We've all heard of D-Day, the 6th of June... but now the full story can be told. The tale of Generals Butters and Sayre, who participated in a battle similar to the one that took place some 50 years before. General Von Butters commanded the forces defending the shores of Der Homeland. He had at his disposal some 12 units, which we termed regiments. The regiments were grouped in fours, giving the General 3 brigades, (4 regiments each), i.e., a division-of troops. The map on the ping-pong table was divided into randomly sized areas, termed provinces, each, under the stacking rules, capable of holding 3 regiments. There were about 20 towns on the field, i.e., some 20 built-up areas, plus another ten wooded areas. Von Butters then listed - on a highly classified document - the hidden location of all of his units. I was interested in Von Butters' initial set-up of his forces... would he place them on the beaches in the manner advocated by Rommel, or would he follow the procedure of the High Command of yesteryear, and place them further inland? General Clifton Sayre, MBE, set out his invading forces, fighting for Gweat Bwiton and wiberty (not to mention fweedom and powitical cowoctnecs). General Sayre, as did Von Butters, had a division of troopes which put him at a slight disadvantage... here he was, invading Der Homeland with a force equal in size to that of the defenders. But we gave General Sayre five "air strikes" before his men hit the beach. Each strike consisted of the toss of 3 10-sided dice, Hit Dice (HD). A result of 1, 2 or 3 resulted in a hit on the target. I should note that, after some 4 turns, all at tableside unanimously agreed that the "1,2,3 result" was too restrictive... the attrition rates were too low. And so we changed the results table... a toss of 1,2,3,4 was now a hit. The invading Bwitish forces also got another 4 air strikes which they could call in anytime during regular play. Mertons About a year ago, I reported on a WW II game using my collection of "Mertons," 40mm-size plastic figures which were manufactured in Germany. Mertons are fairly scarce nowadays... they seem to be collecters' items. It turns out that if one runs to one's local Woolworth, one can find packagea of WW II soldiers almost equal in size to the Mertons; for the price of about one Yankee dollah, one can purchase some 20? 30? figures. Since a Woolworth man is slightly larger than a Merton man, one must cut and trim the plastic Woolworthians down to size. Which brings up the question: why game with the Mertons at all? Why not stick to the Woolworthians? I have no answer for this, except to say: "If I got 'em, I play with 'em!" Each regiment of the involved forces consisted of 3 figures, 3 Mertons, if you will. Thus with 12 regiments per side, each of the players pushed a total of some 36 figures around the field, a not too exhausting task. The other result of the 3-men-per-regiment, 36-man-force definition was that the encounter resembled a giant table-size skirmish with 4Omm figures. Difficult Task In retrospect, General Sayre was given a truly difficult task. His men were armed with rifles, he had one heavy machine gun, two light machine guns... and this was the force with which he was to spread the banner of fweedom! But then again, Von Butters, men were similarly armed, and Von Butters suffered from a huge disadvantage. Not knowing just where the Bwitish would land, Von Butters had to spread out his men all over the field to protect a fairly long shoreline. In all, perhaps, the inequities balanced each other. General Sayre's objective was to capture Der Homeland's capital city of Plok, at which time, all defending Mertons would simultaneously throw up their hands and cry: "Kamerad!!" And the invaders would shout "Keep your hands waised, you wotten scoundwols!" A unit on the field could move as many areas for which it had sufficient Movement Points (MP). Each turn, the sides diced for their points, and received, for each of its units, either 6, 8 or 10 MP. Traveling cross country on the field, from one area to the next, required 2 MP. If a unit got on a road area, the required MP were down to 1 per road area. Using the roads, therefore, a unit could zip quite a distance on the map. The capital, Plok, was located only about 10 areas from the beaches, hence it appeared that in only one or two moves, the Bwitish forces would enter the town. But what stopped what looked like an easy advance was the Zone Of Control (ZOC) rule, which mandated that a force had to stop if it entered an enemy ZOC. Von Butters had placed his men to effectively stop the Bwits in their twacks... whenever the Bwits entered a town, it seemed as if it was already occupied by Von Butters' men. Rifles fired for a distance of 2 areas, machine guns for 3. Each rifleman firing got a 