My collection includes a small group of plastic MERTON figures, World War II "modern" figures... little fellows some 45mm tall, quite skinny, rather ugly, definitely not collectors' items. The five-and-dime-stores sell packs of el-cheapo green-plastic WW II figures which are slightly larger than the MERTON's. A judicious use of the X-acto knife and of the soldering gun can easily transform the el-cheapo figures into MERTON size. The el-cheapos are fairly good looking figures, speaking anatomically, to begin with; when I'm through with them, however, they're uglier than the MERTON's. But for gaming purposes, they're quite compatible. On the table, I set up a small town of 7 houses. Each building was situated in its own "courtyard", an area which extended 10 inches from the walls of the house. The perimeter of the courtyard was defined as the departure line, the jump-off point, for an assault on the house by the attacker's squads. By definition, a squad was composed of 3 figures... I don't have that many MERTON's around for a full complement of 9-man squads. I get the same effect, however, by using data sheets... instead of immediately taking figures off the table when a squad takes casualties (and, you will admit, immediate removal of one man in a 3-man squad, each time a hit occurs, would make for a very short game), boxes are crossed out on the squad's data sheet, and a man is removed only when a total of 4 boxes is scratched. The sequence begins with the attacker assembling his assault squads, and placing them, together with those men that are to provide support fire, on the perimeter. Each of the attacking squads must be placed so that it directly faces the wall of the house it is to assault... none of this tricky attack-from-a-45-degree-angle, out of the line-of-fire, business. He who assaults must charge directly in, and run the gauntlet of, defensive fire. Each house has 4 rooms; each wall of the house is defined to have one room behind it... this is where the defenders are located. Hence, when I use the word "wall" in reference to the defenders, what I mean is the room in which the defending squads rest. After the assaulting squads are placed on the perimeter, the defense dices to determine if the defending squads see the attackers. There is a 70 percent chance they do so... one throw is made for all the squads assigned to defend a wall, and if the dice throw is successful, all the defending squads at that wall issue defensive fire, and the targeted assault squads take losses. The next step in the sequence is for the attacker to place all his assaulting squads a distance of 4-inches from the walls. At this point, there is a round of simultaneous fire stemming from three sources: a. All defending squads b. All squads placed on the perimeter by the attacker and designated to provide support fire c. Each assaulting squad dices and there is a chance (50%) that the squad participates in the round of fire Subsequent to this fire phase, all affected squads -- those that were hit -- take a reaction check... they either continue to carry out orders, or fall back. Those brave assaulting squads that pass their reaction test will continue with the attack; they will close to contact, and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders. Melee is resolved, and the winner and loser take reaction tests to determine their dispositions. Defending squads that lose may fall back to another room in the house or run to an adjacent house, or surrender. And that's the basic sequence. Note that there are only three positions of interest on the field: First, the departure line, 10 inches from the wall of the house to be assaulted. Second, the line at a distance of 4-inches from the house, at which point the assaulting squads take fire, and may get off a round of their own. Third, the interior of the house itself, where all combat is fought. In all the above, I have referred to "attackers" and "defenders" in equal fashion. The attackers, of course, are the dreaded MERTON's, for the game is centered on them, and they are moved around the field. But in the above description of the sequence, you'll note that the defending force is really never seen. The defending squads fire from the rooms behind the walls of the houses, fall back from room to room, zip from house to house... all without ever being glimpsed. Which means that the defending players have no need to push figures around... their force is a "paper" force, completely defined by their data sheets. I set up a "command center" for the defenders; a 30" x 30" map of the village, on which they could, with little cards for each of their squads, track each squad's location (which room of which house they were in) and strength (in terms of boxes). In fire combat, each man's weapon received a number of "Kill Dice" (KD), 10-sided dice, for which: 1, 2, 3, 4 was a hit when the defender fired 1, 2, 3 was a hit when the attacker fired The KD assignment was: Revolver 1 KD Rifle 1 KD Light MG 2 KD Heavy MG 3 KD Grenade 3 KD So as to not overload the system, the use of Heavy MG's was limited, as were grenades. Each squad was assigned a total of 3 grenades. A squad's data sheet looked like: SQUAD: GRENADES: 0 0 0 HITS: 10 20 30 100 10 20 30 100 10 20 30 100 Each time the squad took hits, the appropriate number of boxes, i.e., numbers, was circled. The numbers represent the probability that one man was lost. If the squad took 2 hits, for example, then two numbers would be circled, the last being the 20, and the chance that a man was killed was 20 percent. Note that when 4 hits occurred, and the 100 was circled, an automatic kill was established. Somewhere in the town was the Armory, and this was the attacker's key objective. The first time we tried the rules, Colonel Haub, of the Imperial Merton Infantry, simply massed his entire allotment of some 10 squads against a single wall of the house he was assaulting. There were only about 2 squads defending each wall, and Colonel Haub quickly walked right through the defenders, wall by wall, house by house, until the Armory was reached. The first scenario also deprived the defenders of any heavy machine guns... I wasn't sure of the balance between attackers and defenders and didn't want to make the town impregnable. The result was that the engagement was weighted in favor of the attackers. The next scenario gave the defenders much more firepower. I tossed in, not only the machine guns, but a slew of grenades, each with their 3 Kill Dice. And I limited the number of combat squads that could assault a given wall to three... this put a limit on the number of assaulting troops at 9 men, and gave an even battle. Once the assaulting troops closed with the troops defending the wall of interest, each side simply multiplied its number of troops by a 10-sided die, and the winner was defined to be the side with the higher product. Each side then took a reaction test. For each squad engaged, the loser added +20 to a percentage dice throw... if the total came out over 100, then that squad would immediately surrender. Less drastic results were for the squad to fall back... either to another room in the same house, or to the next house. Throughout the battle, I think only 2 squads surrendered. Toward the end, the defenders had suffered heavy losses and pulled back just about every remaining squad they had to protect the Armory itself. I took a look at the map-board in their command center, which indicated how they had placed their troops, and saw that the Armory appeared to be crammed full of the entire 89th Division... the place was definitely filled to overflowing... this was do-or-die, the last valiant stand. The attackers divided their troops in two groups, with each group massed against one wall of the Armory. Defensive fire from the troops in the Armory (lots of machine guns at 3 dice each, coupled with grenades at 3 dice each) made mincemeat out of one massed force, but the force at the other wall survived, and closed to contact. A wee bit o' dice tossing, but the conclusion was inevitable... the Imperial Merton Infantry was victorious. Back to PW Review December 1993 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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