We look at the magazine, the Lone Warrior, the publication of the Solo Wargamers Association (SWA), the issue dated November, 1979. And we see in this almost-20-year-old issue, an article by Robin Peck and Michael Walker, titled THE BRIDGE AT DORFLIN. The Dorflin article outlined a small campaign, circa WW II, wherein an Allied force had to fight its way to the Dorflin bridge and secure it before the bad guys could blow it up. The campaign map is sketched at right: There are three possible routes to Dorflin, and the Allied commander, trying to punch through the German lines, "is to organize three armoured columns which will take the three available direct routes to the important river crossing at Dorflin... (he) cannot be sure which of the three routes will offer the best chance of reaching Dorflin." Each route has its own 'traveling time', in terms of hours, noted on it. And to this traveling time would be added whatever 'battle time' would be necessary to break through the defending forces at the various sites. For each of the above 7 sites, the authors, Messrs Peck and Walker, sketched in a map of the local terrain, and Fred Haub and I decided to fight the encounter at Plasdorf. Lannigan Brigade Out came my 20mm modern figures, the Lannigan Brigade, so named because I had purchased them from Jerry Lannigan some conventions before. Now I must warn the reader that I am not a spit-and-polish wargamer who adheres to strict historical accuracy... I consider myself, rather, a 'generic' wargamer in that I will set out on the field whatever strikes my fancy. The reason I mention this is because, for this battle, the troops that I defined as fighting for the Allies' cause were two battalions of my Highly Imperial Japanese Marines. In contrast, Fred Haub, as defender, in true historical fashion, was given some tried and true German troops. In the Lannigan Brigade are a varied assortment of 20mm German and British and Russian and American and Japanese units... whichever nationality troops come out of the box for a given game is somewhat of a random function. I should, perhaps, mention that assisting the men in the Lannigan Brigade, were a number of armored vehicles from the Toys-R-Us Brigade, which, to my tired old eyes, are quite compatible with the 20mm figures. So now we have the Japanese Marines coming from the north, with the defending Germans somewhere on the field as sketched below. I commanded the advancing Japanese, and in my force I had: Two battalions of infantry. One stand represents a company, and four stands represent a battalion. Hence, I had a total of 8 infantry stands, each with 5 men mounted on them. Two tank battalions. One tank model is a platoon, and a battalion is composed of 3 tanks. This gave me 6 tank models on the field. One battalion (2 models) of self propelled guns. Two mobile HMG platforms, able to fire at enemy aircraft. In short, my side had a total of 18 tokens to maneuver on the field. This size force, to me, is infinitely more preferable to the huge array of tokens one usually sees in a typical COMMAND DECISION or SPEARHEAD game. The SWA article listed the total number of forces available to the defending Germans, and, using this list as guide, General Haub, the German commander, chose his force in random fashion. He took some 36 cards, and on each one noted a listed item such as "infantry battalion", or "self propelled gun", or "heavy tank", or "anti-tank gun", and so on. He had to defend three routes to Dorflin, and so, of the 36 cards, he drew 12 to designate his defending force at Plasdorf. This left 24 cards to defend the other two routes. He then took his 12 cards and set them out on the field, together with about 5 'dummy' cards. In addition to the above, the Germans were given what I termed "pop-up" anti-tank guns... these could be placed anywhere on the field during the German offensive phase and fire immediately. There were 6 of these pop-up guns... note that the rest of the German units were pre-sited using their cards. Although the pop-ups thus provided the element of surprise, they were very brittle... it took only one hit to knock out one of these guns. Note that on the master campaign map, it had taken my force some 10 hours to reach the battlefield at Plasdorf... it now remained to see how rapidly I could break through. In the sequence, I defined an entire bound as completing 6 hours of battle time. For example, if the Germans were the active side, and they did assorted things (move, fire, etc.), and then my Japanese force was the active side, and the Japanese did assorted things... that entire cycle completed 6 hours of battle. Battle Battle commenced at 0600, early in the morning, and so the first complete bound of 6 hours brought the time to 1200, at noon. Another complete bound and the time reached 1800, or 6:00 PM... at this time, all combat ceased for the day, and the forces settled down for the night. During the night phase, reserves could be brought up and units reinforced. At Plasdorf, we fought for 6 bounds, 6 full cycles of the sequence, i.e., 3 full days of battle time on the field. And the result, at the end of the third day, was that my Highly Imperial Japanese Marine force was thrown back... the defending Germans held Plasdorf. The Emperor was furious! The actual game at Plasdorf took about 2 hours real-time, and even though, at times, it looked like I was pushing the Germans back, they always seemed to rally and fight back when necessary. For example, I sent one of my infantry battalions, 4 companies (4 stands) strong, to enter the Rhinewald, a section of woods to the west of the road leading to