I ran an early morning World War II game using Arc of Fire rules at Pro or Con. This was the first game I did with these rules with more than one player per side.

The U.S. forces consisted of two squads of paratroops entering from the south and/or east table edges, and one squad of infantry, a recon jeep, and four M4A3 (75) Sherman tanks entering from the west side of the table. On the table was a town with a church, old section, cemetery and six other buildings. In the town were two squads of German panzer grenadiers, one platoon HQ, one Medium machine gun team, and one artillery Forward Observer team which had no contact with the German artillery. The Germans had also laid two 1"x3" minefields.

This is an adaptation of the "Attack on Ste. Marie" in the book, Skirmish Campaigns: Normandy '44 - First Hours. The Germans had to defend the church, with their artillery FO team in it, and the Americans had to capture the church and cemetery, which would eliminate the most likely German FO position, and cut the only north-south road which ran next to the cemetery.

The Germans had some problems. The main one, besides never playing with these rules (one player had never played World War II before), was that they didn't think in terms of delaying the American attack. They also didn't take the time to check if their positions had arcs of fire. For example, one unit was in a building which had no windows facing the edge of the table. What happened was that one squad of Germans ambushed a U.S. squad as it came in fairly successfully, but were unable to break contact and were caught by the Shermans moving in. The other squad realized it wasn't in a position to engage the Americans and moved into the cemetery where they ran into American infantry and another Sherman.

One German squad managed to lose only two figures -- the Squad Leader and the Assistant Squad Leader, which didn't help at all. They also forgot about the MMG they had covering one approach. Their panzerfausts either all missed or the men carrying them were cut down before they could fire. The Germans fought as well as they could, but in trying to hold a position, were overrun by the American assault.

The only saving grace was that two Shermans found the two anti-tank minefields the hard way, with one destroyed and the other temporarily out of action. The damaged one was close assaulted and immobilized. By then, the church was minus its bell tower and on fire, and the Germans in the tower were dead. The Americans were in the cemetery and were not slowing down.

All in all, it went pretty good. I have rewritten it some to drop the U.S. paratroops and make them all regular infantry, reducing their morale, and splitting the two German squads into four fire teams.

Next, the Soviets need to hold the town. At Drums 2003, the town will be used for "Rumanian Nightmare."

Pro or Con, although small and only for one day, had what looked like a good selection of games. Most of my pictures are from my game and the game I was in, but I took others, including the "Caribbean Jack" skirmish/role playing game, complete with town, sailing ship, harbor, and fortress. Plus, a lot of pirates.