Tag Archives: Twilight: 2000 4e

Review: The Poisoned Chalice

I purchased my copy of The Poisoned Chalice at full price and am receiving no compensation for this review. However, in the interest of full disclosure: author Alf Bergesen and I are long-time collaborators. We’ve been playing in each other’s play-by-post games for over a decade, and we coauthored Tara Romaneasca, the Romania sourcebook for Twilight: 2000.

I don’t often review stuff, mainly because of some undefined unease about the process. This is probably unfair of me because, as an author myself, I appreciate any attempt at a thoughtful review that shows someone actually read and paid attention to my work. This post, then, is an initial attempt at a module review. Reviews probably won’t be regular features here, but I do want to make some sort of occasional effort toward highlighting products that I find interesting, useful, or praiseworthy.

By the Numbers

The Poisoned Chalice is a module for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition. It’s PDF-only, available on DriveThruRPG through Free League Workshop, that publisher’s community content channel. At the time of this writing, the product link is https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/437864/Twilight-2000-The-Poisoned-Chalice and the module is priced at $1.99. For that princely sum, you get a 19-page module (3 pages of front and end material, 16 pages of content) and a 27-hex x 18-hex battlemap in 4th edition’s 10-meter scale.

For those who like to work off word count because you know different layout styles can mean radically different amounts of content in the same page count, the module clocks in at just under 5,000 words. By my imperfect estimation, that’s probably double the word count of your average old school article/module from Challenge.

New toys include five vehicles (PTS-M, BTR-50P, Alvis Stalwart, Zil-131, and the Ursus C-451 farm tractor) and three weapons (Stechkin, L2A3 Sterling, and – inexplicably missing from the core book despite its ubiquity in both reality and film – the H&K MP5).

Presentation

Layout appears to use the Free League community content toolkit. The main text is a larger, well-spaced sans serif, while sidebars are clearly set off with borders, darker backgrounds, and a serif font with a delightful retro typewritten aesthetic. The background color appears to be a very pale grey, which may or may not consume unwarranted ink or toner if printed at home. Stat blocks for NPCs, vehicles, and weapons align with the Free League format.

The four art pieces are AI-generated. They’re all appropriate to the theme and mood, rendered in a pencil sketch style reminiscent of that used in the game’s first and second editions.

The writing is solid. Having worked with the author for a while, I have the advantage of having seen his writing style progress over the years, and this is him at the top of his game: tight and focused. I did catch a couple of grammar and mechanical issues, but they probably won’t leap out at many readers, and they didn’t derail my own reading.

The map, provided in a separate PDF, is usable and visually appealing. It has an appropriate mix of terrain for allowing maneuver and use of cover during tactical play. It is somewhat tight for vehicle combat. The style and palette aren’t a close match for Free League’s own, but it shouldn’t be hard to determine the terrain style in each hex. I have one quibble here: I’d like to see this map provided in an image file format (e.g., JPG or PNG) for easier import into a virtual tabletop.

Content and Usability

I’ll attempt to avoid spoilers here. This may result in excessive vagueness.

The module starts with two pages of history to establish a framework on which the referee can improvise. The Poisoned Chalice is set in northwestern Poland, which may be a geographic issue for integration into a campaign set around Kalisz after the U.S. 5th Infantry Division’s demise. However, there is a valid historical reason for the author’s choice of locale. For the referee who wants to use the module elsewhere, adapting it to another town should be problematic only if your players are history students with very specific areas of specialty – in which case, I recommend telling them to get over it because the game is clearly alternate history anyway.

Ahem.

The module is set just beyond the northwest edge of the boxed set’s Poland travel map – about 40 kilometers west of Grodzisk Wielkopolski in hex D13. While the tactical map is delightful, it would increase the module’s usability to have a local 10-kilometer-hex travel map to manage positioning, travel routes and times, and overall geography.

(My hypocrisy knows no bounds here, as I didn’t include maps in The Pacific Northwest – and rightly got called out for that in reviews. But I think it’s more of an issue for a 4th Edition product, given that rules system’s well-integrated focus on hexbashing.)

