Aeons ago - or, perhaps, only one aeon - Bob Hurst announced he was gearing up for a huge modern armor Barbarosa campaign... Russians versus Germans. Ever since that announcement, he's been massing his 15mm armor collection... painting, mounting, organizing... he's told us, several times, that he's almost ready... only another 3 or 4 thousand tanks to go. As a preliminary to the Barbarosa affair, Bob has also been looking for a set of rules to use. Readers of the REVIEW with long memories will remember that, on several occasions, I've reported on test battles we've fought with different sets of armor rules... I've mentioned that Brian Dewitt's rules have been tried and rejected, that my own childish efforts at WW II rules have been laughingly torn up, that the even more childish COMMAND DECISION rules have been turned down. Not all of COMMAND DECISION (CD) was tossed out the window, however. Included in the CD package is a vast amount of data pertaining to organizational structure and orders of battle, and it's this information that Bob will use to gin up the forces involved in his Barbarosa effort. Test Battle In early June, Hurst and Simon squared off in another test battle, this one involving a set of rules generated by Fred Haub. As the German commander, my force contained 3 rifle companies, a heavy weapons company, 2 tank companies, a recon unit, a couple of A/T weapons, and a headquarters company. Each company had 3 stands in it, and if one assumes that an infantry company has some 100 troops in it, then each of my 3-stand companies, i.e., each token, represented around 30 troops. My entire force, when added together, totaled less than 30 stands, i.e., 30 tokens, to push during the game. Sufficient to keep a player busy. Note that my German force was organized in terms of "companies", with each company given a command stand. The stands within the company could range out to a maximum distance of 12 inches from each other. Beyond 12 inches, and they were penalized... they could fire defensively, but couldn't move. If a stand panicked, i.e., failed a morale test, and went beyond the 12-inch range, the company commander had to fall back to rally the troops. In contrast, Bob's Russians were organized, not in companies, but in battalions, some 9? 10? stands each. Here, each battalion was given a command stand, and here, too, the stands within the battalion couldn't range further than 12 inches from each other without being struck by the deadly you-can-fire-but-you-can't-move virus. I must note that, at the outset, Bob imposed this organizational structure on the Haubian rules set. This "cluster theory" comes from the CD rules,, and it represents the contrast between the Russian and German organizational doctrine. The Russians must clump their 9-stand units together in battalion fashion, while the more efficient Germans may spread out across the field since their maneuver element is the much smaller 3-stand company. The half-bound for the Fred Haub Rules (FHR) sketched out by Fred consisted of three basic phases: Active side's off-board artillery fire Active side moves and fires Resolve melee resulting from active side's contacts Units came in three grades; going from best to worst, these were veteran, experienced and trained. Units functioned in terms of "actions". Each stand was assigned 2 basic actions, and could use each action to either move or fire. Most of my German force were vets, and these troops units had a chance for a third action (70%). The possibility of the third action, coupled with the poor Russian organization, purportedly gave me a one-up on my opponents. Looking at the movement capabilities of several unit types, infantry moved at a rate of 4 inches per action, light tanks at 6 inches, while trucks could dash along at 7 inches per action. The firing procedures for the FHR were fairly simple. Each troop type was given a Defensive Factor (DF), and each weapon was given an Offensive Factor (OF). When a weapon fired, it tossed a number of 10-sided Hit Dice: First, each stand had 2 "intrinsic" Hit Dice, regardless of type. Second, the stand was given a number of Hit Dice equal to the difference between OF and DF. Third, a die or two was deducted if the target was in cover, etc. Initially, dice were also deducted as a function of range, but after a turn or so, we abandoned this factor as one less item to slow up the game. Note that, unlike other modern armor sets which thrive on the nitty-gritty, the FHR used a single number, the DF, which was sufficient to define the target value for a particular unit type. For example, when firing on a tank, there was no need to look up the exact armor thickness, the angle of penetration, whether a flank or rear shot, etc. The single DF told all. Bob's Russians had a Forward observer (FO) linked to his off-board artillery. This little fella, peering across the table with his teeny binoculars, whom I shall call Captain Hurstsky, was the most dangerous man on the Russian side. Whatever he could see was subject to an artillery barrage, and this proved to be the most devastating weapon in the game. When Captain Hurstsky focused his eyepiece on you, it was time to dive for cover, for he brought the Thunder From The Sky. At the beginning of the active side's half-bound, Bob had allowed a single artillery barrage to be brought in. In retrospect, it was a good thing only one barrage was allowed; two would have shortened the game