I set up a WW2 skirmish game in 25mm... about 7 figures (men) per squad, and we pitted 4 squads against 4 squads. The key difference in the composition of the sides was that one had 2 armored vehicles, while the other, with no armor at all, had 2 men carrying anti-tank bazookas. My basic intent was to avoid the necessity of having each individual man toss his own hit dice when firing, and so the rules provided for several men "grouping" their Fire Points, i.e., adding them up to get a final result. Thus only a single dice toss would be sufficient to determine the casualties produced by the group’s firing. This was accomplished by providing each side with a number of "Coordinative Fire" (CF) tokens. The side selected one rifleman as the ‘lead’ firer... he received 3 Fire Points (FP). Then, to have another man coordinate fire with the first, a CF token was played, and the second man’s FP were now added to the first’s, yielding 6 FP. A third man’s FP could then be added to the total by playing yet another CF... this would give a new total of 9 FP. The number of CF tokens were limited, otherwise all the guys on a side could keep adding in their FP to get a huge total on the target. Once the total FP had been determined, it was multiplied by one of 2 parameters to get a final Probability Of Hit (POH) If the target was in the open, multiply by 15 If the target was in cover, multiply by 10 And now that the final POH was determined, reference the following POH chart If, for example, a 37 was tossed, then the man was hit and would be replaced with a prone, casualty figure, and his nearest buddy would take a morale test. My first problem arose when I discovered that I hadn’t furnished the players with enough CF tokens for coordinated fire. And so, after a couple of men fired together, adding their FP, the side would run out of CF tokens, and the rest of the men would have to fire singly, each individually tossing their own hit-dice. Which was precisely what I DID NOT want. And then, one of the participants joined in, saying that the ‘group fire’ method wasn’t realistic at all, and that, in a skirmish level game, all men should fire as individuals, each one selecting his own particular target. In other words, he advocated the exact opposite of what I was trying to implement. Being a nice guy, I said "Let’s try it!", and we then started to use ‘individual fire’... a man would fire and see if he hit, and then the next guy would toss his dice, and so on. But Problem #2 then arose. If the first man fired and hit Helmut, and Helmut fell prone and was replaced with a casualty figure, could the second firing man then zero in on poor Helmut to finish him off? First Thought My first thought was that all this firing business was supposed to be happening simultaneously, and it wasn’t quite cricket to first, find out that Helmut had been hit, and, second, knowing that Helmut was down, to then keep smashing Helmut. If this was the way we were going, said I, then a side, before any of its men fired, should first declare the targets of all of its firing figures. But this meant noting down the particular targets of everyone on the field. In our game, with our 28 men per side (4 squads of 7 men), if only about half fired on a fire phase, we’d have to keep a record of some 14 of these guys every fire phase. Even the man who advocated "realism" balked at this. Too much of "realism" is too much. And so, after about a half hour’s discussion, we hit on a compromise. What we do is to total 2 types of points that would affect the result of the volume of lead spraying out across the field at the target area. First, we’d give each of the guys that fired together 1 Fire Point (FP). If 4 guys fired, they’d get a total of 4 FP. Second, said I, how about giving a couple of FP for the target size? It stands to reason that the bigger the target, i.e., the more men in the target area, the more the probability of hitting someone. So utterly persuasive was I that we agreed to add a couple of FP for target size. Here, we said we’d add 1 FP for every man in the target area more than 3. In other words, 3 targeted men was our "base", and if more guys crowded in, the firer would get his bonus. Third, we’d now multiply our total FP by a number to get a POH. Before, we had used a multiplying factor of 15 if the target was in the open... but the realistic guy said that was too much. And so, now we used a multiplier of 10. We then went back to the table to get an example. Fred Haub had barely kept awake during the preceding vibrant and stimulating discussion, but we jostled him, and said "Toss your dice, Fred!" Fred had 4 men about to fire... that gave him 4 FP. Now we saw that his men were going to hit an area containing 5 men in the open. There were 2 men over the reference base of 3 in the target zone, and so Fred had a total of 6 FP. Multiplying 6 by 10 gave a total POH of 60 percent Now, what to do with the 60 percent? The realistic guy said that because Fred had 4 guys firing, each of them had a 60 percent chance of hitting the target. My thought was "Wait a minute!" By adding up fire points, we weren’t increasing everyone’s probability of hitting the target... we were only increasing the probability that someone in the target zone was going to get hit. Another half-hour of fascinating discussion. And we came up with another POH results chart, this one divided into four, rather than three, regions. DICE THROW RESULT Above POH No effect Up to POH 1 man is hit, falls prone. Up to 2/3 of POH 2 men are hit, fall prone Up to 1/3 of POH 3 Men are hit, fall prone In Fred’s case, with his 60 percent POH, his chart looked like: DICE THROW RESULT Above 60 No effect 41 to 60 1 man is hit, falls prone. 21 to 40 2 men are hit, fall prone Up to 20 3 Men are hit, fall prone Fred tossed a 34 and 2 men in the target area fell down. Looking at the above procedure, it becomes apparent that if you let everyone join in on the volley, the numbers quickly get out of hand as the POH skyrockets heavenward. For example, if 15 men fire at a group of 8 men in cover, the 15 firers get their 15 FP, and they add another 5 FP for the target group size, giving them a total of 20 FP. Multiply this by 10, and you get a POH of 200... the chart looks like: Above 200 No effect. 134 to 200 1 man is hit, falls prone. 67 to 133 2 men are hit, fall prone Up to 66 3 Men are hit, fall prone And so you’re "guaranteed" to hit at least 2 men. Is it "realistic" to guaranty that a couple of hits will occur? In truth, I could argue either way. And so the conversation went. Anyway, I’m fascinated with all this stuff. How much of this finds its way into Simon’s WW2 rules, only time will tell. But rest assured, it’ll keep me glued to my word processor. Back to PW Review April 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 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