(Also, there’s no provision for moving the module to Sweden. I’m not sure if that would be historically plausible within the module’s framing, but I do feel compelled to note that here in case any of the game’s Nordic fans happen across this review.)

After setting the stage, the module suggests a few rumors and other options to use as hooks for pulling the PCs into the module. The focus is on a single town and the interactions the PCs and other factions have with it. There’s reasonable suspicion that a MacGuffin is located in the town. With word having gotten out, the community is attracting unwanted attention from multiple directions.

Once the PCs engage with the situation presented, The Poisoned Chalice is more sandbox than linear story. The module leaves the timing of events up to the referee and the “correct” response up to the players. The major decisions are how the PCs engage with the town, whether they attempt to take possession of the MacGuffin themselves, and how they deal with (or avoid dealing with) the competing interests that are converging on their location. I like the sandboxy nature here – this is similar to how I run my LARPs, with predefined plot elements in motion that will continue until and unless the PCs interact with them and change their vectors. However, it might be helpful for new referees if the module included a suggested timeline for driving those events – e.g., “Day X, PCs arrive; Day X+3, Faction A arrives; Day X+5, B-52 wreckage catches fire.”

There’s not a lot of depth here – which is not a slam on the product, more an acknowledgement of the limitations of tight word count. There is enough of a framework for a good referee to improvise a few different battles or pursuits (note to self: write pursuit/chase rules for 4th edition) and probably get three to six sessions of play out of it. As noted above, an inexperienced referee might benefit from more direct guidance.

I probably won’t use The Poisoned Chalice in my current campaign, but that’s not due to any failing on its part. As written, it would work as a stand-alone one-shot/short-run or would integrate nicely into a conventional hexbashing campaign of the sort that the 4th Edition rules support very well. Kaserne on the Borderlands is going in a different direction in both a geographic and a narrative sense. However, The Poisoned Chalice is solid and usable, and I’m strongly tempted to lathe it down into a four-hour one-shot scenario for use as a convention demo game. It has the core elements that would make for a solid demo: a well-contained core premise, a community for NPC interaction and “establishing shots” of the setting, some technical challenges to accustom players to the mechanics without risking their PCs, and the likelihood of a climactic firefight.

Score: Six out of seven loaded magazines. Not a full combat load, but it’ll get you through most firefights.

(I have no actual scoring scale but that seemed thematic.)

Vehicle Commander (Twilight: 2000 4th Edition House Rule)

Something that’s always bugged me about Twilight: 2000’s vehicle combat is the relative lack of anything meaningful for the person in the vehicle commander’s seat to do. Sure, many of them have their own pintle-mounted MGs, but there’s no command function. This recently came up in a Kaserne on the Borderlands session and my table had a brief discussion about it. Here’s what we came up with:

Vehicle Command: As a slow action, the vehicle commander may coordinate the actions of his vehicle's crew.  Make a Command check.  With success, this counts as help (Player's Guide, p. 46) for each other crew member's actions this turn.

Timing wasn’t an issue because of our house rules on initiative. The table agreed that the commander should act first to determine success or failure on granting the bonus.

In the interest of balance, we restricted the benefit to actual crew positions, not passengers. There was some debate about whether human cargo using firing ports should benefit, but I felt that was excessive. If you want an in-game rationale, assume that only the actual crew seats have jacks for the vehicle’s intercom.

This seemed to work well as implemented. The commander’s player felt his XP investment in Command was being rewarded, and the gunner appreciated the extra +1 to offset penalties. The driver was a NPC, so he didn’t have opinions, but the bonus was there when needed.

Catering

A minor house rule from my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign:

One of the PCs in this campaign has the Cook specialization. With the campaign centering on a farming village with adequate food production, the party hasn’t yet had to subsist on its own in the wilderness, so foraging and hunting are more supplements to the local food reserves. This makes Cook something less of a good investment.