Plasdorf. These woods were full of the cards previously placed by the German commander... and up popped a German infantry battalion to block my way. We fired away at each other, stand on stand, and the result was that three of my 4 companies, in taking a morale test after incurring casualties, failed, and retreated from the woods. Infantry stands had 5 men on them... they started out with a 50 percent chance of causing an enemy casualty. The infantry figures were mounted on metal washers, and the company base for the 5 figures was made of a magnetic strip, measuring about a 3x2 inches. When the company took a hit, a figure was simply pulled off the base. Each casualty, i.e., each man removed from a base, affected its functioning in two ways... its fire power, and its ability to withstand a morale test: a. For every missing man, the fire power of the company went down by 5 percent b. Every missing man caused the morale level of the company to go down by 10 percent It was item (b) that did in my Highly Imperial Japanese Marines. They fired just as well as did the German troops, but when it came time for the post-firing-phase morale test... the Germans would hold position, but off my own men would go, searching for the nearest sushi bar. The morale level for all units started at 85 percent, less 10 percent for each missing man, and my troops just couldn't come up with sufficiently low percentage dice throws. The situation was almost the same at Farmer Rhine's farm, located just to the east of the Plasdorf road. Here, too, the Germans had sited a number of infantry companies, and they fended the Japanese off. This, despite the fact that I had assigned one of my tank battalions, 3 tanks strong, to help out in the attack on Farmer Rhine's farm. The other tank battalion I sent streaming up the road to Plasdorf. In fact, this tank column almost made it. It was fired at by the pop-up German anti-tank guns, which put a couple of hits on it, but the thing that truly did me in was... German airpower! The first phase of every bound consists of referencing the draw of one of 7 airstrike cards to see if either side could call upon an airstrike. Two cards were for the Japanese, 2 were for the Germans, and the other 3 cards stated: "No Airstrike!". During the battle, I drew no card for an airstrike... but the Germans drew 2 of them. When an airstrike card appeared, then, because of the relative movement rates between the aircraft, infantry and tanks, all land movement stopped, and the only platform permitted to move was the plane. Air Sequence The sequence during the aircraft phase was: a. Aircraft move 10 inches, is permitted a 90 degree turn. b. All anti-aircraft guns fire (range is 15 inches). I had 2 such guns. c. If the plane is hit, the pilot immediately takes a morale test. If he fails, he cannot strike that phase, but must execute an immediate 90 degree turn. d. If the plane is still flying (5 hits destroys it), it strikes either by strafing or bombing. It "bombs" tokens that it has overflown during its 10 inch move, and it "strafes" tokens straight ahead within 10 inches. e. Any target that is hit will immediately take a morale test. On the airstrike phase, only a single plane flies across the field... we found, in prior games, that more than a single plane was too powerful a tool. I must admit that, of the entire sequence, I like the 'zooming-aircraft' bit the most. It temporarily shifts the focus of the game and provides a wee bit of suspense. And I say this, despite the fact that in this particular game, the 'zooming-aircraft' done did me in. Each plane carries 2 "bombs" and 3 "strafes". When an anti-aircraft gun fires at a plane, or the plane itself bombs and strafes, the same hit chart is used: Percentage Dice Throw 67+: Miss 34-66: 1 hit on target 01-33: 2 hits on target Thus a low throw by the pilot of, say, 27, would inflict 2 hits on his target. And the same would hold true for the anti-aircraft guns. In the Plasdorf battle, the 2 German airstrikes concentrated on my armor column, the one making straight for Plasdorf. I shot down the first plane after it had placed a couple of hits on my tanks, but the second plane, one bound later, survived and thoroughly whomped the column. Every one of the 3-tank battalion took at least 2 hits, and the leading tank ended up with 5 hits on it. When infantry is hit, men are immediately removed from their company stands, but armor is treated differently. Hit markers remain on armored vehicles until a 'Damage Assessment Phase' occurs in the sequence. This phase occurs twice each cycle, i.e., twice during the bound. Damage Damage assessment is referred to the following chart, wherein a Damage Factor (DF) is used: Over DF: Remove all hit markers but 1. If the target has only 1 marker remove it. Between 1/2 DF and DF: Add 1 hit marker to the target Under 1/2 DF: Target destroyed The Damage Factor is calculated as follows: DF = 30 + (10 x Hit Markers) Thus my lead tank, with 5 markers on it, had a DF of 80. A percentage dice toss of under 40 and BANG!... there went the tank! The second tank in line had 3 markers, giving it a DF of 60. It, too, blew up. Only the third tank survived... it had 3 hit markers, and it was only a matter of time before it, too, went BOOM! A tank, even though laden with hit markers, can still fire and move. It's only when the Damage Assessment Phase occurs that we find out how serious the damage actually is. At this point, with one tank battalion out of commission, and my 2 infantry battalions decimated, I gave up the attack on Plasdorf. Back to PW Review December 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