In the April, 1989 issue of the REVIEW, I described an encounter between the Xaradugians and Yuccans... a fierce airstrike, using HARPOON type rules, by the Xaradugian Air Force upon a Yuccan SAM complex. Tucked away in the southeastern sector of Europe, Xaradu and Yucca share a small common border (see map)... they've got their own little war going on, and never mind UN Resolutions 487 and 540, neither of these two warlike nations -- both described in Professor Feodore Robutussin's yet unpublished history as the "pitbulls of Europe" -- will back off. This article relates another Xaradugian effort; the tale of an armored ground strike across the border to destroy another Yuccan site. A momentary digression. Bob Hurst has assembled -- is still assembling -- a huge conglomeration of WWII and modern armor units in 15mm. His intent is to host a fairly extensive modern campaign using the guidelines given in COMMAND DECISION (CD). The CD campaign book is quite detailed in scope. The makeup of every US, British, German, Russian, etc., unit you can think of is listed... all to the scale of the CD armor rules, wherein, using 15mm figures, one stand of infantry (about 3/4 x: 3/4 inch) is a platoon, and one vehicle model represents five or six actual vehicles. Bob has played the CD rules and is not completely enthralled by them; he's still looking for a modern armor set that flows more freely than does CD. At which point I stepped in. "Bob, you do realize that my field of wargaming expertise encompasses not only the ancient, medieval, Pike and shot, horse and musket, and turn of the century colonial eras, but also the modern era?" Bob nodded. "Bob, you do realize that I am all too willing to draw up for you a superior set of modern armor rules?" Bob nodded again. "Bob, you do realize..." At this point, Bob broke in, stating that he had to attend an important meeting with his Notary Public, and he wanted to get there before the rates went up. off he went, mumbling to himself. I took Bob's nods (two, possibly three, in a row) as confirmation of his interest in my armor rules, and I commenced my research into the appropriate references...textual efforts such as Dr. H. Bigham's thought provoking article on clockwise versus counterclockwise rifling in Third World countries, and the seminal work by Z. Igwich on the HECD 90mm artillery round... for those interested in such detail, HECD stands for High Explosive Cow Dung, and the artillery projectile takes advantage of the potassium nitrate to be found in manure piles. The result of my efforts: ARMOR-ONE, so named because there is bound to be TWO, THREE, etc., as perfection is gradually achieved. I should mention that the battle was set up in 15mm, and that the armor I had accumulated was of German and Russian heritage... Hetzers and Mk Vs and T-34s and and Pkz IVs and other WWII items. I had, for no other reasons than sheer ignorance coupled with a dash of perversity, intermixed guns and turrets and chassis to flesh out the Yuccan and Xaradugian forces, so much so that former members of the Wehrmacht or of the First Siberian Guards would have had great difficulty in recognizing their equipment. To give credit where credit is due, I must state that Bob Hurst's 15mm armor does follow approved historical guidelines and orders of battle. Indeed, one of the reasons I had amassed my own 15mm armored force was because Bob's units, when placed on the table for battle, offered a fine visual perspective, especially in light of the fact that the 15mm foot troops were clearly visible as they operated alongside the more massive armor elements. This is in direct contrast to the presentation offered by microarmor (1/300) forces, wherein the teeny weeny tankies are barely discernible, let alone the infantry figures. Xaradugian Generals Fred Haub and Fred Hubig had at their disposal the following force with which to carry out the attack against the Yuccan site: Unit Comment No of Data Sheets 4 Infantry platoons A platoon consists of two 1-inch x 1-inch stands 4 Halftracks for infantry transport Each halftrack model carries 1 inf platoon 4 1 Motorcycle recon platoon A recon unit consists of two 1-inch stands 1 2 Light tank platoons A unit consists of 2 tank models 2 1 Med tank platoon 3 tank models 3 1 Anti-tank unit 2 gun models 2 Vehicles for A/T units 2 models 2 Tracked artillery unit 2 models, 1 hvy gun, 1 med gun 2 Command vehicle One "jeep type" model 1 The Yuccan Defense Force, the dreaded YDF, was headed by Bryan DeWitt, and his order of battle was pretty much the same as that of the attacking Xaradugians. This immediately caused Generals Haub and Hubig to cry out: "Why are we attacking?" I, as Master-Umpire and Game Setter-Upper, had no answer for this, other than to say that this was the way things had been, and that the history books said there had been an attack, and that it was too late to change it now... as it has been written, so shall it be done. The above listing of the attacking force shows there are 21 Xaradugian elements to be tracked on the Data Sheets, an example of which is: On the