I presented a WW2 game to a group of friends... I call them "friends", but I’m not sure if that’s the proper term... do true friends laugh at your rules?... do they mock your set-ups?... do they deride your presentations? In this WW2 encounter, one side, consisting of about 12 stands, was hidden, waiting to ambush a larger force. The ping pong table was full of woods, of towns, of hills... good ambush country. The larger force had some 16 stands in it. If we call each stand a company, and say that each side had two battalions of 6 or 8 company stands each, then we have a brigade-vs-brigade battle. The battle started with the larger, attacking force appearing on the field, all 16 stands worth. What made the appearance noteworthy was the fact that all 16 stands were lined up, shoulder to shoulder, infantry and armor, in one long line, one grand phalanx formation. Each stand measured about 2 inches wide... and so we had one long 32-inch line of units. They all moved onto the table together, side by side, for a distance of 10 inches. None of this silly reconnaissance business. None of this silly business about sending out a patrol to try and discover where the enemy was hidden. None of this silly business about breaking your force up into special units... one unit to head for the town, another to head for the woods, etc. Nope. Just one huge, long-line, shoulder-to-shoulder phalanx. In about 2 or 3 moves, several companies of the grand phalanx butted up against a couple of the hidden companies, and the line halted and traded fire. And about this time, the smaller force called in for an airstrike on the approaching phalanx. And so an aircraft appeared on the flank of the phalanx, ready to go right down the line, to spew forth death and destruction on this target-rich environment. First in the sub-sequence pertaining to the aircraft was anti-aircraft fire. I had decreed that every company on the field, every stand, had an inherent anti-aircraft capability. The aircraft moved onto the field 10 inches, and zipped overhead directly on top of the first few stands of the phalanx, and each ground company within range (5 inches) opened up. With each anti-aircraft unit having a 50 percent probability-of-hit, the ground units scored 3 hits. Four hits would have taken the plane out, and so it survived long enough to drop a bomb (another 50 percent probability-of-hit), blasted one tank, flew another 10 inches, and was promptly shot down by the next burst of anti-aircraft fire. Immediately, there were shouts of "This doesn’t look right to me! Where’s the collateral damage rule? Here you’ve got targets lined up shoulder to shoulder... one is hit, explodes, and the very adjacent stands remain untouched!". Of interest to me was the fact that no-one, I repeat, no-one, said anything about the odd-ball, long-line phalanx formation that existed on the field. They all seemed to take this as a given, that this was a proper and sufficient tactic for the WW2 era, that this exemplified standard WW2 combat techniques. To make this long story short, I must relate that in the next edition of my WW2 rules, there’s a huge section devoted to nothing but collateral damage. Make sure that on my ping pong table, that when you bring your forces on the field, you keep at least a 2-foot distance between units. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me. Back to PW Review May 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