The community currently has 71 residents (including PCs), so it burns through 71 rations of food a day under normal circumstances. The PC in question has assumed a discussed-but-not-seen-on-screen role as the village’s head chef. Up until now, it’s been solely a roleplaying factor, but we recently negotiated a means for giving it some mechanical effect.

Each day that the PC spends a shift supervising food production, the player makes a Survival check. Each success reduces the community’s total food consumption for that day by 5%. This represents increased efficiency in the communal kitchens – basically, the same effect as the specialization’s as-written function, but scaled up.

Fire Sprites

As promised in the last campaign post, here’s how I ran the fire sprite “combat.”

This whole scene was a result of rolling into the topmost hex of my weather hex flower table (to be detailed in another upcoming post). That result for weather indicates some sort of hazardous weather. Because the previous day had been extremely hot, I decided to throw in a day that would have been a red flag warning in modern National Weather Service terms: hot, low humidity, and high winds, perfect for starting and spreading wildfires. I struggled a little bit on how to make a wildfire interesting and “winnable” before settling on a field fire that would start small enough to be manageable… if not for some complicating factors.

The action sequencing for this “fight” ran according to my normal initiative house rules, with the farm NPCs assisting the PCs and the fire acting in the NPC phase. Attempting to extinguish an adjacent burning hex was a slow action requiring a successful Stamina roll. This received the usual +1 bonus for each helper, and an additional +1 if the PC was foolish enough to stand in a burning hex and try to extinguish it.

Good enough so far, but how about the fire “fighting back” and spreading? Well, I decided that while the initial UXO blast that sparked the fire was “natural,” the weather and – ahem – other conditions were right to attract entities that would drive its spread. What the PCs couldn’t see (until Minka and Pettimore uttered their respective prayers) were the two hexes that I had designated as holding the initial entities:

On each NPC/fire turn, I rolled 1d10 for each active entity. For each success (6+), the fire spread one hex. For each maxed die, a new entity would join the fight – which would drive faster spread on subsequent turns.

For each hex of spread, I chose a burning hex and rolled an appropriate die to randomly determine where the fire would go. For example, this would just be a d5 (or d10 / 2) roll:

After all spread had been resolved, each burning hex rolled a normal intensity C (2d8) fire attack against each character within its flames.

So far, this would work perfectly well for fighting a normal fire, perhaps with some mechanism for randomizing the spread rather than picking the source hex with deliberate ill intent (and for pushing the spread downwind).

As far as the entities went – Minka dubbed them “fire sprites” in the team’s after-action review and the name stuck – I decided that they’d be invisible to the PCs, but anyone who spent a turn studying the fire’s spread would get a Command or Survival check to realize the fire was acting unnaturally. With success, they’d be able to perceive the fire sprites. Minka was designated as getting automatic success because of all the PCs, she’s been leaning the hardest into the local folklore. If we’re putting it in D&D terms, she’s the party’s druid to Pettimore’s paladin – but as it turned out, both players independently did things that made me say, “screw it, you can see” without a roll – as did Arkadi’s player a couple of turns later.

Banishing a fire sprite required total melee damage (or Thoughts and Prayers damage) of 5 points. I also was open to creative solutions, but Minka, Pettimore, and Arkadi solved the problem rather efficiently once they could actually see it.

Coolness Under Fire and Initiative (Twilight: 2000 4th Edition House Rules)

It should come as no surprise by now that the tinkering with rules continues in my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign.

Improving Coolness Under Fire

I’m not a fan of the rules as written because of the chance to lose Empathy on increasing CUF. As there’s no way to improve attributes during play, that’s a permanent hit to any EMP-reliant character. We’re currently assessing the effects of the following house rule:

At the end of each session, roll your base Coolness Under Fire die.

If the die comes up its maximum value and you were in combat during that session, increase your CUF by one step, to a maximum of A (d12).

If the die comes up a natural 1 and you took a critical hit or were incapacitated from stress during that session, decrease your CUF by 1, to a minimum of D (d6).

