Historical background. Deep in the Balkans, un-noticed by the rest of Europe, are two small countries whose armies have been massacring each other's populations since the beginning of time. These are the countries of Tchubbla and Tschivva; they share a common border, which makes it all the easier for their respective forces to cross over and perform their requisite wipe-outs. The Centre for Provocative Wargaming Analysis sent a representative to these fierce warrior lands. He recently returned (minus three fingers and an ear) and filed a report on the situation, which permitted me to re-create one of the encounters between their forces. Along their common border is Lake Czyspzxy... about a year ago, Tchubblan units crossed the lake, landed in Tschivva, and were met by the defending Tschivvians. On to Battle With that as a backdrop, on to the battle. In the past few months, I have played Arty Conliffe's CROSS FIRE over a dozen times... a small-size squad level game... and this renewed my own interest in this scale game. What I wanted was an individual-figure game... as opposed to the set-up in CROSS FIRE, wherein one stand represents a squad, and the squad itself is in one of 4 status levels: it's either functioning efficiently, or pinned, or suppressed, or killed. The individual men mounted on the squad stand are merely along for the ride, they themselves take no casualties as individuals. My shelves contain an assortment of MERTEN figures... these are 40mm in size... plastic, ugly, skinny, and anatomically distorted little men. They originated either in Germany or France, and I think they are now 'collector's items', ... on occasion, one can see a box of them (8 figures) at a toy soldier show. I mounted each of them individually, called three of them a 'Fire Group', and with Fred Haub as my opponent, the battle was on. I should note that to augment my MERTENS, I used a selection of other rubbery-plastic figures from TOYS ARE US... these figures are slightly larger than the MERTENS, but a wee bit of surgery with an Xacto blade, cutting them off perhaps an eighth of an inch, and a re-soldering of the parts together, produced an acceptable MERTEN clone. I took command of the defending Tschivvian units... I had a total of 6 Fire Groups (that's 3 x 6), or 18 men in all, with every three Fire Groups (FG) defined as a platoon. In effect, my 2-platoon contingent gave me a single company to hold off the vast Tchubblan hordes. Coming ashore at lakeside were 2 full Tchubblan companies, 12 FG's in all, outnumbering me by 2-to-1. And to make matters worse, General Haub had scrounged in my MERTEN box, and emerged with an additional 2 LMG stands, and 2 HMG stands. I had noted, on a map of the field, where my forces were placed. As any good defender would do when outnumbered so badly, I concentrated my FG's in the middle of the field. In a little compound in mid-field, I situated 2 LMG's and 4 FG's, while the remainder of my force was rather scattered all over the place... not knowing how and where that devilish Tchubblan commander, General Haub, would strike, I assumed that where-ever I put my units would, eventually, turn out to be the wrong place. Proven Right And I was proved right. For the first turn, the Tchubblans were the active side, moving their men onto sacred Tschivvi territory. After the active side moved, the sequence called for 'opportunity fire' for the non-active side. Taking advantage of a chance to get in a round of 'opportunity fire', the non-active side... my boys... had to 'spot' the oncoming Tchubblans. The percentage chance to 'spot', in this instance, was the sum of two factors a. 40 percent if an enemy unit was in the open (lesser percentages if the observed unit was in a structure or in woods). Here, the Tchubblans were on the beach, in the open. b. Plus 10 times the number of observing FG's. I had 3 FG's looking on And so my first chance to fire at the enemy produced a 'spotting' total of [40 + (3 FG's x 10)], or 70 percent total. And do you think my blind, besotted Tschivvians saw the enemy landing?? Not on your life! After I had fouled up my 'opportunity fire' phase, came a 'regular fire' phase, in which both sides flailed away at each other. Note that 'opportunity fire' gave the non-active side a wee bit more fire power than that of the active side, but only, of course, if enemy units could be spotted. The regular fire phase required no spotting... if an enemy was within Line Of Sight (LOS), he became an acceptable target. Rifle range was 30 inches. One ploy I borrowed from CROSS FIRE was that a unit in cover (woods or a structure) within LOS could be fired at. In previous rules sets, for example, units in cover had to announce if they were 'inside the woods' and hence were not a target, or were on the verge of the woods, and could fire and be fired at. The CROSS FIRE approach seemed more logical. When we came to the regular fire phase, I drew cards from a Fire Deck... these designated which side fired, and how many units fired: "3 FG's on Side A may fire", or "2 FG's on Side B may fire", etc. The number of eligible firing units totaled their 'fire points', and looked at a Hit Chart. For example, each rifleman in a FG contributed 10 points to the total, each LMG contributed 20 points, etc. Thus 3 firing rifle-FG's (each of 3 men), had 9 men, and their total was 90 points. The Hit Chart looked like: Over Total Points: No Effect Between 1/2 Total Pts and Total Pts: 1 cas figure and 1 column crossed out Under 1/2 Total Pts: 2 cas figures and 2 columns crossed out Note that the target received casualty figures, while the reference to 'columns crossed out' looked at the data sheets of each FG. A typical data sheet: Morale Level 80 80 75 75 70 65 60 FG Strength 6 5 5 4 4 3 2 When the FG was hit, an entire column was crossed out. Each FG, therefore, could take a total of 7 hits. General Haub expressed dissatisfaction with the Fire Deck concept. Included in the deck of 6 cards was one annotated "End", which indicated that the fire phase was over. The fire phases terminated too rapidly for General Haub's liking. He never, he said, had an opportunity to have all his men fire at the enemy. The "End" card appeared too frequently. To put it another way, although he had twice as many units as I had, the deck constrained him, and prevented him from concentrating twice as much fire power on my troops. A valid point, said I, but the rules is the rules, and we'll fix the problem in the second edition. Note in the Hit Chart, that if one tosses a