The weekend of August 17th featured two sets of gaming rules, both written by Arty Conliffe, and, to my understanding, both fairly successful in the marketplace. Tactica is his ancient warfare game, while Spearhead is his modern armor WW II rules set. As such, Arty has covered the waterfront in thorough fashion. I use the word 'thorough' in the sense that the rules contain enough historical grunge to make the period player content. Arty doesn't quite cover the route taken by COMMAND DECISION and the WRG series. In these rules, if there are any values to be listed... by all means give them a number and list them... and this, in the past, gave rise to such things as cavalry, heavy cavalry, extra heavy cavalry, super extra heavy cavalry, etc. As an example of what I term a more proper 'gaming' approach, consider the Bruce McFarlane set of WW II rules that I looked at two issues ago. In Bruce's set, armor is divided into three classes... light, medium, and heavy. The set-up procedure for each scenario then lists the armored weapons, i.e., tanks, and tells you just what class each tank falls under. The tank itself might be classified as 'heavy, while its gun is termed 'light'. Alas! light and medium and heavy just can't hack it. In Spearhead, all armor is individually listed. The Pzkv IV is given its to-hit value, its frontal detense value, its flank defense value, as is the KV-2, the Sherman, etc. Sheets are furnished on which are tabulated the various values. It's my impression that, in today's market, a successful set of modern armor rules must contain page after page of nitty-gritty armor values, weapon values, etc., The sheer weight of numbers must present enough minutia for the gamer to believe he's really getting an accurate assessment of the true relative merits of the weapons concerned. Whether or not the entries ring true... that's another issue. Again, this concern with detailed classifications is a carryover from the WRG rules... and now incorporated into the current DBM system... wherein, for example, the Carpathian Slamdunks get '+3' in combat, while the Moldavian Slamdunks (who live right next door) only rate a '+2. And so Spearhead (SH) meets the test of minutia. Battle Our SH battle was set up as a 1943 battle in Russia, wherein a German force attacked a Russian-held city, and most important, a large factory complex. On our side, the German, there were three adults and two kids about 10 years old. Opposing us were three adults and another two kids. It's been my experience that after tossing the dice for, say, three turns, kiddies at table-side get bored, and wander away, leaving the game to the big guys. In this case, however, the kids proved to be exemplary... they maintained their interest in the game until the very end, a period of almost four hours. In part, I give credit to SH for this, for being simple enough to enable the kids to follow and participate throughout the battle. SH's scale is 100 yards to the inch. We played with 15mm figures, wherein one tank stand represented a platoon of 5 tanks, and one infantry stand was a platoon. A turn represents a time span of 15 to 30 minutes. SH's sequence consists of 6 basic phases; the first is movement (decided by an initiative dice toss) and the second is firing. When listed, the phases for the bound are: Movement: Side A Side B Fire: Air strikes/ off-board artillery Stationary infantry ATG guns Stationary vehicles Infantry that moved less than half their allotted distance Vehicles that moved less than half their allotted distance. Morale Close combat Additional morale checks Command phase The Russians were allowed to set up anywhere except within 12 inches of the German baseline, hence as we arrived on the field, the shooting started immediately. Prior to the game, both sides had diced for 'special attributes', and in our case we had, amongst other things, an air reconnaissance flight, and two captured Russian prisoners. These three assets enabled us to immediately pinpoint three separate, previously hidden, Russian defensive positions. I had the German right flank, composed of three infantry battalions (36 stands). As indicated on the map. One Russian defensive position was on a hill, right in the middle of field, manned by a Russian intantry battalion of 12 stands. The German commander, took his tank brigade... about 12 tanks... and set out for the hill. In fact, he took more than his tank brigade... he took two tank brigades. He took two battalions of infantry which were loaded into halftracks... and I think he took another force which could have been used elsewhere. All these units approached the hill in fine phalanx formation. Just like in 2,000 BC. Due to this bumper-to-bumper, fender-to-fender set-up across the width of the field, our formation looked suspiciously like a huge ARMATI battle, a compact unit game in which all elements are bunched and grouped shoulder-to-shoulder. On my flank, I approached the Dempski Woods with my first 12-stand infantry battalion. Surprise! Jeff Wiltrout was waiting for me with his own 12-stand battalion, plus three KV-2's. Ambush! I made the mistake of rushing toward the woods at full speed... 