Four of us are participating in a WW II campaign… Don Bailey (Colorado), Bob Hurst (Texas), Mike McVeigh (Ohio) and me (the Washington, DC area). The campaign background was drummed up by Don, who sent us all of our assets and several maps denoting key areas on which battles would be fought.
When I visited Bob Hurst in late February, we played out two of the battles. For the most part, however, each encounter will be fought solo, and we'll all, via the internet, attempt to average out the results of four of the same battle fought on four different tables, using, perhaps, four different sets of rules.
Figure 1 is the map on which the campaign is fought. The Allies (me and Bob Hurst) start from the bottom (south) and must work our way north to the city of Darnim. You'll immediately note that every key city which the Allies must capture and go through on their advance north has a river running through it. The presence of rivers on the wargames table makes for lousy battles... especially rivers that can't be crossed except at particular bridges. The battle usually deteriorates into a huge fire-fight as the two opposing forces simply stand on opposite sides of the river and take pot shots at one another. Not too much movement.
This is the reason that, whenever I set up an encounter on my own table, one which has a river as a key terrain element, there's always a chance that units can cross. Sometimes the percentage chance is small, sometimes large... depending upon "how wide" I want to open up the battlefield. But, in any case, the major point is that the river is crossable, and the sides are not restricted to a single bridge.
I reported on the first two battles in our campaign in the last REVIEW. These were fought on Bob Hurst's table... he took the part of the Germans, while I commanded the Allies. For the first encounter at the town of Donwald, we used the Bailey rules for WW II, STURM, which I outlined in the REVIEW.
The heart of STURM rests in a 'reaction deck', whose cards are drawn when one of the following events occurs:
- When a unit is close assaulted
When a unit is fired upon
When a friendly unit within 10 inches retreats
When an enemy unit comes within 20 inches
When an enemy unit within 10 inches retreats
If, for example, a unit is targeted and fired upon, it will draw a reaction card. The response may be to withdraw, or to return fire. If it does fire, then the original firing unit, now being fired at, draws its own card. And it, in turn, may fire back. And in response, the targeted unit will again draw a card. What may happen, therefore, is that a short fire-fight occurs until one of the responses on one of the cards calls it off.
For solo and 1-on-1 gaming, this is an excellent sequence. But in a multi-player environment, this produces a slow game. The only two players that are busy are the two drawing reaction cards... all others are on standby, waiting for the two opposing units to quit reacting to each other. In a sense, it reminds me of the PIQUET sequence... here, too, the only two busy participants are the two opposing players drawing sequence cards... the others watch and wait.
Back to the Campaign
But back to our campaign. We fought the battles of Donwald and Best at Bob Hurst's house. The Allies at Donwald, outnumbering the German defenders by 2-to-1, won. The battle of Best, however, was a severe defeat for the Allied forces. The last issue of the REVIEW speaks to these encounters.
I should note that Bob and I fought the battle of Best three times... two using STURM rules, and once with my own set. And all three times, the Allied force was driven back. Note on the map that, between towns, there are specific time requirements to go from one point to another. Added to these requirements is the time used in fighting a battle at a given site. For example, the map indicates that an advance from the 'Allied Start' position in the south to the town of Simongen, will require a basic total of 2 days travel time.
But the Allied advance was held up by 2 factors... first, the time required for the battle at Donwald, and second, when the Allies arrived at Middel, they found that the Germans had retreated all the way back to Simongen and had blown the Middel bridges across the Wald Canal. Repairing the bridges consumed time, and this stopped a rapid Allied advance north toward Simongen. The two events I mentioned added another 3 days to the total time required to get from 'Start' to Simongen, hence the Allied force finally arrived at Simongen on the morning of the 5th day of the campaign, whence the battle began.
I fought this Simongen battle solo on my own table. And used an original set which Bob and I had tried out at his house. I have no doubt that, by the time the campaign ends, spurred on by the campaign, I'll have generated several sets of WW II rules to play.
Figure 2 shows the area around Simongen. Don had notified us that the Germans had blown the east bridge, and that the German defenders had orders, direct from the High Command, to fight to the death. "Stand and die!", was the command received by the Simongen defenders... which is pretty tough stuff, coming from the shielded, well-fortified concrete bunkers below the Berlin headquarters of the German Army.