10-sided Hit Die (HD), light machines got 2 and heavy machine guns got 3 HD. Each unit (regiment) had its own data sheet, and when a hit occurred, it crossed out a box, and took a morale test. All units started out at an 80 percent level, and from this was deducted 5% for every box away from the nearest officer. Failure to pass the test resulted in the unit's falling back, and in placing one man in the "Rally Zone" from which he had to recover to rejoin his unit. If he failed a recovery test, the poor fellow was buried immediately. Each side had a deck of 5 sequence cards, each of which denoted whether the side could fire or move or both. One card was a special combat card... on the draw of this card, the player's units could advance into combat (entering an enemy occupied area) and receive a bonus in melee. Units could commence combat on the regular movement cards, but here, (a) they'd receive no combat bonus, and (b) all units attempting to enter combat on a movement card, had to be "prompted." i.e., they needed an officer to spur them on to perform their duty. The "prompting" player selected a number from 1 to 100... this was the percentage chance that the unit in question willingly advanced into the fight. But it was also the percentage chance that the "prompting" officer was an immediate KIA. If so, the officer played no further part in the battle. What was convenient about the special combat card draw was it permitted contact without any "prompting" by a nearby officer. General Sayre, in the early part of the battle, lost two officers in this manner. He decided to have his units advance into contact on one of his regular movement cards, and had his officers do the "prompting" with percentages of 60, each. In the first engagement, he tossed the prompt dice 3 times, once each for each of three regiments at 60 percent chance of success. Unfortunately, only one responded; the other two held back. And then, to rub salt in the wound, Von Butters tossed his own dice to see if he had potted the officer... BANG!, and General Sayre was one officer less. Each side was given an initial officer staff of 4 officers. When the Bwits lost 2 of the 4, this put a huge crimp on their ability to advance, since only half the officer staff was around to do the prompting. To attack, General Sayre had to wait for the draw of the special combat card, permitting a contact without prompting. This definitely slowed his advance. Not knowing how the invaders would be disposed, i.e., whether they'd attack in more than one place along the beach or concentrate their forces at one particular point, Von Butters had stationed his front line troops along the beach area... they were fairly spread out. Up the Middle General Sayre chose to attack right up the middle and power his way through to Plok. This meant that, initially, the Bwits were able to concentrate and overwhem the defenders. General Sayre, in at least two instances, gathered 3 regiments (a total of 9 men) and attacked a town in which Von Butters had only a single defending regiment. The "stacking rule" prevented the Bwits from conglomerating more than 9 men in an area, otherwise a huge mass of Bwitish troops would have focused on the area. In the first town, Von Butters chose discretion over glory; he took advantage of the "retreat first" rule which enabled his men to pull back, and in doing so, get off a few shots at the advancing invaders. In the second town, der men of Der Homeland chose to fight even though outnumbered. Things looked a wee bit better for the defenders when, despite a flurry of "prompting" dice throws by General Sayre, attempting to toss under 60, two of three of the attacking regiments failed to close. And things looked even better when (a) the attackers were beaten off and (b) the "promptin" Bwitish officer keeled over in the midst of his prompting efforts. About 10 turns into the battle, we decided to call it quits. The Bwitish advance had petered out; General Sayre didn't want to risk his two remaining officers in any more prompting activities: First, because they became prime targets when engaging in prompting, and Second, because the distance of the officer played role when a unit took a morale test. His current staff of two officers had to handle a fairly wide expanse of the field, and if he lost another, a single officer just couldn't hack all the morale tests thrown his way. One of the items discussed in the post-mortem concerned the stacking rule. It appeared that a maximum of 9 men per area was a bit much... the battle would have flowed a wee bit faster if the stacking limit would have been reduced to 6. So shall it be written; so shall it be done. Back to PW Review December 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 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