Way back in the mid-seventies, I wrote a couple of articles on using 54mm WW2 figures for skirmish encounters. My approach had each man in a force, at any given time, represented by one of three different figures, i.e., three different poses…one if he was running/standing, one if he was kneeling, one if he went prone. And so, if one of your men, say, Quinn by name, moved across the field, you’d replace Quinn’s figure with the proper pose… Quinn could fall prone to take aim, he could stand up and sprint 10 inches to nearby cover, or he could get on his knees behind a wall to view the area in front of him. This, to me, gave a “true” visual representation of a skirmish action… if your man went prone, no more of this crappola of simply tipping the figure on its side. You’d actually put a prone figure down. And by viewing the table top, you’d get to see the full panorama of what was going on. Some guys were crawling forward, others were dashing for cover, others firing, while others were prone on their back, indicating someone had truly put a hurt on them. Since I was dealing with single-man skirmishing, each player would handle about 6 or so men. The player would have to track each man for his wounds, and for his ammunition supply, i.e., the rounds in his weapon, and the number of spare clips he carried. I permitted a man who carried a rifle to fire 10 rounds before he had to reload, or 25 rounds if he had a submachine gun. And each man carried a couple of spare clips. A man, when he fired, had a basic Probability Of Hit (POH) for his particular weapon, from which was deducted a percentage if the target was in cover, and another percentage for range. To make up for these deductions, a man could empty his full clip at the target… every round he fired would add 3 percent to his POH. Thus a guy with a submachine gun could keep his finger on the trigger and blast away with all 25 rounds at the target. He’d add 75 percentage points to his POH, making it hard to miss, but the negatives were that, having just emptied his magazine, he’d have to spend time reloading, and since each man carried only 2 spare magazines, he could perform this wonderful feat only two times before he’d be out of ammunition. A couple of weeks ago, I took my 54mm figures out of the box… hadn’t gamed with them in years… and decided to try a new approach to the running-out-of-ammunition procedure. I decided that I didn’t want to track the number of clips carried by a man, nor the exact number of rounds each man fired… if he really let go at the target, firing a huge burst to augment his POH, I would let the dice decide if he ran out of ammo. If he was lucky, his weapon would remain loaded… if not, he’d have to reload. I played a couple of solo efforts… the first pitted 6 men against 4, the second had 9 men against 6. Both times, the larger force drove the weaker off the field. Fire power was definitely decisive. The reason that the larger force literally drove its opponents back was due to the results of the mandated reaction tests when a man was hit. I set each man’s reaction level at a fairly low value (50 percent), which meant that about half the time, a man would fail the test. And if he failed, he’d fall back 10 inches and end up prone, on his back. When he was next activated in the sequence, he could attempt to recover (70 percent chance), and if he did, his sole function was to rise to his knees. After that, he was free to move on. Since the force with the greater number of men forced more reaction tests on its opponents, it wasn’t surprising that the smaller force kept being driven back. I’ve never liked skirmish games in which the players have to track the wounds inflicted on the figures… this man is hit on the right arm so that his fire efficiency is down, that man was hit in the leg so he can’t move as fast as the other men, the other man merely had a light wound. I gave each man a total of 20 Loss Points (LP)… when he was hit 20 times, i.e., crossed off 20 LP boxes, he was out. This doesn’t mean that 20 rounds had to hit him before he fell down for good… an LP is not exactly a hit… LP piled up rather rapidly, so that a man was pretty much out of it after he was fired at two or three times. In the last scenario, 9 men versus 6, I permitted 3 of the 6, as a defending force, to set up on the top of a small hill in the middle of the field, while the remaining 3 started at their baseline. All the men in the 9-man force started on their own baseline and advanced toward the hill. To illustrate how the firing procedures worked, we can look at Corporal Quinn, one of the attackers, who moved up and set up at the edge of a woods at the base of the hill. Quinn could see Joven, a defender, perched on his knees behind a wall at the top of the hill. Quinn decided to take Joven out. a. Quinn’s basic chance to hit Joven was 20 percent, i.e., his POH was 20 percent. But due to the fact that Joven was under cover, the POH was reduced another 10 percent, making it a grand total of 10 percent. Now a 10 percent chance of hitting Joven isn’t too great, and so Quinn decided to press the trigger, and keep on pressing the trigger, hoping that the sheer volume of lead he threw at Joven would make up for the poor initial POH. b The term “keep on pressing the trigger” meant that Quinn had a choice of 3 possible modifiers to his POH… he could add +50 to his POH, or +60, or +70. Augmenting his initial 10 percent POH with one of these numbers would bring the total POH up to a respectable level. And so Quinn chose to raise his POH by 70 percent. c Quinn’s POH is now up to 80, but there’s one additional factor to call into play. I mentioned that Quinn had moved up prior to firing. A man is allowed 2 actions… he can move twice, or move and fire, or fire twice. Having moved on his first action, and fired on the second, we now penalize Quinn by deducting 30 percent from his POH. His final POH is 50, and a toss of percentage dice below 50 indicates that Joven is hit. The next time that Quinn fires, if he takes no other action but simply fires, he won’t get penalized with the minus 30 percent. d If Quinn’s toss is successful, we knock off 1 basic LP on Joven’s data sheet. But there’s more. Since Quinn decided to blast away by selecting an augmentation of 70 percent, the number of LP inflicted on Joven is increased by 1 for every 10 percent increase in the POH. With 70 percent, we add another 7 LP to Joven’s sheet, and cross out a total of 8 of Joven’s 20 boxes. Remember that Joven only has 20 LPs, hence with a loss of 8 LPs, he’s almost half out of the battle. e Next, having been hit, Joven takes a reaction test. His basic number is 50 percent, and from this we deduct the number of LPs he’s lost, so that his reaction number becomes 50-8, or 42 percent, i.e., toss 42 or less on percentage dice. The chances are that Joven won’t pass, and so he’ll stagger back 10 inches, and drop to the ground, prone and on his back. f And lastly, we have to determine if, by pressing the trigger and blasting away, Quinn ran out of ammunition. This is done by again looking at the augmentaion he chose. The 70 percent augmentation says that Quinn has a 70 percent chance of running out of ammunition, and, if so, will have to reload when he’s next activated. Looking at the above paragraphs, you’ll note that only when a man augments his POH is there a chance of running out of ammunition. If he decides to live with the initial POH of 20 percent, he’ll be fairly ineffective, since even if he hits with this low POH, he’ll only get to cross off one LP box on his target’s sheet. It’s only by augmenting his POH can he inflict serious injury to an opponent. And to keep matters simple, I restricted the augmentation to only three numbers… 50, 60, or 70. Joven wasn’t the only defender in serious condition. One of his buddies, a Private Worne, had lost 18 of his 20 LP boxes after being shot at, and Worne decided to call it a day. Whenever he was activated, he discretely pulled back 10 inches, trying to get off-field. The encounter, 9 men versus 6, took about 2 hours to play in solo fashion. I think it would have gone much faster if there had been multiple players present. I divided the forces into groups of 3 men each, hence the oncoming 9 men had 3 “squads”, each of 3 men, while the 6 defenders had 2 “squads”, each of 3 men. By giving each player a squad of 3 men to command, the procedures would run more quickly. The firing system I described in Paragraphs (a) through (f) above, is fairly basic. Additional modifiers could be tossed in to account for range, for weapon type, and so on. Back to PW Review March 2002 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com