About a month ago, I picked up a set of wargames collectively called A B00K OF SANDHURST WARGAMES by Paddy Griffith from the Barnes and Noble book company. For those interested in World War Two or more recent actions and role playing, I would suggest looking into the last of the four games "Men Against Fire". This is a squad level game with each player as a member of a US squad while a "game master" controls the Japanese and/or any unplayed Americans. In addition to the group goal, such as clearing an enemy bunker position, each player also has personal victory conditions to meet. The ability of the squads to achieve their goal(s) may also be jeopardized by the presence of a number of "nonfighters" in the unit. To illustrate to a history class how frustrating the modern battlefield is ~ the fact that a soldier can see his own people going down but not those of the enemy - I recently ran the game over two school periods. There are only ten in the class (worked out well for an understrength rifle squad) and they managed to come up with a good assault plan, but it all went to the wind as soon as the game started. After two turns, they had two wounded and two pinned. After ten turns, five were wounded and two pinned. Their most common comment was "How do we know if we're hitting anything?" to which I answered "You don't know unless there is a decrease in fire or unless you get into the enemy positions." As it turned out, one Japanese was wounded. Eventually they brought up a tank, but too late to be effective. The rules are easy to understand and fairly short and may easily be adapted for use in any post-World War Two small unit action. One example which comes to mind quickly is a squad trying to locate and eliminate an enemy sniper. Back to MWAN # 24 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1986 Legio X This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com