Initiative

I’m definitely not a fan of a random initiative system that doesn’t reflect character proficiency (leaving aside the poorly-named Combat Awareness specialty). Our current initiative system, which we’ve been using since the first session, is:

At the beginning of each round, each player rolls Coolness Under Fire (adding Unit Morale if the PC is within voice or visual contact of a teammate). With success, they act in the fast phase, before all NPCs. With failure, they act in the slow phase, after all NPCs. Characters in each phase may act in any sequence and players may (briefly) discuss tactics and order of operations before declaring actions.

As a play aid, I’ll watch the dice log and drop a brief summary of the rolls into the chat. A typical turn sequence may look like:

  1. Fast phase: Red, Leks, Magda, Arkadi, Pettimore (in any order)
  2. NPCs
  3. Slow phase: Minka, Zenobia, Miko (in any order)

This incentivizes keeping the team close (no lone-wolfing), rewards both individual proficiency (Coolness Under Fire) and team cohesion (Unit Morale), and allows the sort of coordinated action that we see in both documentary and cinematic examinations of small unit tactics.

Belt-Feds & Bullpups (Twilight: 2000 4e House Rules)

My Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign has been experimenting with a couple of tweaks to specific weapon classes. Reception has been generally positive so far, so I’m posting them for public consumption.

The point of having a belt-fed machine gun is sustained automatic fire, whether for lethality or suppression. The problem I see with 4e’s rules as written is that the only thing making machine guns better at this than assault rifles or battle rifles is their larger magazine capacity. Given an equivalent shooter and rate of fire, all automatic weapons stand an equal chance of jamming or breaking down when pushed.

Shortly after the game released, there was some discussion on Kato’s forum about this topic. The usual suspects suggested a few different options. The solution my table is using is to ignore 1s on pushed ammo dice. When pushing a machine gun attack, only 1s on the base dice will reduce Reliability or cause jams.

We have one machine gunner in the party, and this doesn’t seem to be game-breaking so far. Balancing factors include increased ammo consumption (he’s encouraged to use his full ROF more) and rigid enforcement of the penalty for hip-shooting a MG (p. 65 for those following along in the Player’s Manual). The net effect is that he spends the first turn or two of combat getting into a good shooting location with partial cover before he opens up, which, to my mind, is functioning as designed.

Separately, the PCs recently scavenged a Steyr AUG from a downed opponent, which has forced me to codify something I’ve been chewing on for a while. I have a tiny bit of trigger time behind both AUGs and FS2000s and have handled several other bullpup assault rifles, and I was looking for a way to model their unique handling. Their balance and overall length makes them quite handy in tight quarters, but ergonomics can be awkward for certain actions.

My current solution is to treat a bullpup assault rifle as a carbine. This means that a bullpup takes a -1 rather than a -2 for attacks in the same hex, and a -2 rather than a -3 for one-handed fire. To offset this, reloading a bullpup is always a slow action – it’s impossible to make a Ranged Combat check to reload as a fast action.

(I’m not sure what I’ll do, if anything, if the PCs get their hands on a bullpup LMG or SMG. My interim solution is to just avoid letting them have a Steyr AUG Para or an L86.)

Patrolling (Twilight: 2000 4th Edition House Rule)

With my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign revolving around a village, one item that’s been on my players’ minds is the need for their characters to maintain awareness of their surroundings. A hex is something like 60 or 70 square kilometers, so exploring and mapping it doesn’t necessarily reveal everything it contains. Nor does this keep eyes on it after the initial pass. This is a bit of a gap in the core book’s rules, so we sat down at the virtual table to homebrew a downtime action. This also enables players who aren’t regularly able to make sessions to contribute outside “I brew fuel… again.” Here’s what we came up with:

Patrolling

Designate the hex that you’re patrolling (which may require travel time to reach). Roll Recon (additional recon team members may assist if they have Recon D or higher), modified as follows:

  • Scout specialty present in the group: +1
  • Open terrain: +1
  • Woods or mountains terrain: -1
  • Ruins terrain: -3
  • Dark: -1
  • Light precipitation: -1
  • Heavy precipitation: -2
  • Cumulative per person in the patrol above three: -1

The patrol finds one item of interest per success. These may be:

  • landmarks
  • exploitable resources
  • hazards
  • active threats
  • intel/clues
  • salvage items
  • plot

On double 1s, something unpleasant (but not lethal) befalls the patrol.

