The time… sometime in the early nineteen forties. The place… the Inlet of Eu on the coast of France. Colonel of Commandos Tony Figlia had his orders cut for him. He would proceed to Eu and destroy the new naval craft which the Germans were constructing there. Allied intelligence had determined that the boat, the Zuper Kriegs Boot 3 (ZKB 3) was having the following equipment installed: a surface-to-air missile capability, two Phalanx-type systems, an Exocet-type of surface-to -surface missile, a fire-and-forget missile system, a high power laser gun for shooting down satellite systems… it was obvious that if the Germans were permitted to complete the ZKB 3, and it left the Inlet of Eu, it would dominate the entire North Atlantic Ocean.
The map shows the Inlet of Eu, and the point at which Colonel Figlia decided to land his glider force. This would consist of 3 squads, and when they had cleared and secured a landing area, in would come the helicopters, carrying the rest of the commandos, some 12 squads strong.
My Merten figures (approximately 40mm in size) were used for the game. A squad consisted of 3 men (3 figures), and could have a light machine gun attached, making 4 in all. I wanted no data sheets for the squads, and we used casualty figures to mark the status of each squad. A squad, in effect, had 5 status levels. Each time it was hit, it would either remove a man or add a casualty figure:
- Level 1 3 men full strength
Level 2 3 men plus 1 casualty figure must test morale if hit
Level 3 2 men must test morale if hit
Level 4 2 men plus a casualty figure must test morale if hit
Level 5 1 man if hit, the squad is destroyed
The initial 3-squad commando force landed in the woods as indicated on the map, and to show that at least one of the men sprained his ankle, we gave one squad a casualty figure.
A turn or so later, the landing area had been secured, not a shot had been fired, and in came the helicopters. As his men poured out of the ships, Colonel Figlia chortled to himself. His landing point had been pretty close to the berthed ZKB 3, and it appeared that in less than 2 moves, his men could swarm aboard. “A piece of cake!” said the Colonel.
I tell you, there is nothing worse than hearing a Figlian chortle. I was resolved to make him swallow all his chortles… after all, the ZKB 3 was Admiral Doenitz’s prize project, and I didn’t want to send the Admiral a message saying “Well, Admiral, we… er… had some problems today… it seems that… er… a couple of commandos appeared at Eu, and blew up your boat, and I’m requesting reassignment.”
You’ll note on the map that the barracks of the defending troops was located in the northwest corner of the field. They woke up when the first shot was fired and took off toward the pier.
The first shots were fired by the commandos as they approached the ZKB 3… I had placed German Squad A on the boat, and they took 2 hits, lost 2 levels as indicated on the above chart, took a morale test, and ran for safety. The boat was no longer manned!
Each squad fired as an entity… Each man contributed 15 Fire Points (FP), and an accompanying LMG added another 20 FP for a 65 percent Probability of Hit (POH). If the target was under cover, all the previous FP parameters would be reduced by 5 percent, giving a POH total of 45 percent.
The only weapons in the game were the rifle, the LMG, the HMG, and the hand grenade. The defending Germans possessed 2 HMG squads, but they were late in getting out of the barracks. They could fire twice at two different targets, with a POH of 40 percent at each target.
As for the hand grenades, I had learned through previous games that this was a weapon to be much abused by the participants. If you gave each man one or more hand grenade, the scenario would deteriorate into a missile tossing contest. If you gave each squad a supply of hand grenades, you’d have to track the grenades to determine when a squad was out of ammo.
I took the easy way out, the ‘symbolic’ way. During one of the phases of the sequence, a side could choose to activate a grenade, and could ‘assign’ it, during one of the fire phases, to a particular squad. In this fashion, there weren’t too many grenades around, and we had no problems.
After German Squad A had ingloriously retreated off the boat, one of the commando squads boarded. Colonel Figlia’s immediate remark was that since his men had boarded so easily, they were going to start the engines, and take the boat across the channel to England.
“Uh! Uh!”, was my reply… the ZKB 3 didn’t have its engines installed yet… it was pier-bound, and the commandos couldn’t capture it… it would have to be blown up.
The question became moot, when the very next turn, the commando squad aboard was targeted by several of my own squads, and totally eliminated (it quickly went down through 5 levels) via superior fire power. And once again, a German crew went aboard, this time never to be tossed off.
The sequence for the half-bound provided, first, for the active side to move its troops, and then, for the non-active side to have ‘opportunity fire’.
‘Opportunity fire’ was limited… The first unit fired and a 10-sided ‘clock die’ was tossed. A second unit fired and the clock die tossed again. When the clock die total reached 10, the opportunity fire phase ended. With an unlucky toss of 10, the non-active side would only get one unit to fire. With a series of lucky tosses, very low tosses, the total would take some time to reach the cut off value of 10, and, perhaps, 4 units might get to fire.
There were 5 phases to the half-bound:
- (1) Active side moves
(2) Opportunity fire for the non-active side
(3) All of the active side’s units fire.
(4) The non-active side uses its Reaction Points (RP) to respond to the situation as developed. Each side had about 6 RP, and it wold ‘cost’ anywhere from 2 to 4 points to issue a reaction order to either move or fire. And if the points were available, there was still an 80 percent test to pass… there was an 80 percent chance that the order would be successfully received.
(5) The active side, as its last function in the half-bound, now selects what I termed a field order. There were 5 possibilities:
- a. Raise 1 squad one level
b. Call a hand grenade into play
c. Transfer a LMG to another squad. This was important since if a squad was eliminated while a LMG was attached, the LMG would also be eliminated. If, therefore, you saw a squad taking heavy casualties and about to go down the drain, you could transfer the LMG to another, more viable, squad.
d. Obtain a coordinated fire token. Here, during your fire phase, an officer, if he was within 5 inches of 2 firing units that hit the same target, could call for coordinated fire, and the target would receive additional casualty figures.
e. Have a 60 percent chance to snipe at the enemy officers during your fire phase.
Colonel Figlia’s attack fell apart due to a spate of rotten dice throws. In fact, more than a ‘spate’… a veritable deluge of rotten dice throws. As explained above, the POH for a squad ranged around 50 percent, and most of his commando squads never seemed to hit their targets.
Then, when he diced to see the cost of using his RP for his reaction functions, it would turn out to cost 4 RP, so that, with only 6 RP in inventory, he could only select a single unit to react.
And especially in melee, his dice throws betrayed him. After he had driven German Squad A from the ZKB 3, and his own men climbed aboard, one of my own squads clambered aboard to fight it out with them.
In this particular melee, I had 3 men plus an assisting LMG gunner, and I received 4 dice… one die for each infantryman and one for the LMG man. The commando squad had 3 men, and it received 3 dice, one for every man. We each tossed all our dice and totaled them… the high total was declared the winner. Tony tossed low… he lost. Bad for the commandos. The melee rules stated that the losing squad was destroyed, while the winning squad took a casualty figure. And so the commando squad was removed from the field, while my men stayed aboard. This was not the only combat lost by the commandos.
Finally, Colonel Figlia signaled his helicopters that he was pulling back. A commando unit can take only so much. And I faxed Admiral Doenitz of the good work I had done at the Inlet of Eu.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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