6 inches for infantry. If I had approached at a 3-inch pace (half speed), I could have fired; moving full distance prevents you from firing during the bound. Move and Fire? I'm not sure I agree with the move-half-and-fire assessment. I can see, for the horse and musket period, that an appreciable time-out was required for an advancing unit to stop, load weapons and carry on... so that an entrenched and defending stationary unit inherently provided more fire-power. than an approaching attacking unit. But in the modern era, when advancing troops simply slip another clip in the weapon, losing virtually no time, and keep blasting away, why penalize them by totally preventing them from firing at all'? Perhaps a happier solution would be to let them fire, but only 'hastily', using some sort of negative modifier. Be that as it may, my German troops got creamed as they neared the woods. Each defending firing intantry stand tossed a 6-sided die. The defending Russian infantry had an attack value of +4 ... ny troops had a defense value of +5. Since my defense value was 1 point higher than the attack value, one point was subtracted from each Russian die toss. As I remember. a modified total of 6 knocked off a stand, while a modified total of 5 suppressed it. i.e.. rendered it immobile. Two such suppressions killed a stand. Note that the Russian infantry, with their -1 modifier on a 6-sided die, couldn't total 6, and so the worst they could do was suppress my troops with total of 5. With some 6 stands firing, I belive the infantry killed only one of my troop stands. For the Russian KV-2's, however, it was a different picture. Here, the tank's anti-infantry value an 8. . compare this with my +5 defense, and when the tanks fire at my infantry, they add +3 to the die roll. Not good. The KV-2's each killed one infantry stand, easily totaling 6 or more. The result of this first round of fire was that I had lost 4 out of 12 battalion stands... without even firing back! Two rounds later, I was still holding on with my first battalion. Jeff's defending Russians had lost 2 stands... but his KV-2's looked like killers to me. I had heen assigned three Marders with my 3-battalion brigade. The Marders traded fire with the KV-2's, and while my armored unit didn't get knocked out, they were suppressed. Tne Marder defensive value was a +5, while I think the KV-2 anti-armor value was something like an +8... this gave them a +3 on the die roll, but Jeff tossed very low ... no kills, only suppressing rolls. And then... three more Russian tanks showed up near the woods ... KV-1's. The German commander took pity on me... out of the box came a battalion of 9 German tanks, Pzkw IVD's, to join my force. But now the firing situation, with a mix of opposing infantry and armor stands in close proximity, took on somewhat of a haze because of the SH target priority rules. Targets On page 14, under the section titled LIKE TARGETS, SH states, in essence, that infantry must fire on infantry, and armor on armor, unless there are no 'like' targets available, Also on page 14, under the section titled TARGET PROXIMITY, SH states that direct fire must be applied against the "closest visible target ." The underlining comes from the rules book and not from me. So far, so good. But now, we have to find out what's 'visible'. And we discover, on page 15, under FIRER ELIGIBILITY: "...enemy platoons... (stands)... do not block fire as long as the target priority and Target Proximity rules are observed." What developed on the field was the situation in Sketch (a) below. My troops had closed with the defending Russians, and there.was a multi-stand close-assault about to begin at the edge of tile woods. This took place directly in front of one of the Russian KV-2's, which declined to fire at the German infantry in the close-assault, but through them, at a like target some inches beyond. In Sketch (b), one of my platoon stands was in front of, and facing, a Russian A/T gun. Just in back of the A/T gun was a Russian infantry stand. Jeff and I, in trying to interpret the like versus like, both thought the A/T stand was defined as armor, hence my infantry couldn't fire on it, and had to fire through it at the Russian infantry. In each of the above cases, we thought we obeyed the rule that "enemy platoons do not block fire as long as the target priority... rules are observed." In case (a), we were correct. In case (b) not so: we were informed that my infantry could fire directly on the A/T unit, rather than through it. The term "closest visible target" becomes somewhat 'stretchable' when enemy stands directly in front of a firing unit are ignored, and the firing unit simply blasts away