(It’s not as rigorously-programmed as the core rules’ actions, but it has worked for us so far. I try to get a general sense of what each PC is looking to get out of their patrol and provide appropriate results so the player feels like the time was well spent.)

Twilight: 2000 4e Conversion: Ikv 91

Not having followed the Swedish defense industry in detail (or, really, at all), I had no idea this vehicle existed until a couple of months ago. Now, though, I’m a bit croggled as to why Free League neglected to include it in the vehicle listing for Twilight: 2000‘s fourth edition. To my knowledge, it hasn’t appeared in any previous edition of the game (though, of course, Paul Mulcahy has second edition stats for it).

The Infanterikanonvagn 91 is an amphibious light tank produced in Sweden in the first half of the 1970s, built in low numbers and used only by that nation’s military. It served as a tank destroyer and infantry support gun, with one 12-vehicle company assigned to each Swedish infantry brigade. Primary armament is a 90mm gun, supplemented by coaxial and pintle-mounted GPMGs.

In real-world history, the Ikv 91’s phase-out began in the 1990s. Two variants were proposed: an up-gunned version with a 105mm low-recoil gun, which was prototyped in the early ’80s under the designation Ikv 105, and a TOW ATGM carrier, which doesn’t appear to have progressed past the conceptual stage. Neither made it to production.

In my T2kU, both variants entered production in the late ’80s, spurred by increasing geopolitical instability. The Ikv 105 was intended to replace the Ikv 91, but production numbers never accommodated this, and even those Ikv 91s which had been retired were pulled from reserve stocks to replace combat losses. The ATGM carrier, designated Pvrbv (Pansarvärnsrobotbandvagn) 152, was intended to supplement and eventually replace the existing Pvrbv 551 (itself a TOW carrier built on the chassis of the Ikv 91’s assault gun predecessor).

With no official prior-edition stats1, converting this vehicle is a little trickier than the previous number-crunching I did on the LAV-75 and M88A1. Still, the publicly-available information does provide a basis for conversion while comparing the design to real-world equivalents:

The Ikv 91 and Pvrbv 152 are fully amphibious with no preparation required. The Ikv 105, due to increased weight from the larger gun, can be made amphibious with one stretch of preparations.

I’ve chosen to fit the Pvrbv 152 with the dual TOW II “hammerhead” turret also used on the American M901. The real-world Ikv 91 used the Swedish m/39 machine gun, but standardization on the Ksp 58 seems appropriate for vehicles that are being kept in service in the ’90s. Main weapon ammo load is 59 rounds for the Ikv 91’s 90mm gun, 50 rounds for the Ikv 105’s larger gun, and 10 TOW II AGTMs for the Pvrbv 152.

The 105mm gun and the TOW ATGM already exist in the fourth edition rules, so no conversion is needed. The base 90mm gun looks something like this:

And there we go.

Reference sources used for this post: Wikipedia, Military Today, Tank Nut Dave, Military Factory, Tanks Encyclopedia.

1 I respect Paul Mulcahy and his work immensely, but his stats rarely align with GDW’s baseline work. Also, I use his site only as an error-check or research guide to avoid accusations of plagiarism. In the interest of completeness, I’ll note that in addition to the Ikv 91 traits linked above, he’s also worked up the Ikv 105, which he designates Ikv 93.

Twilight: 2000 4e Conversion: M88A1 ARV

I have an inordinate fondness for a few non-mainstream vehicle types in any variation of Twilight: 2000‘s setting. In particular, armored recovery vehicles and combat engineer vehicles are interesting to me in a way that MBTs and IFVs aren’t. They (generally) can’t withstand the same level of damage that a dedicated combat vehicle can, but they offer some level of crew protection beyond sheetmetal and they carry ancillary equipment that’s useful.