to a one-turn affair. Early in the game, Captain Hurstsky focused his binoculars on my tank units, which were attempting a flanking unit to the east. Thence came the Thunder From The Sky, and when the Thunder stopped, so had my little tankies. Fred Haub's artillery procedures were rather clever. Instead of an artillery template used to define the affected burst area, the artillery commander could "walk" his barrage around the target area. As an example, when the Thunder From The Sky erupted on top of my ill-fated tank unit, the procedures were as follows: a.Bob pointed to the first point of impact; denote this point of impact as Point A. Because Captain Hurstsky had the tanks directly in plain view, in his line of sight, there was a 90% chance the first burst fell directly on the chosen target stand. Percentage dice were tossed, and if 90 or lower appeared, so did the Thunder. b.The next point of impact (Point B) was chosen, and this time, the percentage chance of the Thunder appearing was 80%. c.A third impact point (Point C) was selected, with a resultant probability of 70%. d.Whilst all this Thunder was erupting, track was kept of the distances between Points A, and B, and C, etc. When the total distance added up to 20 inches, the Thunder ceased. e.For my tank unit, Points A and B were 7 inches apart. The next target, Point C, was 5 inches f rom Point B, hence the total distance covered was 12 inches. Another tank, Point D, was only 4 inches from Point C, and the running total was now up to 16 inches. A fifth tank, Point E, was 2 inches from Point D, and the total now reached 18 inches, leaving 2 inches to go to hit the "stops" at 20 inches. f.Fortunately, no other tanks were within the remaining 2 inches left for the barrage. No more Thunder. g.As I indicated above, this technique allows the artillery commander to walk his barrage through the affected area, subject to his 20 inch restriction, selecting the most optimal targets available. Also note that although the probability-of-hit is high for each target (it starts out at 90%), the probabilities go down by 10% as we go from target to target, i.e., it's not a sure hit each time. After Captain Hurstsky zeroed in on my tanks, I can assure you that for the remainder of the game, I kept all my units spread out as much as possible. It took only one barrage to thoroughly drill me in the rules of war. Artillery The reason for my terming the artillery "Thunder From The Sky" was its Offensive Factor (OF) of 8; my medium tanks Defensive Factor (DF) was 3, hence, when targeted, each medium tank was subjected to 2 intrinsic dice, plus The (OF-DF) difference, 8-3, or 5 Hit Dice. The total, therefore, was 7 dice per target. Hits were scored on tosses of 1 or 2. The probability-of- hit, therefore, was fairly low, but if enough dice were tossed, one was bound to come up with a couple of low numbers. In all, we thought the fire power of FHR varied from a wee bit too much to a wee bit too little: a.Too much. A medium tank (OF of 5) fired on an armored car (DF of 1) . Here, the tank got its 2 intrinsic dice, plus the OF-DF difference factor of 5- 1, or 4, a total of 6 Hit Dice. 6 Hit dice, in and of itself, isn't too bad when only '1s' and '2's' are considered. The problem, however, was that the tank, on its active phase, was given two actions, and could fire on both actions... giving it a total of 12 dice. b.Too little. A machine gun (OF of 3) fired on an infantry stand (DF of 2) in cover. Here, the machine gun got its 2 intrinsic Hit Dice plus the OF-DF difference, 3-2, or 1 Hit Die, minus a die for the cover f actor. This gave it a total of 2. Here, we thought the machine gun didn't get "full credit" for its capability. During our battle, we had only two hand-to-hand encounters, as my infantry charged up a slope, attempting to drive off the Russian defenders. We hadn't noticed it before, but the sequence doesn't allow for defensive fire prior to combat resolution. The active side, on its half of the bound, charges into contact, and melee is resolved immediately. Another item in the melee procedures which gave us second thoughts was that the active side could single out one enemy stand and charge in with a couple of its own. Here, too, the defender was rendered helpless; there didn't seem to be any provision for the defending stand to call for help. Command Paperwork Bob superimposed another factor on the FHR scheme of things. Under the COMMAND DECISION campaign system, he needed to track the various units so that, at the end of a battle, losses could be determined on a long term basis, units could be reinforced, etc. He thus prepared data sheets for each side. Every stand was noted on the sheet, and hits were marked off accordingly. Infantry stands could take 3 hits before they were annihilated, medium tanks took 4 hits and so on. I'm an avid data sheet fan, but essentially only on a per-unit rather than a per-stand basis. I had 30 stands to take care of, and while the task of recordirtg data on 30 tokens wasn't overwhelming, it was time consuming. Our game encompassed a relatively small encounter, 1-player-on-1. In a larger battle, with, say, three or four players per side, my thought is that there's going to be an awful lot of time wasted with people researching their data sheets and recording losses. Back to PW Review June 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 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