In the last couple of issues, I’ve been tracking the events on the Island of Ishtar, where the rebels have been popping up with surprising success. For the most part, I fight these WW2 battles in a solo manner, but occasionally, a poor unfortunate comes through the door at the wrong time, and I collar him to head the rebel forces. Jim Butters and Cliff Sayre appeared and were promptly handed the rebel command. The procedures went thusly: (a) I tossed percentage dice to get the sector (province? region?) on the island in which the rebels (called the Brotherhood of Love... BOL) would appear. Ishtar has 44 sectors, and a toss of 44 or below quickly determines in which sector BOL units appear. (b) If, however, the dice toss exceeds 44, this means the BOL has held up its attack, and is awaiting reinforcements. Which means that when the BOL does appear, it will be reinforced by one unit. In this last instance, I tossed over 44 some 5 times… indicating that the next-to-show-up BOL force would be reinforced by 5 units. (c) BOL forces normally start with 9 units… this one would have 14 units. The Local Government (LG) force is always stable at 10 units, so they’d be somewhat outgunned. (d) More bad news for the LG units… the LG would have to march into the sector held by the BOL, and the rebel units would be hidden and able to ambush the LG units. Rebel commanders Jim and Cliff snapped into the spirit of the battle, drew a map, and noted where each of their hidden units would be located. They proved so overcome with battle lust that they withdrew for a brief moment to have a private ‘strategy session’. At first, I was truly impressed with the generalship of these guys… they really knew what they were doing! This feeling lasted for about three minutes. Because then I heard cries of… “I don’t know where my units are located!” “I’ve lost track of where my forces are!” “Who is commanding whom?” and similar sounds of consternation. The Rebel staff problems were soon worked out, they noted the placement of their troops on the field, and on the first turn, my 10-unit Local Government (LG) force showed up. In the north of the BOL-occupied sector, was the sole town on the board, Vlup, and I ordered 2 tanks, 1 armored car, and 2 infantry units (half the LG force) to approach the outskirts of Vlup. In the sequence on this first turn, immediately after the active side (me) moves, the non-active side (the Rebels) fire. Cliff had placed several BOL units in and around Vlup. Cliff had a couple of ‘coordinated fire’ (CF) tokens, and he used them well. a. First, he had to have an officer within 5 inches of 2 firing units. b. Second, he had to play a CF token. c. Then, each of the 2 units fired. When a unit fired and successfully hit, the target would receive a casualty figure. Thus, if the 2 coordinating units each hit, the target would normally receive 2 casualty figures. But here, because of the ‘coordinated fire’ aspect, the number of hits on the target would double, and it would receive 4 casualty figures. One of my tanks was immediately inundated with casualty figures… it took a morale test, and fell back, receiving yet another casualty figure. Casualty figures were ‘bad things’… one of the last phases in the half-bound was a phase termed Damage Assessment for evaluating the effect of the casualty figures on the units which had been dragging them around. Each figure added +1 to a 10-sided die toss, where the result was Table 1 1, 2, 3: No Efficiency Levels (EL) lost 4, 5, 6, 7: Lose 1 EL 8, 9, 10: Lose 2 ELs Over 10: Lose 3 ELs Each type of troop on the field had what I termed an Efficiency Level as follows Infantry company 1 stand 6 EL Tank company 1 stand 7 EL Armored car company 1 stand 6 EL This meant that when a single-stand infantry company lost 6 ELs, i.e., had 6 EL’s crossed out, it was defined as destroyed. Note that with coordinated fire, if 4 casualty markers had been placed on a unit, with each marker adding +1 to the assessment die roll of Table 1, this could result in about half the unit’s strength shot up in a single volley. Of interest to me was our post game discussion, in which both Jim and Cliff stated that the damage assessment of Table 1, above, was too mild, and units should have gotten wiped out in a quicker, more rapid, fashion. The results of Table 1, in effect, determine the length of the game… a more deadly table wou ld make for a quicker battle as the number of destroyed units pile up rapidly. But I am always responsive to my audience, and so, in the 5th Edition, soon to placed on the market, Table 1 will display a number of more horrific results. But back to the battle. On the field, my LG units just couldn’t face up to the defenders of Vlup. I’d mass my troops, send ‘em running up to the town, and the defender’s fire power would cause one or two units to fail a morale test and fall back, breaking the back of the attack. The Rebels never had more than 2 Coordinating Fire (CF) tokens, but Jim and Cliff shared them most judiciously to great effect. My own CF usage was far from perfect… my boys refused to man their guns properly. Remember that to get the full effect of coordinated fire, both of the designated units must hit, and I could rarely pull this off. On the eastern side of the field, Jim Butters’ BOL units fought quite fiercely… they were ensconced in a woods, and when I tried to drive them out by entering the deep, dark woods, it proved too deep, and too dark for my boys… they continually failed their ‘rough terrain’ test… they had a 70 percent chance of entering the woods, and they refused to do so. And so, between Vlup and the woods, the government forces had a hard day. My data sheet shows the LG lost 2 of its 3 tanks, and the third one was on its last legs. Both of the government armored cars were in sad shape… and the upshot was that I called a halt to the attack. And so the Rebels maintained control of Sector 6. As of this writing, the BOL holds 4 sectors on the island, and the President-For-Life has appealed to Washington, DC,. for assistance. Back to PW Review July 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon 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