With that in mind, today’s post looks at the M88 armored recovery vehicle – specifically, the M88A1 version that would have been most prevalent in the Twilight War. The original M88 was a fuel hog. The M88A1 received the engine of the M60 MBT, which had lower horsepower but more torque and better fuel economy, as well as upgraded hydraulics for its recovery equipment. The majority of the original M88 production run appears to have been upgraded to the M88A1 standard by 1982, alongside additional new production of the same spec.

(In the second edition timeline – and presumably the first edition as well – the modern M88A2 HERCULES never came to be. Its role instead was filled by the M5 Abrams ARV, as depicted in the American Combat Vehicle Handbook. In our history, the prototype of what might have become the M5 lost a 1987 trial against what was then called the M88A1E1.)

The M88A1’s Twilight War service was fairly broad. Many nations that bought M47s, M48s, or M60s also procured M88s. In American forces, it served with both the Army and the Marine Corps. Most armor units that went to war with M60s included one M88A1 per company (or cavalry troop) maintenance section, as did artillery and ADA batteries equipped with self-propelled guns, mechanized infantry companies, and combat engineer units – basically, any unit with AFVs lighter than Abrams chassis. Additional ARVs were concentrated in maintenance and recovery sections of battalion HQs and higher echelons.

By the end of 1997, commanders had begun to collect their remaining ARVs and other combat engineering and recovery heavy equipment into combined engineering units. Generally considered more valuable in their recovery role than as makeshift AFVs, and ill-equipped for conversion to the troop carriage role, few M88A1s were assigned to front-line combat. All became targets, though, and crews added a variety of improvised armor augmentations and weapon mounts in the hope of increasing their survival rates.

Conversion of the M88A1 is fairly easy, as I can start from the second edition stat block in the ACVH. Modern online sources do list some discrepancies, particularly in the onboard fuel supply, but that’s easy enough for napkin math. Just for the hell of it, I also included M88 traits for that fringe-case CONUS game that digs a non-upgraded original out of a forgotten National Guard armory:

The 4-person crew is composed of commander, driver, mechanic, and rigger. The latter two have no combat roles, effectively being passengers, but each position has its own roof hatch, so they can stand up to fire small arms from partial cover. I’ve been unable to substantiate GDW’s claim that the cabin includes four passenger seats for the crew of a disabled AFV under tow.

Speeds given are for normal movement. The vehicle can tow up to 45 tons at half speed. Two M88A1s in tandem are required to safely tow a vehicle above that weight, such as an M1 Abrams-series MBT.

Beyond the numbers, the M88A1 has four interesting pieces of equipment worth noting for game purposes.

Winch: Front-mounted, 60-meter cable, 41-ton capacity. Treat the winch as a component in the penetrating/cargo hit location with Reliability 5.

Crane: A-frame boom, stowed on top of the vehicle but forward-facing when elevated for work. Can reach up to 2.5 meters in front of the vehicle, with a maximum lift of 7 meters. It’s intended for lighter vehicle recovery (think truck or APC as opposed to MBT) or changing major components (like engines), but can be used for other construction tasks in a pinch. 60-meter cable, 23-ton capacity (drops to 5 tons if the dozer blade is not in use to stabilize the vehicle). Treat the crane as a component in the non-penetrating/external stores hit location with Reliability 4.

Dozer blade: Front-mounted, full width of the hull. Primary designed function is to stabilize the vehicle when winching but can also be used for light earthmoving, including carving out hull-down fighting positions for vehicles. Treat the blade as a component in the non-penetrating/external stores hit location with Reliability 5.

Auxiliary power unit (APU): Can provide limited electrical power without use of the main engine. This enables battery charging (both for the vehicle’s own batteries or other devices), as well as use of the hydraulics that drive the three items described above. Consider this a 5-kilowatt generator (“large” for fourth edition purposes) that consumes 15 liters of fuel per shift (doubled for alcohol, of course). For damage purposes, treat the APU as a component in the penetrating/cargo hit location with Reliability 3.

