I recently tried a solo game at the squad level... one 20mm stand with 5 figures representing a squad. This was a sort of "talk to yourself" game, for, at the beginning, I didn’t have too many rules... in fact, none.
It was a free kriegspiel game, in which, as I encountered a situation, I asked myself, "Now, what would this particular unit do when confronted with this situation?" And then I would answer and move the troops accordingly. Gradually, as the game proceeded, I developed a set of rules, which I then tried to apply consistently to similar situations.
The occasion for the scenario arose in the ongoing WW2 e-mail campaign I’m conducting between Bob Hurst and Don Bailey. Bob had invaded an island occupied by one of Don’s forces, beaten the defenders rather severely, and the result was that the Bailey force had retreated into the surrounding countryside, reduced in strength.
Each force, or army, has a Relative Strength (RS)... all start with an RS of 10, and after the battle, Bob’s men had an RS of 9, while Don’s people had an RS of 7. Both brought up reinforcements to the island, and in the next campaign turn, Don ordered his force to attack Bob’s positions... a bold move.
Instead of conducting the battle on a large scale, i.e., division versus division, or battalion versus battalion, I decided to reduce it to the squad level. I gave Bob 7 squads, plus a couple of machine guns, and gave Don 6 squads, plus machine guns, to counter-attack.
On the table, I laid out the town of Miltner, occupying a total area of about 4 feet by 4 feet, which had 12 buildings in it, as shown on the accompanying map. This was going to be a house-to-house-fighting scenario. The grounds of each house covered an area of 8-inches by 8-inches, and movement would be from house to house, as the forces advanced through the town.
I diced for the initial positions of the squads in Bob’s defending force, and discovered that if you drew an east-west line across the field through Flag House, most of the squads were north of this line, with only a couple of stands in the south of town. Each house could hold a maximum of 2 squads.
Don’s advancing force started from the south baseline, and here, too, I diced to see how his squads would appear. First on the map were Don’s squads #1 and #2, denoted by D1 and D2, concentrating on Grosham House. No defenders were present, and so D1 and D2 took possession of the property.
Just north of Grosham House was the Joab House, in which one of Hurst’s MG units was situated. The MG opened fire on D1 and D2 and I had the first fire fight of the battle.
With only 7 stands on one side, and 6 on the other, I wasn’t worried about overloading the system with complexities. Combat would essentially be stand-on-stand, and at the most, it would be 2-stands-on-2-stands. One of the things I wanted to avoid were the procedures for "close assault"... I wanted everything resolved solely by the firing procedures.
I re-fought the battle several times, each time changing a couple of procedures, until I came up with what I thought was an acceptable outcome..
Initially, I decided that each engagement between the opposing troops would consist of a maximum of 6 rounds of fire. During each round, an infantry squad would fire once and an MG would fire twice. As I said, no close assault here... just lots of firing.
- Round 1 Here, the probability of hit (POH) for each stand or MG was defined to be 60 percent. Each time it was hit, the target received a casualty figure
Round 2 The POH was reduced to 50 percent.
Round 3 The POH was 40 percent
Round 4 The POH was 30 percent
Round 5 The POH was 20 percent
Round 6 The POH was 10 percent
Round by round, the number of casualty figures increased. As soon as a targeted stand accumulated 4 casualty figures, it retreated, and the combat was over. Consequently, rarely did I reach Rounds 5 or 6... the participating stands had fallen back before then.
There were two ways for a fire fight to end. The first was as I just described... one of the units taking 4 casualties and retreating. The second occurred when neither side hit each other for two consecutive rounds of firing. In this instance, the two forces stopped and glared at each other, waiting for the next turn.
When a stand fell back, I removed all of its casualty figures, but kept 1 as a "residue" of the original 4, which meant that in subsequent fire fights, its threshold, i.e., its ability to hold position, was slightly lower. I did the same for the unit or units that had forced the fall back. Which meant that, little by little, all the units were becoming weaker. I should note that I played the scenario several times over, and eventually changed the number of casualty figures kept as a residue... after each firefight, I diced for all participants, and they each kept either 1 or 2 casualty figures as residues.
Another item I looked at was the number of casualty figures to be received before a unit was mandated to fall back. In the order of battle I gave above, Don had a total of 6 stands, while Bob had 7... yet Don was the attacking player. One could argue that Don’s slightly-smaller force had a better morale factor, a better sticking capability, i.e., a "banzai" factor... and so I ruled that before one of Don’s squads had to fall back, it had to have received 4 casualty figures, but that, for one of Bob’s squads to fall back, it needed only a total of 3 casualty figures.
