conflict Twenty Years On: Lessons for the Future (Sandhurst Conference Series); 2005
Chant, Christopher; Air War in the Falklands 1982 (Osprey Combat Aircraft 28); 2001
Clapp, Michael and Southby-Tailyour, Ewen; Amphibious Assault Falklands: The Battle of San Carlos Water ; 1996
Cooksey, Jon; 3 PARA - MOUNT LONGDON - THE BLOODIEST BATTLE (Elite Operations); 2004
Cordesman, Anthony and Wagner, Abraham; The Lessons Of Modern War: Volume Iii: The Afghan And Falklands Conflicts; 1990
Falconer, Duncan; First Into Action: A Dramatic Personal Account of Life in the SBS ; 1998
Fox, Robert; Eyewitness Falklands ; 1992
Game Documents & Misc
Getting Started Designer's Notes Scenario List
What's Different in the Falklands
One of the most obvious things you will notice on the Falklands maps is that there are no forests. The climate in the Falklands is very wet and very windy and not conducive to growing trees. There are a few around some of the inhabited areas that have been planted and tended, but there are no forest hexes on the game maps. This means that you will have to pay more attention to and use dead ground more then you might have in some of the other games in the series. Any of the daylight scenarios are going to be a tough advance. Use your smoke judiciously and don't forget about your WP grenades.
The open nature of the terrain explains why so many of the battles fought during the conflict took place at night. I changed the time per turn for night scenarios to ten minutes per turn rather than the standard five as every thing takes longer and goes slower in the dark. Another and more important change that you will notice in night scenarios is that open ground now has a protective value. Almost (there are some exceptions, but not many) all of the weapons used in this conflict used plain iron sights without any luminescence. Combine that with the shadows created by artificial light and it is pretty hard to shoot accurately at a target you can barely see. So open ground now has a protection of four while brush and high grass have a protection value of six for night scenarios only. It will be harder to slow down a night attacker, but once you get close, assault combat will be unaffected. To counteract this a bit, some area fire type weapons have a higher penetration value than previously.
If you take a further look at the maps, you will also notice that there are not a lot of roads. If you check the scenario orders of battle, you won't find many vehicles either. Other than Stanley, the Falklands have a very low population density with only tracks connecting the outlaying communities. The ground is either rocky or soggy and not a happy element for wheeled vehicles. There is a higher chance of breakdown in Squad Battles Falklands than in most of the other titles and you will quickly notice that your wheeled vehicles, if you should have some, don't move very far in a turn off-road. Historically, both sides were aware of this to some extent and consequently, did not send many wheeled vehicles to the islands. Both sides intended to use helicopters for logistical support and troop movement, although both sides,especially Argentina, had problems in this regard.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, inaccuracies or things that you think are just plain wrong, feel free to let me know and I will try and explain what is supposed to be happening.
Jeff Conner
Reposted with Jeff's kind permission. Note, you may reach Jeff also by dropping the site here a line or contacting JTS Support.
Source:
http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=59586&pid=346795#pid346795
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