Meramic Enterprises

Face of Battle
WWII Skirmish Rules

review by Bill Rutherford

Face of Battle (FoB) is a very detailed set of WW II skirmish rules. A single or model figure represents a single troop or vehicle.

A turn is around 20 seconds long, with its building block, the action, between 1 and 5 seconds long. An inch on the tabletop represents 2 meters (or more, or less, depending upon the size of one's miniatures). Components include a full color cover, 230 pages of looseleaf rules, 46 pages of scenario data (more on this, later), 22 pages of cards and counters, all designed to be copied and cut out they're printed on 11 sheets, two of which are cardstock, so you will want to copy most of them before you cut them out - and two eightpage sets of player charts, back-printed onto four sheets each, one set of which is on card stock...

Those 230 pages of rules include a well-organized six-page table of contents, a decent seven-page index (these two are important to game play simply because there's so much to this game!), 158 pages of rules, 58 pages of organization and equipment data (Germans and Soviets only in the core game) and a cover sheet. Everything's well organized except for the page numbering schema.

The 24-page introductory chapter provides a very high level overview of the game, orienting the player to the various terms and mechanisms used throughout the rest of the rules, and taking the player through setting up and playing a game. For those who have played the "Light Plus Edition" of the rules, it's worth noting that the current version's reorganized just a bit - to the better - moving some topics such as those that appear in the Game Construction Kit to their own section under the Advanced Rules (previously, these rules were almost the first thing the reader saw when delving into FoB).

The balance of the rulebook addresses each rule concept in turn. by its end, the reader will have been exposed to the whole game system. Every concept is accompanied by a sidebar example, which provides a step-bystep explanation of what happened... Important!

FoB uses a task resolution system (TRS) for everything (well, almost) in the game, and reduces most game activities to checks against one or another of the four task resolution tables (skill, morale, firearm, and explosion). Task checks are made with 1D100, modified situationally by a wide variety of factors. There's a fair list of skills, ranging from throwing various items in various stances, crawling through windows, firing a mortar, spotting, etc. A two-page skill resolution table provides situations and modifiers for the most common skills. Troops have initiative and combat values that provide the bases for all of their task checks.

Three play sequences are included with FoB. A card-based system (cards to be photocopied and cut out as noted above, or one can use playing cards) works in the usual way and is at the core of the basic/standard game. A chart-based system that acts sort of as a pre-drawn set of cards and speeds play a bit, and an initiativebased system wherein troops roll for their initiative each turn, with actions taking place in initiative order, are presented in the advanced rules. All three seem to work well, though I was less excited by the chart-based system than by the other two, as the card and the initiative systems are both considerably more variable in their results...

Various tabletop events trigger morale checks, based on figures' morale values, which are taken in a manner similar to the TRS and which may result in several levels of performance degradation (run away!). On the flip side, characters may undergo combat heroics checks to do crazy/heroic things... Cover, lines of sight, and spotting are all addressed in a straightforward and detailed manner, the bottom line of which is that spotting is probabilistic, requiring a skill check to succeed (Yes!). Movement is normal - troops move given distances, modified by terrain effects. Fire combat, too, is reasonably normal, a percentile dice roll using the TRS being modified by a wide variety of factors including range, cover, target and firer movement, morale and fatigue status, etc., all modifying the die roll. Semiautomatic fire, spraying fire, and fire lanes all merit their own rules. Grenades - and all indirect fire weapons - may scatter and will affect all troops within their various blast radii in a manner generally similar to direct fire.

Melee, too, has its own modifiers and unique circumstances, but relies on a die roll using the TRS. One feature of combat at this scale not found in higher level games are wounds. They degrade troop performance (go figure) and generally give the players more things to worry about... Also present due to the scale of the game are mishaps - fumbles. Guns jam or run out of ammo, grenades get tossed back at the throwers - that sort of thing, based on badly failing TRS rolls.

One more thing to keep the players busy... Artillery, flame-throwers, tank, and antitank combat and movement are all dealt with in a manner consistent with the preceding. Vehicle combat is fairly detailed, which seems reasonable, given that a player force may consist of a single AFV... Vehicles can be open or buttoned up, can break-down during maneuver, frequently get stuck, and can knock down buildings. Ramming, while not recommended, can be done.

One of the big changes (again, for you players of FoB Light) is that data - and good descriptions - are now provided for 155 German and 83 Soviet AFVs and vehicles, a big jump from the 28 mid/late-war vehicles included in the Light version. AFVs have nine armor aspects (including top and bottom) each with separate armor values. These don't seem to be in millimeters; I haven't tried to reverse-engineer the factors into millimeter equivalents (bean counter, here!), but the relationships between vehicles seem right, i.e., a Panther has better armor than a T-34/85 from the front but less so from the rear, that sort of thing... Penetrations (penetration factor - itself variable - of firing gun must exceed armor value of target) may cause explosion or fire and will certainly cause other damage. Nonpenetrating hits may cause all manner of other outside damage, e.g., to tracks, suspension, periscopes, etc.

The game also now includes four generic and two historical (east front) scenarios, each of several pages including maps, player rosters, etc. They're well detailed and with less than a platoon per side even in the larger scenarios, are quite playable. The organization charts are welldetailed, addressing the most common companies used by each side, but don't go above company-level, which for a set of skirmish rules is probably just as well...

For the creatively challenged, there's even a gazetteer of German and Soviet surnames with which to name your troops...

The basic concepts of FoB are reasonably simple. The wide variety of modifiers that seem to apply to every die roll are what may make it seem complex. Various specific rules can be applied at different levels of detail, depending on how complex or fast a game one wants to play. Action cards can be issued by troop or might be issued by squad or even by side; initiative can be rolled in the same manner. Troops can be represented on the table in any of three stances (upright, kneeling, or prone - an opportunity for the painter to get a decent painting session out of a game who's player force may only be a squad!), or by a single stance. At their most detailed, FoB puts the player in the role of a squad leader or tank commander; at their simplest, they make the player a section leader, with a weak platoon of troops or vehicles under command.

I found FoB to be a challenge to read. Clearly written, the rules were reminiscent of board game rules, i.e., case style, all-inclusive, and lots of examples. What presented the challenge was that the rules cover so many things (bagpipers???) -- hence 158 pages of rules, not counting charts and scenarios! While things were clearly written, the rules took me a couple of reads (no mean feat, given their length) before it all began to jell... I think things would've gone faster had I played in one or another of the games I saw being played at the last HMGS convention. The best way to learn FoB is to collar somebody who's already played and have it taught to you. Reading the rules works, too, but takes longer... From what I've observed at conventions and my own (very limited) play experience, FoB provides a decent game, and will provide good competition for the other skirmish rules on the market. You should be able to acquire FoB from your local game shop for $29.95 or failing that, can be obtained from the publisher, Meramic Enterprises, at 778 Rolling River Creek, Gloucester, ON, Canada KIV IM2, or online from their website at http://www.meramic.com/tfob... I recommend these rules because they provide a clean - if very detailed game system with which one can play out some very intense skirmishes.

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