Over Christmas, I got together with my friends Duane Nelson and Rick Dunbar for some miniatures gaming. The scenario for this outing was Eben Emael - the Belgian fortress overlooking the Albert Canal. In 1940, German paratroopers made a daring glider assault to capture the fortress and the nearby canal bridge. My "fortress" consisted of a bunker, several machine gun nests, and even a "Maginot Line" style gun turret - all resin castings from Vac-U-Cast. The Fallshcirmjagers took the form of around thirty HO scale figures I had painted the previous Summer. The real fun, however, came with the gliders. I've read several articles about wargaming airborne and glider actions. Most of these suggested the use of a map grid and dice or some such method to determine troop dispersion. I thought it would be more fun to actually "fly" the gliders into the combat zone. After some experimenting with my computer and some scanned images of the German DFS-230 glider, I managed to design a glider model that I could print out and cut from index card. Assembled, and with the addition of a paper clip to the nose, the little thing actually flew. As a matter of fact, with a few adjustments, it could fly a good fifteen or twenty feet. With three of these cardboard contraptions built, our glider assault force was complete. We went through a short pilot training period where we practiced landing our gliders on the dining room table. After we got the knack of it, I set up the terrain as shown on the map below and we each took a glider, eight men, and one leader figure. I made up some cards listing the objectives of the raid and we each drew one. Duane picked the gun turret, Rick drew the bunker, and I was left with the canal bridge. We decided to determine victory by assigning victory points to the objectives. If a force took its primary objective, it received ten points. Any other objectives were worth five points. However, we needed to take all three objectives to prevent a Belgian victory. Thus, we had some incentive to help each other if the opportunity arose. The action sequence was a simple affair consisting of a turn for each German squad followed by the Belgian defenders. Since we had no fourth player, we each took turns playing the Belgians. Our first turn consisted of landing the gliders and deploying the paratroops. After the glider landings, we gave the Belgians a chance to detect the Germans and sound the alarm. The first turn a roll of 1, 2, or 3 on a ten-sided die indicated success. Each following turn the chance increased by ten percent. Detection was automatic once the Germans started firing. Assault Team Nelson bravely led the assault. Duane carefully launched his glider only to see it fall well short of the gun turret. The glider settled in near the bunker. His troops debarked - ready to move toward their secondary objective. Next came Assault Team Dunbar. Rick aimed carefully for the bunker and launched. His glider veered off to the right and landed in the canal - Disaster! Rick then had to roll a ten-sided die for each man caught in the crash. On a 1, 2, or 3, the figure became a casualty. Rick rolled the dice and three overloaded paratroops would have drowned if it weren't for the fact that we were using Uncle Wally's "Rally Zone" technique. Instead of being removed permanently, casualties were put in the Rally Zone, where, at the end of the turn a die roll would be made to determine if each figure could be recalled into combat. A roll of seven or less, meant the figure reappeared - a failed roll spelled doom for the figure. The three souls went to the Rally Zone to await their fate. The rest of the soaked heroes of the Fatherland managed to drag themselves up to the nearest canal bank, a few moves away from the canal bridge. Seeing the fate that had befallen Rick's glider, I decided to just try for a good landing regardless of how far from my objective (the bridge) I ended up. I carefully launched my glider toward the table. The little kite sailed past the bridge and skidded along the vinyl tablecloth surface toward the canal. Luckily, a piece of lichen caught it and sent it spinning to a stop a few inches from the canal waters. My troops exited the glider a bit dizzy, but dry - only a few moves away from the gun turret. At this point, we rolled a ten-sided die for the Belgian guards to see if they detected the gliders. A roll of seven meant the guards sat wearily at their posts and saw nothing. In the following turns, each German team could perform one action: move, fire, or recall troops that had successfully rallied the previous turn. We all opted to move our units toward their nearest objectives. Alas, misfortune again befell Team Dunbar. One of the machine gun nests near the bridge detected his paratroops and opened fire. Our combat procedure was borrowed from several Review articles. Each German paratroop figure received one attack die it could use to attack targets within a six inch range. The Belgian machine guns in the nests and in the bunker each had four attack dice to roll at targets within ten inches. Rick's troops were in cover, so we subtracted one attack die from the machine gun. The machine gun rolled three dice for two hits. Two more brave members of Team Dunbar went to the Rally Zone. Turn three saw the paratroops trying to close range to bring their weapons to bear. Belgian machine gun fire was ineffective. Then the 75mm in the gun turret spoke. The 75mm gun received eight attack dice. One die was subtracted for each ten inches of range to the target. The turret gun also had a minimum range of six inches. Any paratroops under this range were deemed to have slipped in under the minimum elevation of the gun. The gun had two targets in sight, Team Bailey and Team Nelson. A roll of the die decided that the gun would fire at Duane's unit this time. The gun ranged in at thirty inches and rolled five attack dice (8-3). Two of the dice rolled under 3, thus two casualties for Duane. In the next few turns, the gun turret extracted several casualties from both Team Nelson and Team Bailey. Finally I managed to get a few paratroopers close enough to the turret to set their shaped charges. The following turn, I rolled one die for each charge, hoping to get a 5 or less. Whump! Boom! Both charges went off blasting the gun turret to ruin. This allowed Team Nelson to set its explosive charges on the bunker. The next turn, the bunker was reduced to rubble. At this point, Team Dunbar was hanging tenaciously onto the east end of the bridge, while the Belgian machine gun nests on the west end were pummeling Rick's troops without mercy. Rick's squad leader had gone to the Rally Zone and then had failed to rally - thus disappearing for the rest of the game. By our rules, this meant he couldn't recall any of his rallied troops to the field to beef up his two or three remaining figures. Luckily, teams Nelson and Bailey managed to recall enough of their casualties from the Rally Zone to go to Rick's aid. We soon had the last pockets of resistance mopped up and the bridge secure - victory for the Germans. When we tallied victory points, Team Nelson came out on top, having destroyed the bunker and three extra machine gun nests. Team Bailey came in second, with Team Dunbar bringing, up the rear. The scenario went fairly quickly, and we were able to play it three more times that afternoon. Each of us took our turn getting the worst of it from the Belgian defenders and in turn being rescued by the other two paratroop teams. While the combat and movement procedures we used were borrowed, I think the two components of our Eben Emael game that stood out were the use of the glider models to determine landing spots and the fact that all the players were on the same side. This balancing of competition with the requirement for teamwork, I believe, merits further experimentation. Flying the cardboard gliders proved to be great fun. They brought a little extra entertainment to a phase of the game that otherwise would have ended up as a dicing exercise. Back to PW Review July 1996 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 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