Ever since last year's HISTORICON, when I bought a collection of Jerry Lanigan's 20mm moderns (the Lanigan Brigade), I've been trying to whip up something along the lines of WWII rules. My enthusiasm increased when I received Don Bailey's submittals to the REVIEW on his own rules set, COMBAT TEAM (see the December issue).
We've played about six games with the Simon version of what actually went on in WWII, and each successive version differs slightly from the previous. As different participants appear at table-side, each has a suggestion or two to offer, and PRESTO!... the rules are updated.
Bob Hurst has indicated to me that there weren't too many missile units in WWII. He has also stated that there weren't too many Hummers in WWII. And he also states (is there no surcease??) the Brits never fought the Americans. This goes in one ear and out the other. If the toy soldier store has Hummers and missile units in stock, then... By Glory Be!... they're gonna appear on my table! And if, in the Lanigan Brigade, I don't have enough troops to flesh out the German forces, then... By Glory Be!... the Americans will help the Germans. Don't tell me about WWII!
In our most recent battle, Tony Figlia faced the devastating duo of Hurst and Simon, both of whom were intent on capturing some six towns placed on the field.
Figlia was out-manned... he had 8 stands of infantry; each stand consisting of 5 figures. To furnish an historic gloss on the situation, each stand represents a company of infantry. Four companies are defined to be a battalion.
The Hurst/Simon force (hereinafter to be referred to as H/S, the party of the first part) had 16 companies, 4 full battalions. Figlia (the party of the second part) was thus outnumbered 240-1. Partly to make up for the lack of troops, the Figlian force was permitted to initially set up anywhere on the table, whereas the FUS troops were off-table, and had to appear on their baseline.
Each side had some 5 or 6 armored tokens. H/S had two heavy tanks, a jeep-drawn anti-tank gun, long-range rocket artillery, a troop-carrying vehicle with a heavy machine gun on it, and a Hummer equipped with an anti-tank gun.
Each vehicle represented a platoon of such things; for example, the troop-carrying vehicle was permitted to transport an entire company of infantry (one stand).
Digression
Digression. I've described the sequence before... a full cycle essentially consists of 6 phases: Side A move/Side B fire/Resotve melee/Side B move/Side A fire/Resolve melee. This is a time-tested, alternate sequence for just about any era game you'd like to place on the table.
Sometime ago, in a book describing wargaming sequences, the author had bad things to say about this sequence. He stated that, by permitting the non-moving side to fire after the active side moved, this "discouraged aggression", i.e., dissuaded the active side from advancing since, after he moved his units, he was going to take casualties.
In some of my gaming rules, I took the authors advice... I permitted the active side to have a "first-fire" before it moved, and then the non-active side fired. To tell the truth, I could see no difference in the outcomes... and, most important of all, the gamers never even brought up the subject, but took the rules variations as they were given. End of digression.
Back to the Battle
General Figlia had fewer armored tokens than we had, but he used his well. As the H/S force advanced up the field, the Figlian armored car and light tank smacked our troops rather soundly. All armor had a line-of-sight (LOS) range on the table... if you could see it, you could hit ft.
When a stand suffered a casualty, ft took a morale test. Here, the initial morale level for every stand on the field was 80 percent, and we deducted 5 percent for each hit. I state with pride that I don't remember any of our troops, the good guys, that is, infantry or armor, failing a morale test. In contrast, I do remember a number of Figlian units, the bad guys, retreating after being hit. The penalty for failing a morale test wasn't that severe... it merely caused the failing unit to fall back 12 inches, thus taking it out of the fight for a turn.
In contrast to the armored weapons LOS range, infantry rifles had a 10-inch range, while a heavy machine gun was given a 15 inch range. All weapons fired with a probability-of-hit (POH) somewhere around 50 to 80 percent. The greater POH's belonged to the armor weapons. A hit caused a single casualty, but for a single exception.
This was the heavy machine gun (HMG). Here, the POH was 70 percent. But the owning player had the option of "breaking up" the 70 percent figure into smaller increments to attempt to cause more than one casualty. For example, he could increment his 70 into three numbers of 25, 25, and 20, which, if he was lucky, could result in three casualties to the target. I noted that the Figlian force, which had 2 HMG's (we had one) never broke up the initial 70 percent, but was quite satisfied to use the larger figure. Which brings up the point that Bob Hurst, who commanded the only H/S truck-mounted HMG, never even got in a shot with the weapon... he tried to outflank Figlia, and was held up in trying to circumvent a wooded area on our left flank.
As the battle drew to a close, the Figlian forces wiped out all the advancing H/S armor... all that was left was infantry. The H/S command staff then gathered their remaining infantry battalions for one final strike. Hurst had 2 battalions (some 8 stands), ready to dash out of the woods in which they were assembling, and I had somewhat less than 2 battalions, also ready to exit the woods.
Bob tossed percentage dice for his battalions. I tossed for mine. A throw of 70 or lower was required for the units in the woods to run out and engage the enemy. Bob's units didn't make it (they refused to leave the shelter of the wooded area), while mine did!
This was the true turning point of the battle. I managed to storm the town near me and drive out the defenders. Melee casualty-causing procedures, i.e., close-assault, followed those of firing. The opposing forces fired on each other at close range. Each then added their surviving men (figures) to the casualties they had just caused to the enemy, and multiplied the resultant Sum by a 1 0-sided die roll. High number won.
At this point, we had captured all but one town, and because the Hurst infantry refused to budge from its picnic area in the woods, Figlia held on to his own town. Outnumbered 240-1, the Figlian forces had won a tactical victory.
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© Copyright 1997 Wally Simon
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