left side, for ready reference, are listed the unit types and the Strength Points (SP) associated with each. A halftrack, for example, has 8SP boxes before it's knocked out... in the middle section, therefore, which has a total of 20 SP, 32. boxes are immediately crossed out, leaving 8 as the initial number. The highest number of SP, 20, is that of a heavy tank. The right side of the Data Sheet is the "pin tally". Each time an element is hit, there's a chance that it is pinned: Pin % = 30 + [5 x No of previous pins] Thus the more an element is pinned, the more chance it will became pinned in the future. When pinned, a "P" is circled, and when the element recovers, the "P" is crossed out and an "A" circled to indicate the element is on its feet again. Any number of "Ps" can be accumulated. One "P" marker can be automatically crossed out per bound during the rally phase; another may be crossed out if the force commander helps out. Three active "P" markers indicates an element is disorganized and immobile. Note use of the term "element" in the above discussion. An element refers to a component of a unit. In the light tank platoon, for example, the unit, i.e. , the platoon, is composed of 2 tanks. Each tank is an element and is tracked, and each of the two elements can became pinned on an individual basis. Elements that are pinned move slower and suffer a firing penalty. It was my intent to use m visible pin markers; I thought it be more interesting if the opposition, firing on a unit, had no idea of whether it was pinned or not. The thought was fine, but didn't work out in practice, for most of the time, when an element fired, the participants forgot to look on its data sheet to see if it was pinned or not. First lesson: ARMOR-TWO will use visible pin markers. It also turned out that the base pin percentage of 30%, was too small... units weren't accumulating pinned markers as rapidly as I had anticipated. Second lesson: ARMOR-TWO will use 40% as the base pin marker percentage. The map below shows the terrain associated with the battle; there are three potential targets for the Xaradugian strike: a SAM site, a Communications tower, and an ammunition depot. Brian Dewitt set up his defensive YDF components not knowing where the attack would be centered, and I then threw dice to determine, for the Xaradugians, where they would be headed. The dice decreed that the target was the SAM site on the western edge; I so informed the Xaradugian commanders, and the battle was on. My master plan for the scenario was based on the Yuccan requirement to spread YDF elements all along the table to cover all possibilities of attack; this would, in theory, balance out the fact that both forces were essentially equal. The Xaradugians, I thought, could mass most of their units in the target area before the Yuccans, could bring up the resources scattered about the field. Third lesson: Unless you've got a set-piece, one-on-one, head-on battle going, give the attacker a substantial advantage and DON'T rely on defensive units NOT arriving on time. They always do. The fact that the Yuccan heavy tank unit had been placed in the eastern half of the field prevented a very early wipe-out of the attacking Xaradugians. Despite the relatively light defense initially concentrated around the SAM site, enough YDF units were able to be brought up to drive back Fred Haub's advancing force. Things started out badly for the Xaradugians and rapidly got worse. The first few Yuccan defensive shots in the middle of the table drew yelps of outrage from Yanadugian General Hubig, who questioned the quasi- nuclear bomb effect that the impacts had upon his units. Unfortunately for the good General Hubig, the planetary-blast effect was due to a couple of consecutive unlucky "Loss/Damage" (ID) card draws. Firing Procedure The firing procedure involved two steps: 1. Target Acquisition: When a particular target was chosen and fired on, the first firing weapon had to acquire it by tossing anything but a "1" on a 10-sided die. The second weapon firing on the SAM target had to throw anything but a 1 or 2; the third weapon, anything but a 1 or 2 or 3...and so on. The intent was to prevent ALL weapons from miraculously and simultaneously "ganging up" on one poor target and blowing it to smithereens in one volley. 2. Loss/Damage: If acquisition was accomplished, an L/D card was drawn on which was listed the SP loss sustained by the target. The intent was to simplify the damage calculations usually associated with modern armor games ("... lessee, we're aiming at a Pkz III with a 75mm round at 1200 yards; it's got 53mm of armor at an angle of 32 degrees to the horizontal; the tank is hull down, not moving, and the shot is semi-frontal."). There were two types of cards; one was for infantry as a target, the other for armor and vehicles. The two types are shown at right. When a target was acquired, I, as chief card holder, would draw an L/D card, cross index the firing weapon with the type of target, and call out the target SP loss, which would be marked on the target's Data Sheet. There