through them at another target in the neighborhood. I understand the rationale for the target priority listing, and in fact, the rules book does a good job of justifying it, but for stands in very close proximity, it just doesn't look right. Perhaps one could use the rule for opposing stands over 3 inches (300 yards) apart... and relax it when enemy units are about to bonk heads at less than 3 inches. In any case, my right flank brigade of infantry was fairly well pooped... even with the tank reinforcements I received, things looked bleak. On Bound #8, we Germans used another of the special assets we had diced for at the beginning of the battle. This was an airstrike. By definition, the aircraft can hit two targets, I was informed. And so I selected the Russian tanks facing me. A hit by an aircraft is a kill... it requires a toss of 3,4,5,6 on a 6-sided die. I destroyed one tank, and missed the other. Back in the middle of the field, I counted the German tokens (stands) still milling about in midfield. We had: 66 stands of infantry 41 tanks and armored cars 26 infantry-carrying vehicles (each vehicle carried one stand) All these good troops were still shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the defensive Russian position on the hill... so crowded was it that it looked like a huge vehicle mob action. Downright silly, thought I. Indeed, it appeared to me that the scenario designer had just about overloaded the table. Finally, something broke in the middle of the field. The German commander sent his infantry around the hill to the right and toward the factory complex. But he still had 16-count 'em-16 tanks held up by 5 Russian infantry stands on the hill. Unfortunately, the German commander's infantry, when assaulting the factory, suffered the same fate that my men did when assaulting the woods... BANGO! WHAMMO! ... they died like I flies. The Russians called upon one of the special attributes for which they had diced at the game's beginning. This was the presence of the Commissar in the factory! All Russian troops in the factory, with the Commissar breathing down their necks, got a plus in combat, a plus when fireing, a plus in morale, a plus here, and a plus there... you name it. Artillery All during the battle, both sides called in their artillery strikes. We Germans received 9 such barrages... each barrage consisted of about 3 blasts. When the off-board artillery phase came, our barrages could be called in with a toss of a 2,3,4.5,6 on a 6-sided die. The Russians, because of a lack of coordination capability, could only call in their artillery with a toss of 4,5,6. Somewhere around Turn #10 (?)11(?), it all ground to a halt. We Germans ran out of steam. We made one last valiant effort to capture one of the factory 'blocks'... a huge granary... but were driven off. I tried to close on the granary with 8 stands; defensive fire power suppressed 4 of the 8, halting the attack. There were 4 defending stands in front of the granary, and 3 within. My entire attacking battalion... some 6 surviving stands... took a morale test (they had to toss a 10, 11 or 12 on two 6-sided dice). failed and fell back. Melee in the open under SH is a one round affair. Melee in a building is more deadly... it continues for several rounds until only one side is left. One of the German commander's units entered into a building. and finally, after a number of combat rounds, managed to kill the occupying Russians despite their "+10" in combat given by the Commissar's presence. Prior to Turn #10, the Germans looked at the last special attribute in their inventory... a team of 3 stands (3 platoons) of commandos which we were allowed to plop down anywhere in the field. We chose to set them down in the middle of factory complex, thinking they could fire on the Russians inside within the buildings. Buildings Not so. By definition, men within a building cannot fire out, and men outside a building cannot fire on the occupants. SH wants you to enter and clear a building in a bloody hand-to-hand combat. Which meant that our commandos sat for a turn doing nothing... there were no targets for them, since all the Russians were inside the buildings. I don't go along with the rule concerning firing - or, rather - not firing on people within buildings. For example, the Germans had three 88mm guns trained directly on the buildings of the factory complex, but these huge weapons were impotent... by definition, they couldn't hit the occupants by firing on the buildings. According to the rules, we should have concentrated our artillery barrages and the air strike against the buildings. SH was fast, and it followed a nicely laid-out sequence. Some of the rules I disagree with... the 'like target' rule, the move-full-and-don't-fire rule, the don't-fire-on-people-inside-building-rule... but, in the main, an enjoyable game. Back to PW Review September 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