The regular Allied force came on from the south baseline. This consisted of 10 units... 6 infantry units plus 2 medium tanks, plus a heavy tank, etc. In our campaign, we employ "low level" units... a single stand is a tank or squad or platoon or company, depending upon how "low level" you want to define it. Each stand is tracked for its damage from battle to battle.
Digression
I had a talk with Mike McVeigh at COLD WARS about this "low level" stuff. In my WW II rules and in STURM, portable machine gun (MG) units are either separate from, or attached to, infantry units. In either case, they're separate entities. Mike says that this automatically places the game at the squad level. The only time an MG unit would be specifically broken out would be down at the squad level. At platoon or higher levels, the MG was an intrinsic part of the fire-power of the unit, and there would be no need to track it separately.
Perhaps during WW I, we'd have special MG units, but not during the Second World War. Mike's input didn't phase me at all. In my set-ups, I've still got separate MG stands attached to infantry units, and, depending upon the game, I still call an infantry stand a 'company' or higher. All in the eye of the beholder... a wee bit ahistoric, perhaps, but it sounds better to me to refer to the heroic last stand of Company B, rather than the short-term wipe-out of Squad B.
End of digression
On Figure 2, you'll note that, leading to east, off the map's edge, is a path labeled "To Drop Zone Baker" (DZ Baker). Bob Hurst, commanding the Allied paratrooper force, had agreed to reinforce my attack on Simongen (adding 10 units to my existing 10), and this DZ was where Bob's paratroopers landed and commenced their westward march to the battlefield. Referring back to Figure 1, DZ Baker is a 1/2 day's travel time from the Simongen area. This meant that Bob's paras, in order to join the Simongen battle beginning on Day 5 of the campaign, had to drop into the zone the afternoon of Day 4.
I started the battle without the support of the paras, thinking that a little delay would furnish a wee bit of interest to the goings-on... and almost out-foxed myself.
The paras appeared on Bound 4, and their 10-unit force gathered around the south side of the east bridge, already destroyed by the Germans. I could hear the little guys grumbling "Whotta we do? Whotta we do? How do we get across the river? Who's in charge here?" In effect, way out on my right flank, the cluster of paras around the bridge was useless... they had no way of crossing, and unless they could do so, they might just as well have gone back to DZ Baker for lunch.
My immediate response to the paras' dilemma was to call on my 1-stand engineer unit. This was the 11th Engineers... were they a squad?... a company?... a battalion? Or what? I shall side step this issue and merely state that a similar single-stand unit had constructed a bridge across the Wald Canal at Middel in a day or so. Working with their Phillips head screwdrivers, and their pliers, and their epoxy kits, the engineers created a bridge that was an engineering wonder... it permitted the entire Allied force to cross without a hitch.
And so, here at Simongen, the 11th Engineers raced to the rescue. It took them about 3 bounds to reach the paras. The engineers set themselves up just to the east of the wrecked bridge.
The campaign rules forbid bridge building during a battle... the only assistance an engineering unit can furnish is to provide ferrying services. I mandated that the 11th could ferry a unit across the raging waters on a dice throw of 50 or less, i.e., a 50 percent chance of success.
And so the 11th got to work, and each bound, I tossed dice... it's hard to believe, but in the first 10 tries, the 11th was successful in only three attempts... I just couldn't toss under 50. Evidently, the kayaks and canoes and rubber rafts they were using were leaking like sieves, and couldn't hack the crossing.
It wasn't until around Bound 16 that the 11th successfully ferried all the paratrooper infantry (6 stands) to the northern side of the river. The remaining 4 para units... one anti-tank gun and a couple of armored cars, remained south of the river.
Sequence
A note on the sequence I used. There were 8 phases.
Phase 1. . Here, the Active Side (AS) moved all its units, vehicles and foot, a distance of 10 inches.
Phase 2. .The Non-Active side (NAS) moved its vehicles 10 inches. Note that on the previous half-bound, when the NAS was the active side, these vehicles moved their normal 10 inches... thus the total movement for vehicles during a full bound was 20 inches, split in 2 increments of 10 inches each
Phase 3. The NAS fires all of its units within range. The basic Probability of Hit (POH) was 70 percent, and there were corrections for range, for cover, for armor, and so on. Depending upon the success of the dice throw, a number of Loss Points (LP) were scored on the target, either 5 or 10 or 20. Each stand on the field was tracked, and when the LP accumulated and reached 30, one Efficiency Factor (EF) of the target was crossed off. Crossing off 5 EF destroys a unit.