At the referee’s discretion, appropriate use of appropriate equipment may provide bonuses or reduce the construction time for base facilities. I’d say a fully-functional M88/M88A1 reduces the time for building defensive works from a day per hex to a shift per hex. Most of the other base facilities in the 4e Player’s Manual won’t benefit as much from earthmoving and winching capabilities, but I’d still call it a +1 bonus for anything requiring heavy construction work.

Finally, while few vehicles will have their original TA-50 by 2000, the nominal loadout for an M88A1 includes two sets each of basic and vehicle tools, an assortment of towing and rigging equipment (spare cables, pulleys, hooks, etc.), a couple of portable fire extinguishers, stowage for four 20-liter jerrycans (two water, two engine oil), and 1,500 rounds of belted .50 BMG for the M2.

LAV-75 Viability in Twilight: 2000 4e

Originally posted to the Juhlin.com Twilight: 2000 fan forum.

Having recently discussed the MBT issue in Twilight: 2000’s 4th edition, I thought it might be interesting to tinker with everyone’s favorite apocryphal light tank, the LAV-75. Back in 2009, Kato’s forum had a rather long and productive thread on it, which yielded a few different variants and development histories. I’m too lazy to use that entire thread, but I did cherry-pick the bits dealing with the hypothetical upgrade to a 90mm low-pressure gun system (presumably the same one for which we already have second edition canon stats courtesy of the MPGS-90).

So what does the LAV-75 look like in 4e? Using the conversion rules in the back of the Referee’s Manual, we get a stat line that looks a little something like this (apologies to those on mobile):

(I deviated from canon by providing both pintle and coaxial MGs. Rebellion is a heady drug.)

So, not really awful. It suffers in the tactical mobility department, most notably being slower off-road than the tanks it was intended to slow down in its original RDF conceptualization. However, it’s actually faster on a road march than any of the T-series. But life and AFV design are about compromises.

The big objections to the LAV-75 have always centered around the gun, though. Does it fare any better in 4e rules than it did in previous editions (much less real-world acceptance testing)? Well, let’s take a look at how the 75mm Ares cannon, as well as the 90mm low-pressure gun of the forum’s LAV-75A1, convert to 4e:

(I stuck the 75mm with Reliability 4 because I am cruel. Forgiving referees may feel free to ignore that.)

Okay, so the design objective of both of these guns was to kill Soviet tanks of the types likely to be encountered in Southwest Asia – so anything up to and including a T-72. How do they stack up?

As it turns out, slightly better than in real life. Looking at frontal armor, the T-55 comes in with 6 (actually worse than the LAV-75, by Free League’s own conversion rules), the T-62 has 7, the T-64 goes to 8, and the T-72 goes to 9, while the T-80 (unlikely in the originally-intended AO) goes to 10. For cracking armor, both guns get roughly equal performance (save for range) out of their HEAT and APFSDS rounds. For the 75mm, we’re looking at Damage 6, Armor -1; for the 90mm, it’s Damage 7, Armor -1.

With that Armor -1 modifier, the 75mm will consistently penetrate the frontal armor on a T-55. It won’t automatically crack a T-62 or T-64, but a good hit or luck with ammo dice, because it’s burst-capable may boost the damage enough to go internal. The Penetration Limit rule on p. 82 of the Player’s Manual keeps it from being able to get frontal penetration on a T-72 or T-80. To the sides and rear, of course, good hits are much more feasible, though they still rely on extra successes or ammo dice to pop a T-64 or higher.

How about the 90mm? Much the same story, but up one level: reliable frontal penetration on a T-55 or T-62, but dependent on superior marksmanship to find a weak spot in the face of a T-64 or T-72. However, marksmanship is actually more critical here because the low ROF of a conventional cannon restricts the use of ammo dice.