The HMGS convention, COLD WARS, is in mid-March, and Bob Hurst volunteered our group to participate in a WWII game hosted by Dave Waxtel. Dave will use Artie Conliffe's SPEARHEAD (SH) in 15mm, and the battle will last, according to the program, some 8 hours. Bob really didn't volunteer all of us for the full 8 hour duration. Knowing of our short attention span, Bob has indicated that we will (a) spell each other for two hours at a time, while (b) commanding the same Russian unit in the game. I had played SH once and remembered nothing about it; the others were even less familiar with the rules than I. In late February, Bob set up an introductory game with (SH), using a scenario contained in the SH booklet. At the outset, as one of the German commanders (Fred Haub was the other), it looked to me like the game was a wee bit lop-sided. Lots and lots of Russian armor and infantry, and much less German equipment. We Germans were given 4 trays of troops... each tray held a battalion. Two of the trays each had 13 tanks, each group of 13 representing an armored battalion, and in each of the other two trays, we had an infantry battalion. Looking at the Russian side, I noted they had been given 5 trays, with each tray containing many more tokens than the 13 assigned to our trays. I never did find out the exact size of the Russian force... suffice it to say we were outnumbered. "Fear not!", said Bob, "It may look like you're vastly outnumbered, but the command & control rules will permit the German force to run rings around the Russians, thus evening things up." "Har, har, har!" said I. I'd heard this sort of thing before. Sequence SH's sequence, each bound, consists of an initial dicing for initiative, then Side A moving, then Side B moving, then all weapons of both sides fire simultaneously according to a prescribed listing... first, there's a phase for artillery fire, then all non-moving tokens fire, and then all moving tokens fire. Movement is fairly rapid... using our 15mm figures, vehicles advance from 15 to 18 inches, while infantry move 9 inches. Each battalion had a commander, and his troops were not permitted to move outside an 18 inch radius stemming from the commander. I think that the Germans and Russians used the same 18 inch distance. At the outset, each battalion was given written orders... my infantry battalion, on the German right flank, was told to take Hill 709, located about 2 feet from our baseline. If orders were to be changed, the Germans could do so if the toss of a 6-sided die showed anything but a "1". In contrast, the Russians could change orders only on the toss of a "6". This was the command & control system that was supposed to even out the sides. COMMAND DECISION also has some sort of command & control system, grouping Russians together in a much more compact mass than German troops. In the games I've played, all this does is to give the Russians much more concentrated firepower than the Germans. In this current SH game, the fact that the Russians had a much tougher time than the Germans in changing orders didn't affect the battle at all. Tony Figlia was one of the Russian commanders, and his tank force, on our left flank, approached the German force of Fred Haub's (who, upon seeing this huge mass of Russians moving forward, was playing defensively) and the Figlian force opened fire. Although I have to give Tony credit in trying to keep his tanks apart from one another, he had so many that he was forced to place most of them together. I should note, therefore, that in accordance with COMMAND DECISION doctrine, Tony's tank force was aligned in perfect phalanx formation - very historically realistic - all tanks almost hub to hub. This seems to be the way most modern rules are played... as soon as a player is assigned a tank force, the .phalanx syndrome" becomes overpowering, and the hub-to-hub formation appears on the table-top. In SH, each armor token is given an attack factor (A) and a defense factor (D). The difference between A and D is added to the firing side's 6-sided die roll. A resultant total of 3 or less produces no effect; a total of 4 or 5 supresses the target, while a total of 6 or more destroys the target. Tony attacked with a mixed battalion of T-26 tanks and BT-7's. Their attack factor, A, was "4". Fred's defending Mark IIIG and Mark IVD tanks had a defensive factor, D, of "3". The difference between A and D was +1, hence every time Tony fired, he added +1 to his 6-sided die. Tony proceeded to toss all "5's" on his fire phase. Add the +1 modifier to his tosses of 5's, and you get a run of "6's"... he destroyed, in short order, five of Fred's defending tanks. Despite the initial orders from the German High Command to advance up the field, Fred immediately changed his orders by tossing his command & control die appropriately, and pulled back his remaining tank force. On my side of the field, things weren't any better. My infantry had been given orders to take Hill 709, and when they arrived there, they found that a battalion of Bob Hurst's Russians tanks were already parked on the crest. I refused to fall back. If the High Command wanted Hill 709, then, by George, or, perhaps, by Kutusov, I would get it for them. Up the hill surged my troops. Close Combat In close combat, the defending side gets defensive fire and then melee is resolved. The combat procedures consisted of simply comparing my die roll with the opposition's. The token with the high die roll destroys the token with the lesser die roll. I didn't do too badly here, but on the next half-bound, the Hurst tanks came down the hill, seeking additional close combat with my infantry. In this melee, the Hurst armor had a huge advantage ... I got a -2 for my die throws, because the Russians had caught my infantry in the open. Needless to say, a -2 modifier on a 6-sided roll is decisive... my boys were decimated. We had barely played four bounds when we Germans threw in the towel. Of our four battalions, two were pretty much annihilated, and the Figlian phalanx just couldn't be stopped. None of us at table-side were too happy with SH... it seemed a bit of a clone with COMMAND DECISION... a simpler, faster moving clone, but a clone nonetheless. Both have a command & control system which seems to do nothing, both have every token on the field firing separately during the fire phases, and both use a 6-sided die to resolve firing and combat. Many times in the past, our group has debated the use of the 6-sided die... why rules' authors continue to use the die in their rules systems, and why the wargaming world accepts this. As we approach the end of the 20th century, one would think that people would become more and more aware of the restrictions imposed by the 6 outcomes of the die, and enlarge their horizons accordingly. So much for philosophy... In the December REVIEW, Don Bailey described his WWII rules, COMBAT TEAM (CT); he sent us a copy of the rules, and we decided to try them out after our SH adventure. CT's procedures are in no way similar to those of SH; the focus is on units, not stands: a. In CT, a group of 4 to 6 stands fires as a unit, i.e., a single dice toss for the unit rather than each token firing separately. b. One doesn't target individual stands, but one fires at a target unit, "spreading out" whatever hits are inflicted. c. A deck of sequence cards determines which side is active, moving or firing. d. If a stand panics (fails a unit cohesion test), it is placed off-board and must rally later in the sequence. e. Each unit is given a data sheet, on which unit efficiency is listed and tracked. As the unit takes hits, the efficiency goes down; each hit reduces its efficiency by 5%. Somehow, we got off on the wrong foot with CT. Under CT, using the data sheets we were given, a group of 4 tanks constituted a German company, a group of 6 Russian tanks constituted a Russian battalion. For some reason, we chose 4 German companies defending against 6 Russian battalions. Each side also had 2 infantry units. This produced an even more lop-sided game than SH. The total number of German tanks turned out to be 16, and the total number of Russian tanks was 32! Definitely an uneven battle! We played a turn or so with CT, and then decided to contact the author via E-mail, asking him about the scope of the rules, i.e., did he envision a battle as German companies versus Russian battalions... or what? More later on this. CT contains some interesting innovations. For example, in the regular sequence deck, there's a provision for a unit to immediately seek cover instead of moving. It has a certain percentage chance of digging in on the spot, and going to ground, thus halving casualties. Another ploy is that each side is given 3 "interdiction cards"; each, when played, produces a "bad thing" for the opposition. One card, when played on an enemy unit, will stop its movement... "Out Of Petrol". Another card will say "Out Of Ammo". Interdiction cards cannot always be played... their appearance is a function of how many units are moved by the active side... the more he moves, the more chance he has of being interdicted. Back to PW Review April 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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