Phase 4. Here, the AS gets to react to the NAS fire. The AS had an inventory of Reaction Points (RP) and, to react (either move or fire), two things must happen: (a) A move or fire reaction 'cost' 3 RP. Most of the time, a side had around 6 or 7 RP in stock (these were replenished every half-bound). And so the first thing the reacting side did was to cross off 3 of their RP, signifying that orders were issued to the concerned units. (b) Second, did the orders arrive? Here, a dice toss of 80 percent was required. Most of the time, with an 80 percent chance of success, the order arrived, but occasionally, a foul-up occurred and the RP were wasted. Note that RP were quite scarce, hence not too many reactions were allowed.
Phase 5...After the AS reacts, so does the NAS, expending its stock of RP. Note that this phase gives the NAS an additional opportunity to fire, augmenting the damage inflicted on Phase 3.
Phase 6...Close assault is resolved. A comparison of the Efficiency Factors in the combat, the EF losses of the sides, and a random die roll determined the outcome.
Phase 7...This was an additional damage phase. Looking at the above sequence, you'll note that losses were inflicted on the opposition on Phases 3, 4, 5 and 6. Each time an EF was crossed out (an accumulation of 30 LP), a unit received a casualty figure. On this Phase 7, all units with casualty figures were assessed for additional losses in terms of LP, and, if necessary, other EF's were crossed out. Then all casualty figures were removed.
Phase 8... Here, the sides diced to see how many Reaction Points they received for the next half-bound.
The main firing phase is on Phase 3. The two reaction phases, 4 and 5, permit a limited response to the opposition. I purposely kept the number of Reaction Points supplied to each side fairly low... after all, the reaction capability is a 'bonus', and I didn't want the bonus to get out of hand.
When the battle commenced, the Allied force was led by an armored car and a medium tank... both proceeded straight north up the road. Both got creamed by the German defenders situated in the town. Each of the 'houses' depicted on the map was defined as a small farm, holding a maximum of two units. There were, therefore, 5 farms just to the south of the river, and they all contained infantry. Infantry units (whatever they were) could reach out with an anti-tank capability to 10 inches. And probably, at the scale of the game, this range was far too large, but it made for some interesting encounters.
The German infantry in the southernmost row of farms fought like devils. Every time they accumulated a total of 30 Loss Points and crossed out one EF box, they had to take a morale test (toss dice under 70 percent). Very few German infantry failed their tests, and only one was actually forced to retreat across the bridge. The others, just as their orders prescribed, 'died to the last man'.
Figure 2, the map of Simongen, shows a hill located to the south of the town. I directed the Allied armor of one heavy tank and one medium tank to move up to the crest of the hill to see if they could provide fire-power support for the attack. It turned out that the only targets available to the tanks were the infantry in the first row of farms. All other targets were blocked. After a couple of bounds of ineffective firing, I got impatient and ordered the tanks off the hill... "Charge!" was the order I gave them.
And so into one of the farms, defended by 2 German units, went the two tanks. And BOOM! Went the defenders. They fired, quite accurately, both in their regular fire phase and on their reaction phase. Having crossed out a couple of EF boxes, the heavy tank commander thought better of the situation and retreated (he failed a morale test)... the medium tank, now unsupported, continued the attack.
In melee, after a round of combat, there's a 33 percent chance that the casualty producing phase is over and the outcome should be determined. Thus a combat can last for a maximum of 3 rounds, during each of which the sides pummel each other. The tank assault went on for 2 rounds before it finished. And during each round, the medium tank took additional casualties (Loss Points). When it was all over, and the tank lost, it suffered an additional 20 Loss Points, and that was that... all 5 of its EF boxes had been crossed out. The defending German infantry, even though they had taken quite a few losses themselves, broke out the Budweiser.
It took 16 full bounds before the German infantry was eliminated and the Allies took possession of the farms south of the bridge. The main Allied force (what there was left of it) then gritted its teeth and prepared for a grand bridge assault.
The savings factor were the paratroopers. By Bound 16, all the para infantry had crossed, and started to sweep to the west against the few remaining German units north of the river. At this point, I decided that despite their orders from Berlin, the on-the-spot German commanders, having lost over half their force, had had enough and they pulled back.
Out of the original 10 defending German units, they lost 6 of them... including all of their infantry and one assault gun. Of the 20 Allied units (10 in the regular force and another 10 paratroopers), the loss consisted of a total of 5 units... including the heavy tank and a medium tank.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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