What's Different in the Falklands

[Jeff Conner]

Gentlemen:

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