The most worthy editor of this magazine has repeatedly asked me for an article explaining some of the thornier rules in COMMAND DECISION and I have as often promised to produce one. I am going to limit the scope of this article to just a few of the more important (and somewhat ambiguous) aspects of the rules. As an added bonus I am including a few rules modifications that we have been playing with locally that I think improve the play of the game. But first, the clarifications. 1. Disengage The rules do not explain what happens when a unit is ordered to disengage. The unit must move at least half of its movement allowance and may move up to all of its movement allowance, directly away from the closest visible enemy. Enemy units may not conduct opportunity fire against a disengaging unit except in the following two instances: A. A disengaging unit which moves through an established artillery barrage suffers opportunity fire. B. A disengaging unit which moves closer to an enemy unit than it was at the start of its move may be fired at during opportunity fire by that unit (provided the unit was otherwise eligible to conduct opportunity fire). This is a rare case but can happen. Since the disengaging unit must move directly away from the closest enemy unit, a further enemy unit placed along its retreat route would be able to conduct opportunity fire. 2. Force Back In Cover The rules state that a unit may be forced back further intocover, but neverout of cover.There has been somequestion as to how this applies to a unit in an entrenchment, where there is no place to force back to without leaving the entrenchment. in this case the unit is merely pinned in place. 3. Visible Indirect Fire Targets If an indirect fire weapon can actually see its target it is not necessary to plot an indirect fire mission during the command phase. Instead the unit may conduct an indirect fire mission in the general fire phase (provided the target is still visible) without benefit of a plot. in other words, artillery can bring fire to bear on a target it can see much more quickly than one which it cannot. Actually, there is no reason for guns to do this, as they could instead engage the target with direct fire HE, which is always more effective than indirect fire. (More on this in the next section.) However, this self-observed fire provision is an exceptionally useful procedure for mortars, which have no direct fire capability. 4. Direct Fire HE This has caused some confusion so I'm going to give you the most complicated example I can think of. A village is defended by a Soviet tank platoon and part of a rifle battalion, with three infantry stands. To stiffen the defense there is also a bunker, which is immediately next to a wooden building. The tank parks next to the bunker and the building. One infantry stand occupies the bunker, one deploys in the open, and the remaining infantry stand occupies the house. (Why should they ever do anything so wierd? Beats me. But it does make for a good illustration.) The Germans, impressed by all the armor and concrete, roll up a 15cm infantry gun for direct fire work. All these targets are so close together that the burst area of the round will cover all of them. The question is, which oneshould the gunner aim specificallyat? Well, this isn'tastrategy article, so you be the judge. We will examine each potential target in turn. I know this is tedious and didactic, but hopefully it covers every major possibility. Assume the range is such that the gun needs a roll of 3 or less to score a direct hit. The HE value of a 15cm round is 7. The various cover modifiers applicable are: Wooden Building: -2 Medium AFV: -3 Bunker: -4 Regardless of the specific target chosen, if the German does not get a direct hit all of the stands and vehicles in the burst area will be attacked with one die roll for casualties, and will sustain a hit on a roll of the following or less: Infantry in the open: 7 Infantry in wooden building: 5 Tank: 4 Infantry in bunker: 3 First, suppose the gunner aims at the infantry in the open. If he rolls a 3 or less he scores a direct hit on the infantry. He rolls twice for casualties and get a hit on a roll of 7 or less in both cases. If he rolls higher than a 3 he does not get a direct hit, but still gets one roll forthe infantry being in the round's burst radius. The roll is for a 7 or less. Regardless of whether or not he gets a direct hit on the infantry, he rolls once for the infantry in the wooden building for a 5 or less, once for the infantry in the bunker for a 3 or less, and once for the tank for a 4 or less. In all cases except the tank a hit would count as a normal casualty on an infantry stand; a hit on the tank will damage it. Next, suppose the gunner aimed at the infantry in the wooden building. If he rolls a 3 or less he gets a direct hit. This gets him two chances for casualties on the stand and allows him to ignore cover modifiers of up to 3. Since the cover modifier of the wooden building is only 2, he ignores all of it and rolls twice for 7 or less. If he does not get a direct hit he rolls only once and does not ignore the cover modifier. The casualty roll is thus for 5 or less. Whether he gets a direct hit or not he gets one roll for 7 or less against the infantry in the open, one roll for 4 or less against the tank, and one roll for 3 or less against the bunker. Finally, suppose he aims at the tank. if he gets a direct hit he gets one roll for penetration versus the tank's armor, conducted the same as normal antitank fire. He also