I recently visited Bob Hurst at his home in Texas for a 10-day stay, and brought with me an assortment of what I term "modern armor" rules. To me, "modern" encompasses just about everything from 1935 to the present, i.e., as long as there are tanks and planes and machine guns and mortars, it’s "modern".
Bob is more of a stickler for historical accuracy than I am, and so when I pulled out his 15mm troops for a battle, and clumped two tanks next to each other as a field unit, and it turned out that one was German, the other Russian, he’d kinda shake his head at me and insist that, at the least, we get the nationalities right.
Bob has a fairly large collection of 15mm troops… some time ago, he planned to host a huge Barbarossa campaign based on the detailed orders of battle provided by COMMAND DECISION, and so his shelves hold all sorts of WW2 troops. The campaign, however, never got off the ground… and so the poor guy has to put up with me, who can’t tell the difference between a Panther and a Sherman. Sad, sad.
Just about all my "modern" rules employ "Reaction Points" (RP). The sequences change slightly from rules set to rules set, but in each one, there’s pretty much of a pattern, and within the sequence, you’ll always find:
- First, the active side moves and fires
Second, there’s a response by the non-active side… either move or fire or both
Third, there’s a reaction by the active side using Reaction Points (RP)
Fourth, yet another reaction by the non-active side using RP
Each side has a limited number of RP. To have a unit react, 1 RP must be assigned to the unit, indicating that a message was sent from HQ (or from wherever messages are sent). Second, there’s an 80 percent probability that the message arrives at its destination. Toss percentage dice under 80, and the unit carries out its orders to move or fire or both.
In a game employing alternate movement, the RP ploy permits a bit of "local initiative", wherein the sides are not strictly locked into the you-go/I-go pattern.
Most of the WW2 games I set up will employ 10 to 12 stands per side, with each stand representing something down around the company or platoon level. And with single stand units, since a single hit can’t destroy a stand, there’s got to be data sheets to record unit losses.
In the last battle we fought, with Bob as the Russian commander, and me as the German commander, there was yet another bit of data keeping to perform. Here, we had to record the "Ammunition Points" (AP) of each unit. Each time a unit fired, it used up an AP. To provide the field forces with ammunition, we set up, on a side table, a track of ‘ammunition vehicles’, one for each unit, which meant that we had 10 or 12 separate tokens, i.e., supply trucks, on the supply map.
Once each half-bound, the sides would dice for the progress made by the supply trucks attempting to get through to the front. Via a percentage dice throw, a good toss would have all but one of the trucks proceeding along the supply route, or, with an unlucky toss, only 3 would progress.
In this type of ploy, there’s got to be a balance between several factors: first, the number of times a unit can fire within the bound; second, the number of AP each supply vehicle can bring up; third, the length of the supply route.
Our battle allowed for 3 phases during which a unit could fire during the half-bound, hence we had to provide at least 3 bullets for a front line unit to keep in stock.
Some time ago, in the first game in which I used the supply routines, I had a 4-point supply route, and trucks would proceed from (1) the supply depot to (2) first midpoint to (3) second midpoint to (4) the field unit. A 4-point trek proved unwieldy, as, due to the limiting dice throws concerning supply vehicle progress, units were quickly running out of ammo, and the supply rout was reduced to a 3-point trek.
In our Russian-German battle, each unit on a side started with 5 AP, permitting it to get in 5 shots before it first ran out of ammunition. Then, when a truck arrived, another 4 AP would be delivered. To prevent rear-bound units, those that didn’t engage in combat, from accumulating an infinite supply of bullets, a limit of 5 AP was placed on each unit as the maximum number of AP it could accumulate.
We fought three armor battles, and in all of them, my heavy tanks were destroyed. I have a tendency to rush my heavy armor up front to take advantage of their fire power, and so they draw repeated enemy fire.
In the Simon universe of WW2 warfare, any armored unit can impact on any armored enemy unit, regardless of relative size. Anytime a unit selects a target unit, there’s always some damage done to the target. It can range from a few points to many points, depending upon the size of the weapon firing and the target’s armor… but I always knock off a few points.
This is in direct contrast to several sets of armor rules, which give a "weapon factor" which must be added to a die roll, and the sum of the two must be more that the target’s armor value. For example, a light tank’s weapon factor might be 3, while a heavy tank’s armor value might be 14, so that no matter what size die you tossed, the total of the weapon factor plus the die roll could not equal or exceed the armor defense value.
I noted that I had failed to provide any sort of ‘victory conditions’ in the games we played, and so, in all three battles, we continuously flailed away at each other, until it appeared that the two forces on the field would drop from exhaustion simultaneously.
In each game, I set out a special "field order" phase, during which the active side could call on one or more of several helpful items. For example, he could call for an artillery barrage, or an airstrike. Or he could call on his reserves... at the outset of the battle, each side diced to see if any of its units would start off-board. In this manner, either one or two units would not be allowed to come on the field unless issued field orders.
Field orders called also be used to "repair" units, i.e., to lessen their damage. This was the most sought-after item in the field orders listing… a certain number of hits would destroy a unit, and to keep the number of ‘destruction points’ down, Bob and I would use our field orders to "repair" our units, and lessen the number of existing destruction points. In fact, so concerned with reducing damage were we, that, most of the time, we simply neglected to bring on our reserve units and fought with a smaller-size force than we had to.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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