Note that I wasn’t interested in assessing casualties due to the fire fights. I was solely interested in the accumulation of casualty figures and not in actual losses. Victory was to be obtained, not by attritting the enemy, but by forcing him to retreat out of town. If a stand was driven back from, and out of, the town, I deemed it out of the battle, unable to continue.
In the first game, I had Side A move, then had both sides engage in the six rounds of fire, then Side B move, then another six rounds of fire, and so on. After awhile, I dropped the ‘six rounds’ procedure, using only four rounds of fire... it turned out that the last two rounds of fire, at probabilities of hit (POH) of 20 and 10 percent, weren’t doing too much.
And then I reverted to a card-governed system of activation. Each card listed a particular squad, which moved up when its card was drawn. The typical lurchy system, preventing any unit coordination. Played a couple of games through with this system, and decided to go on to bigger and better things.
Next was a carded sequence in which, after a unit card was drawn and discarded, I diced to see if it could be drawn again to give the unit a "second life" for that turn. I played the scenario through with this sequence, but decided there was too much dicing, even for a solo presentation.
Then, for the last go-through, I divided the squads into three categories... efficient, regular, and poor, with cards for each. Efficient squads were listed on 3 cards, giving them maximum maneuverability. For example, in Don’s units, Squad D1 was efficient, :D2 was regular, and D3 was poor. I prepared four cards for these units: Units That Can Move And Fire Efficient Regular Poor Card #1 D1 Card #2 D1 D2 Card #3 D1 D3 Card #4 D2
Note that D1’s cards permitted it to coordinate with both the regular squad, D2, and the poor squad, D3. But also note that the poor squad, D3, had no card of its own... in a sense, it had to be dragged into action by pairing it with the efficient unit, D1.
Since Don had a total of 6 squads, i.e., two of the above sets of efficient, regular and poor, I prepared two such 4-card groupings and mixed them together, giving his force a total of 8 cards.
I did the same for Bob’s force. Since Bob had a total of 7 squads, I divided these into two groups of three, which gave him the 8-card set as defined above. Then, I termed his additional squad as a ‘regular, and gave him one additional card for it. He now had a total of 9 cards.
I wanted the decks to be even in number, so I added one card to Don’s deck, a "buffer" card, on which none of his units moved, giving Don a total of 9 cards.
For this last and final effort, which I think was the sixth run-through, I diced to see where each of Don’s attacking squads appeared. Two squads plus one MG attacked Klick House, in which a defending infantry squad and MG were set up. When a squad’s card was drawn, it could move and fire. Its POH was 60 percent, and if it hit, I crossed out a box on the target’s data sheet. I had given up keeping track of the hits on a unit using casualty figures, reverting to the time-tested data sheet.
Each infantry squad fired once, each MG fired twice. And when an activated unit fired, the targeted unit returned fire with a POH of 50 percent.
Each block of four hits on the data sheet was critical. When a unit recorded its fourth hit, it had to fall back, to retreat to the house to its rear. The same when it received its eighth hit. And when it received its twelfth hit, that was it... the squad was destroyed.
An infantry squad accompanied by an MG got to fire 3 times, making the pair of units fairly powerful. At Klick House, the defending squad and MG quickly acquired four hits and fell back to Flag House.
Don’s other squads took over Grosham and Chris house, establishing a foothold.
A maximum of two squads could occupy a house, and I quickly found out that when one of them fell back, leaving a single squad to defend it, the single squad, with its firing capability of one volley, one shot, when its card was drawn, was no match for the 3-shot capability of a squad with a MG attached.
As the cards of each side’s decks were drawn, it became important to group the squads together... and the efficient units, with their names appearing on three different cards, were worth their weight in gold.
Don had 2 efficient squads, D1 and D4... D1 was a sole infantry squad, while D4, also an infantry squad, had an attached MG. D4 proved to be a true terror... Not only did it have great gobs of fire power (firing 3 times... once for the infantry, and twice for the MG), but as an efficient unit, it popped up more frequently than the other units.
Naturally enough, D4 attracted lots of bullets. Somewhere around the third turn, D4 was driven back for the third time... it had accumulated 12 hits, and that was that. Don’s attack seemed to peter out after his D4 squad disappeared.
Don had another infantry-and-MG pair, D6, but it turned out that D6 was a poor unit... it appeared on only one card in the attacker’s deck of 9, and so D6 was, for the most part, no help at all.
I ran through the battle until I saw that the attacker’s force had no chance to win. With 6 squads, each having 12 hit boxes, Don’s initial total number of hit boxes were 72. He gave up the ghost when his force had only 10 hit boxes left out of his original number. For campaign purposes, I had to declare Don’s force destroyed.
I should note that the defending force, at this time, had 29 hit boxes left out of its original 84 (7 stands at 12 hit boxes each). In effect, this force, too, wasn’t in great shape, and I also took it out of the campaign.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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