were only two modifiers to the number I called out: The first was the range factor. From the SP loss noted on the card was subtracted the ten's digit of the range measurement. Thus at a range of 27 inches, the SP loss on the card would be reduced by 2, and at a range of 53 inches, the reduction would be 5. If the firing element was pinned, the noted SP loss value would be decreased by 1. There were about ten different cards in each of the L/D decks. This method of damage assessment worked very rapidly and very well; indeed, it was one of the best accepted factors about ARMOR-ONE. What caused Fred Hubig's cries of pain and anguish was the fact that the very first series of hits on the medium tanks he had sent up the middle of the field produced L/D losses of 10 and 12 SP. Considering that medium tanks started out with 16 SP, an impact causing a reduction down to 5 or so SP was worth complaining about. General Hubig was quickly assured that the statistics of the situation would ultimately prevail, and that sooner or later, some lesser value L/D cards would appear. Several tanks later, they did. The SP loss values noted on the L/D cards varied. Heavy guns inflicted, on the average, larger losses than light guns, but occassionally, a light gun would sneak in with a great big whopper. All categories on all the cards had some "zeroes" filled in, indicating no damage whatsoever, despite the target being acquired. As noted on the L/D cards, the larger weapons were divided into three categories: heavy, medium, and light guns. In similar fashion, armored vehicles were divided into the sane three classes. On the Xaradugian left flank, Fred Haub's infantry, supported by light armor, made its way north, eventually making contact with the Yuccan units in the Great North Woods. At this point, Fred declared that he wanted to "overrun" the Yuccan position. Fred had purposely stayed awake for the entire game just for the "overrun" function, and he was extremely unhappy when the Unpire informed him that the "overrun" was no go. The bit about the "overrun" was a clever(?) idea of mine that fell flat. Trust me, ARMOR-TWO will not have an "overrun" provision. I had originally made a distinction between an "assault" and an "overrun" as follows: Only dismounted infantryl, perhaps supported by armor, could "assault". Here, the infantry and its supports were moved into contact with the defenders, L/D cards were drawn for the losses inflicted by each side on the other, and the remaining SP compared to see who won. If the attackers were successful, the defenders ran back, and the attackers consolidated the position. Only armor could "overrun". Here, the attackers were divided into two groups, A1 and A2. Group A2 stood about 6 inches back, A1 moved up, losses were inflicted, and the remaining SP of A1 and the defenders compared. If A1 won the "overrun" comparison, then group A2 was permitted an 18 inch advance, going right through the defender'ss position... sort of an armored blitzkrieg breakthrough. In assault, the winning attacking units won the position; in "overrun", the winning A1 units merely "diverted" the defenders long enough to permit A2's breakthrough; they didn't hold the position. Evidently, I didn't explain the differences between "assault" and "overrun" in great enough detail. Indeed, during the subsequent discussion, I was advised to do away with the distinction between the two procedures... I must note that I was advised of other things too, but because this is a family publication, I shall not mention them here. And so ARMOR-TWO shall contain only "assault" procedures. The assaulting forces can opt to concentrate on and win the position, gain a freebee move for a breakthrough-unit, or both. General DeWitt's Yuccan defenses holding firm against the Xaradugian advance. Here we see the latest in Yuccan heavy weaponry firing into the advancing armored Xaradugian forces. It is a shame that the Haub Xaradugians didn't complete the "overrun" attempt. I do remember that Fred had properly placed his A2 breakthrough form 6 inches in back of the attacking A1 units. If the Umpire had allowed the "overrun" to take place, and A1 had won, the attacking A2 force was less than 18 inches from the SAM site, their intended goal. The site was lightly defended, and if they could have broken through, great things could have happened. As it was, the Xaradugians were plastered, and the remnants of the attacking force retired back across the border. In all, I don't think the battle, as guided by the rules, went badly. As described above, I had tossed together quite a mix of different and virtually untested procedures in drawing up the rules. In addition, the movemnt phases and the firing sequences were not composed of simple you-go/I-go affairs, but were guided by a series of control cards designating the type of units that were to move and/or fire. I haven't touched on these, saving them, perhaps, for ARMOR-TEN. Back to PW Review September 1989 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 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