Easy Eight

Battleground WWII Rules: Skirmish

Reviewed by Bill Rutherford

This detailed set of WW II skirmish rules comes loose-leaf in a plastic-jacketed 3-ring binder. Easy Eight's Battleground World War II (EEBG) is about 80 pages long, not counting the vehicle and fire templates, game charts, and colored status markers. Scales are as expected for a skirmish game: one figure or vehicle represents one troop or vehicle; one turn represents a few seconds; and one inch represents how far somebody can crawl in a few seconds. The six page introduction gives structure to the rest of the book, providing an overview of play and explaining the turn sequence.

This is interactive-sequential. First, players mark troops who will execute "special" fire during the coming turn, including opportunity fire, ambush fire, and pinning fire . Next, players try to rally broken troops. Then they check morale for their various squads. Next, artillery is plotted for coming turns and resolved for the present turn. Finally comes the phase at EEG's heart - the action phase. Units (i.e., squads, platoons in larger games, etc.) each have a playing card in a card deck. When a unit's card is drawn, that unit may perform two actions. If parts of a unit (e.g., the BAR gunner in a squad) are performing special fires, they don't act now. Once the deck's done, play moves to the next turn. Actions include such things as moving, crawling, going prone, standing up, firing, throwing, unjamming a gun, etc. Spotting is ranged, probabilistic, and is subject to a variety of situational die roll modifiers. Troops move at fixed rates subject to reduction for terrain.

Morale is straightforward. Exceptional failure or success during a morale check can reduce a troop to a coward or elevate him to a hero, with appropriate morale penalties and benefits. Leaders can, within specified command radii influence their troops' morale checks. Rallying is attempted by checking morale during the rally phase.

One novel use of morale ratings is to perform skill checks. We use, in most miniatures games, a house rule that says, in essence, that if the players can't resolve a rules issue or dispute, let the dice decide. In EEBG, this is the case, but the troop's morale score is what is rolled against. Likewise, if a player wants a troop to do something insane, that troop must pass a 'gut' check - a morale check to see whether the troop will indeed jump off the ledge into the enemy MG nest... Squads, too, are subject to morale.

Command control, by contrast, seems absent. Other than using command radii to allow leaders to help with morale checks, there seem to be no provisions for issuing orders, or, more importantly at this scale, simply getting the troops to DO anything. At the risk of really stepping in it, I think one solution consistent with EEBG might be to require gut checks for any troops attempting ambitious actions (tactical movement near the enemy, for example) when outside their leaders' command radii. Failure of such a check (taken at turn's start) would, perhaps, cause the troop to simply perform opportunity fire (or other reactive action) for the turn. This would obviate the need for written orders but would reflect the "hands-on" nature of command at the squad level. Player span-of-command is low enough to keep this from devolving into a dice-athon.

Fire combat is ranged and probabilistic. Damage from hits is rolled for on a separate chart. Opportunity fire works as expected - target crosses LOS and gets shot at. Pinning fire is essentially automatic weapon grazing fire. Targets in the hit pattern check morale and go prone if they fail. This is a nice way of handling harassing fire, I think. Grenades scatter and damage targets within a blast radius of the impact point. Artillery (indirect) fire is quite involved. First the observer calls a spotting round, which may deviate. Then he adjusts the round which can take a few turns, as the adjustments are not guaranteed, then, finally, calls for fire for effect, which arrives after a turn's delay. Hand-to-hand combat is quick and lethal - both combatants roll a D20, add up modifiers, and the loser dies.

Vehicles, especially AFVs, are sort of like squads-in-a-can, except that vehicle crew suffer morale effects more-or-less as a team, and a vehicle platoon also checks morale in much the same manner as an infantry squad. Gun combat is ranged and probabilistic. Statistics are included for 100 US, USSR, and German AFVs and about a dozen softskins.

Mines are nicely dealt with (for this scale), attacks by mines being gauged on the movement rate of the target. Infantry tank assaults are quite detailed and include all of the more popular ad hoc antitank weapons. I've glossed over these special situations - they are, however, handled in a systematic manner typical of EEBG. The last section is more a discussion of what terrain is and how to use it in a game than simply a collection of terrain rules. It also includes helpful notes on making one's own terrain pieces.

As you can see, things get pretty detailed, which is why a player's command span typically doesn't exceed a reinforced squad or two.

The scenarios (ten of them) are well done both in format and content. Following a standard pattern, each consists of a player hand-out for each side that includes a battleground map, a detailed listing of forces available, player orders that include basic victory conditions, and applicable special rules. Scenarios range from very basic training scenarios to the reasonably complex.

As noted, only US, German, and Soviet equipment are included in the game. Other nationalities' equipment, along with scenarios in which to use them, will appear in supplements to EEBG. Based on what I've seen so far, I look forward to the supplements. EEBG is well produced, well written, and is fun to play... What more can one ask? Available for $30.00 from your FLGS.

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