gets one HE roll for a damage result for a 4 or less (for being in the burst radius). If he does not a get a direct hit he rolls only for a 4 or less for a damage result. Whether or not he gets a direct hit he gets one roll for 7 or less against the infantry in the open, one roll for 5 or less for the infantry in the house, and one roll for 3 or less against the infantry in the bunker. ADDITIONAL RULES 1. Submachinegunners A fair chunk of the Central Illinois Tabletop Wargamers are currently involved in a large eastern-front COMMAND DECISION campaign game, in which I am playing the part of Stavka (and for a change playing instead of refereeing, to my immense satisfaction). Over the course of the game it has become apparent that I have overrated submachinegunners. This is a difficult balance to achieve, as tampering with them too much will render them worthless, and that certainly was not the case. We have adopted the following two rules that seem to keep them valuable but prevent them from being supermen. A. For the purposes of fire eligibility, an SMG stand is considered to have moved one category lower than.it actually did. Thus, an SMG stand that conducts a full advance counts as having done a cautious advance for firing purposes. An SMG stand that conducts a cautious advance counts has having remained stationary, and thus may fire opportunity fire. B. If a submachinegun stand is hit during opportunity fire, the hit causes either a force back or elim. result, and if the hit was scored before the stand had reached the SMG range, the SMG stand may not conduct opportunity fire. 2. Artillery Spotters Command stands which observe for an artillery fire mission during a command phase may not issue an orderthat phase. only U.S. recon stands may observe for indirect fire, and may not self-order themselves that same command phase. Forward observer stands of artillery units may observe for indirect fire and also self-order a cautious advance. (They may not self-order a full advance or disengage.) 3. Smoke Round Availability Artilliery units are limited to a number of smoke rounds equal to 1/3 of theit normal battery load. Since a battery has a basic load with it, and another has a load in its supply train, this puts a limit on the number of smoke rounds a battery may fire. 4. Friendly Artillery in Woods When firing artillery into woods where the visibility is 2", if artillery fire of a size 100mm or more is called down within 2" of a friendly unit, that unit is automatically pinned by the enemy fire. Otherwise players end up calling very heavy artillery down within 50 meters of their own position without any problem - with visibility only 100 meters in the woods, the point of impact will be less than that. ED. NOTE: The last two rules are from the group Frank and Greg Novak (Ulster Miniatures) game with and recently printed in Vedette, their club magazine. OPTIONAL RULES FROM BASTOGNE The following optional rules were printed in the BASTOGNE campaign module. Although optional, they are highly recommended. 1. Pinned Effect on Fire The conventional fire value of all attacks against pinned units is halved. This halving is done after all other modifiers to the fire value have been made. Round all fractional fire values down. 2. Voluntary Pin A group of stands all operating under the same order may, at any time, voluntarily become pinned. This tepresents the unit scattering and taking cover, particularly when under air attack or artillery bombardment. 3. Limits on Disengagement A disengage order may never be issued to the following types of units: Unlimbered tow weapons; Green troops; Pinned units. 4. Aircraft Bomb Accuracy The bomb hit number for aircraft bomb and rocket attacks is 3, not 5. All modifiers remain as printed. 5. Vehicle Crews Each combat vehicle (tank, SP gun) has a patrol-sized crew which may dismount. Non-combat vehicles (trucks, wagons, halftracks) have a dismountable crew half this size. Forevery one combat vehicle or two non-combat vehicles which have their crew dismounted, place one crew dismount stand on the table. A crew dismount stand is a single figure stand, the same as a patrol stand. Like a patrol stand, it may only fire in the close fire phase. Unlike a patrol stand, it is not self ordering, may not immediately withdraw when fired on, and does not receive the favorable patrol modification when fired on. Players may combine two crew dismount stands to form a normal two-figure infantry platoon stand. 6. Close Fire/Close Assault Stands in contact with enemy stands at the start of the close fire phase may not fire or be fired at during that phase. (They are instead eligible for close assault, assuming they pass their morale check.) The effect of this rule is to substitute close assault forclose fire, assuming both sides succeed in passingtheir moralethrows. It makes close assault a much more common occurence. I suspect that the results are less "realistic" than the original rules, but they are considerably more fun. 7. Trained Troops A fifth troop type is added to those already in the game: Trained. This category falls between the current categories of Green and Experienced. Treat Trained Troops as experienced when taking casualties (that is, the first hit on a personnel stand forces it back) but as Green for purposes of firing. Trained troops may be issued a disengage order. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. VIII No. 1 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1987 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com