I emerged from one of the local Dollar Stores quite pleased… 8 packs of made-in-China 20mm plastic figures, well sculptured and similar to those manufactured by the old Airfix firm. Each pack cost a dollar, and again I wondered how the Chinese could manufacture and paint and box and ship overseas, and distribute and sell, via a middle man, their goods for only a buck. The Chinese government had, some weeks ago, allowed our EP-3 crew to go home, and we were now bargaining to get the plane itself back. If worst came to worst, and the Chinese decided they would keep the plane, and the US cut off relations with China, every Dollar Store in my neighborhood would quickly go under, and so I thought to take advantage of the current situation and get as many cheapy toy soldiers as I could. Each of the 8 packs contained about 60 figures, giving me more men than I could place on my ping pong table. In addition, the packs contained a couple of tanks and armored cars… A true treasure indeed! Now the issue arose… how to use my new acquisitions? And my immediate thought focused on an “area” game… I drew a field of areas, each about 5 inches by 5 inches, filling the table, and mounted the figures on stands measuring 1 1/2 inches by 1 1/2 inches. The soldier packs contained troops in two different colors… I had a collection of tan-brownish troops (the Browns) to do battle with a collection of greyish troops (the Greys). And so I built two armies. Most of the stands had 3 figures on them, and to facilitate “making change” when casualties occurred, a lesser number had 2 men on them, and I also had a number of stands with only a single figure on them. The stacking limit mandated that a maximum of 6 figures be allowed per 5-by-5 area, and so the basic operational force was a 2-stand unit of 3-figures each. The table-top map I drew looked like the following: In the east, there was a port, Port Arp, and midway across the field, a river cut its way from the south to the north baseline. I placed some 10 towns at random on the map, while, in midfield, there were a couple of highly wooded areas. And so, I was ready to go. I numbered the towns from 1 to 10, and tossed a 10-sided die several times to determine which towns were occupied by the Browns and which by the Greys. First Try This first outing was a solo affair, which, since I had absolutely no idea of where I was going, was a good thing. Infantry stands could move 3 areas, and could also fire for 3. It sounds a wee bit more professional to speak of “brigades” instead of stands, and so I defined a 2-stand, 6-man unit within an area as a brigade. When firing, each brigade started out with a basic probability of hit (POH) of 40 percent. This was then modified: Deduct -5 for every area of range Deduct -5 if the target was in cover Add +5 for every man in the brigade who was firing. In the first battle, my random tossing for which side occupied the towns had placed the eastern Port Arp areas in the hands of the Browns, while the entire middle of the field was held by the Greys. Immediately, the Greys consolidated their force in midfield, and turned their attention to the east, to capture the port and destroy the occupying Browns. The Greys left very little of their brigades to hold off the Browns located on the western end of the map. When a 6-man Grey brigade fired at a Brown unit, within 2 areas, defending one of the port towns, the POH, from the above outline, came out to be Basic POH 40 Range at -5 per area -10 Browns in cover -5 +5 for each of the 6 men firing 30 Totaling the above, the POH is 55 percent. A toss of percentage dice below this figure removed one man from the target brigade. This was a fairly respectable POH, and I didn’t want the casualty rate to become overwhelming. Two solutions offered themselves… I could either lower the POH, or I could lessen the number of units firing at any one time. I chose the latter. To do this, I created the following 6-phase sequence for the half-bound: (a) The Active Side moves all of his units 3 areas. (b) The Non-Active Side (NAS) now gets to fire. There are 2 sub-phases: (i) The NAS selects any 2 brigades on the field to fire (ii) Now the NAS gets “opportunity fire”. He has one of his brigades fire, and then tosses a 10-sided die for the “elapsed time” (ET). A second unit then fires and the ET die is tossed again. When the total ET adds up to more than 12, the fire phase is terminated. (c) Close assault produced by the AS movement in (a), is now resolved. (d) The NAS now moves all its vehicles for 2 areas. In addition to infantry, I tossed in a couple of tanks for each side. (e) The AS now gets its fire, also in two sub-phases, as in (b) above. Two units are selected and fire, and then the ET die is used for “opportunity fire”. (f) Close assault produced by the NAS movement in phase (d) is resolved In essence, the above sequence is a modified ‘A-move/B-fire’ procedure. The inclusion of “opportunity fire” reduced the number of units firing and prevented every unit from opening up when its side’s fire phase came. Since "opportunity fire" was restricted in scope, the decisions as to which units were to fire were of great importance. I played this battle in a solo mode for about 6 or 7 turns, and found the Greys were unstoppable. The Browns were driven from Port Arp and recorded their first loss. Second Try A couple of days later, I had an opportunity to face a live opponent, since Cliff Sayre appeared to head the Grey army. For this outing, I redefined the battle field. The central region of the map became Greyland, the eastern region was Auburneland, and the western region was Brownland. In essence, the Greys were fenced in on either side by their enemies, and were forced to fight a 2-front war… gain access to the sea by capturing Port Arp in the east, and smashing Auburneland in the west. To set the game up, the Grey commander was first permitted to place 3 stands anywhere on the field within Greyland. Then, as the opposing commander, I selected a single stand, which I, too, could place anywhere within either Auburneland or Brownland. Next, the Greys placed another 3 stands in Greyland, and I again followed with placement of a single stand. In this manner, the Grey army materialized in Greyland, outnumbering the opposing armies by a ratio of 3-to-1. Cliff chose to build up his Grey army along his eastern border, facing Brownland, and I could only follow suit. I didn’t dare devote any appreciable strength to Auburneland because of the huge 3-to-1 strength ratio that faced me in the east. The Grey army struck first, and in the sequence outlined above, on its first movement phase, the Grey forces advanced eastward into Brownland, making for Port Arp. At this point, now that war had been declared, whenever the Active Side moved its troops according to the sequence, it tossed a 10-sided die, and this was the number of additional stands that were allowed to appear on the field. Which means that, as of this point, both sides built up in equal fashion. I had found a couple of 20mm machine gun crews in my inventory… these fired with a POH of 70 percent, less the deductions for range and cover. And, as I mentioned, there were tanks on the field, two types, heavy and light. Each of the toy soldier packs contained a number of 20mm figures aiming bazookas, and I mounted these at 3 to a stand, and called them a tank-hunter team. The infantry stands themselves had no anti-armor offensive power, and the tank-hunters gave the infantry an anti-tank capability. The tank-hunters were ‘brittle’… a single hit destroyed a stand. But as long as they were in the same area as regular infantry, the infantry were permitted to soak off and absorb any hits directed at troops in the area. The same philosophy applied to the MGs… here, too, as long as they were protected by accompanying infantry, they’d survive. Needless to say, Cliff’s Greyland troops easily battered their way to Port Arp. Due to the initial set-up, he had troops to spare because of the 3-to-1 ratio with which he started the battle. In the later phases of the battle, I tried to bring up additional Brownland units, but couldn’t stop the Greys. At the end, I had one tank and one brigade trying to fend off the entire Grey army. And in the west, in Auburneland, the result was the same… the Greys marching into the western capital. After the game, we discussed the initial set-up. We thought that, perhaps, an initial ratio of 3-to-2 would have made for a closer battle than did the 3-to-1, while still providing the Greys with an advantage in striking out against their opponents in their 2-front war. Back to PW Review February 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