very low number, well below his point total, he scores 2 casualty figures, and 2 crossed out columns on the target. The particular FG fired upon was termed the Primary Target, and I wanted the first casualty figure and the first column crossed out to focus on the Primary Target. If additional hits were scored, the owning player could distribute these amongst other units, instead of having them concentrate on the Primary Target. My thought was that during the scope of the bound (I had defined it as 3 hours of battle-time), FG's would be firing, not at particular units throughout the time span of the bound, but at several units. When many FG's fired, this would result in "area fire", in which not every firing FG would truly focus on the single Primary Target. Instead, the firing results would be spread out over a couple of FG's, hence more than one FG would take casualties. I have always disliked modern games in which one side can "pour it on" continually on a particular enemy token, piling up the hits until it's completely destroyed. This is the case, for example, with COMMAND DECISION, and with SPEAR HEAD. Admittedly, these are higher level games, but the allowed concentration of fire on a single token goes well over the level of believability. I should note that in our battle, 'spreading out' the hits wasn't really a bargain... for every unit that had received a casualty figure then had to take morale test. The owning player, therefore, could choose to let the Primary Target absorb all the damage, giving his FG an extremely low morale level, or have one or more of his FG's take morale tests. You'll also note that, in my tables, I reverted to the use of percentage dice... CROSS FIRE and SPEARHEAD and COMMAND DECISION and DBM and DBR and the other published sets focus on the use of 6-sided dice... I refuse, I simply refuse, to use these 6-siders. Bulagi Hill On the eastern side of the field was Bulagi Hill, and I had set out a single FG of 3 men to defend it. My total number of 9 FG's was definitely insufficient to match the forces arrayed against me. Up Bulagi Hill came 6 FG's of Tchubblan infantry... 18 men. It took about one bound and my single FG was surrounded by the Tchubblans. General Haub ordered one of his FG's to close, which it did. Now we resorted to what I called a Melee Deck. Each card in the deck stated something like: "Attacking FG loses one column", or "Defending FG loses to columns", or "Attacker can move a support FG forward a distance of 10 inches to join the melee". Thus the Melee Deck cards defined the actual losses (columns crossed out) during the combat. When a support unit arrived, the owning player could have the support absorb the hits, thus preserving the strength of the lead FG. Being able to have the support 'soak off' the hits was important, because determination of the winner was a function of the lead FG's strength, as noted on its data sheet, hence the objective was to keep the lead FG's strength up as high as possible. I had no support nearby to bolster my one FG on Bulagi Hill, and my FG took it on the chin... every hit mandated by the Melee Deck cards reduced my lead FG's strength. General Haub and I decided that enough was enough... my single FG surrendered. The Tchubblans now commanded Bulagi Hill in the east, and commenced to move toward the center of the field, where my remaining forces were located. I had concentrated 2 LMG's around my FG's in mid-field. When, according to the fire cards, my FG's fired, each LMG added "+20" to the "+10's" contributed by each rifleman. Against this, however, General Haub tossed in a "+30" for each of his HMG's when firing, and with his overwhelming strength, my defending Tshivvians lost column after column after column on their data sheets. I mentioned that in the sequence, when a FG crossed out a column, and took a casualty figure, it immediately took a morale test. The morale level was noted on the data sheet, and this decreased in proportion to the hits taken by the FG... it started at 80 percent, and just before the entire FG keeled over, the minimum morale level was 60 percent. Each platoon of 3 FG's was assigned a Sergeant... he, too, had a data sheet, which looked like: Morale Level 20 15 12 9 5 3 3 FG Strength 4 3 3 2 1 1 1 The Sergeant could, by crossing out a column on his sheet, augment the morale level of one of his FG's. After the battle, I noted that on my own data sheets, all of my Sergeants had completely used up their morale level augmentation. And each time they crossed out a column, they used up a number of their strength points, with which they could assist a FG engaged in melee. The Sergeant's strength points could be added directly to the strength points of an FG. At the end of the first days battle, (3 full bounds), the Tchubblans were on Bulagi Hill, most of my units had taken a severe number of hits, my Tschivvian Sergeants had just about used up their 'assist points', and my Tschivvian Officer, Major Karlogia, had also used up his allotment of points. Karlogia's points, as recorded on his data sheet, looked like those assigned to the Sergeants... but his points had a different function. Remember that during the fire phase, targeted FG's accumulated casualty figures. A conglomeration of casualty figures was not a good thing, for two reasons: a. First each of the casualty figures deducted -10 percent from the FG's morale level as indicated on its data sheet. b. Second, an accumulation of 3 casualty figures on an FG, and one man was sent to the Rally Zone. It became important, therefore, to be able to remove casualty figures, and that's where the Officer came in. The basic chance to remove a casualty figure was 50 percent, plus whatever percentage the Officer cared to contribute. This ranged from a maximum of 20 points to a minimum of 3. Major Karlogia's points were all used up by battle's end. The man had done his utmost for his country. He lies buried in Karlogia National Cemetery, hero of the people. The Tchubblan attack finally ended on the morning of the second day (4 full bounds). There weren't too many of my FG's around. One of the things that did me in was the map I had drawn up, prior to the battle, placing my forces. You'd think, with my years of vast military ping-pong-table experience, I could learn to draw a map and follow it explicitly... but no... this unit should have been there, and that unit should have been here, and the other unit wasn't even on the map at all. Looking at the losses recorded on the data sheets, each of my FG's had a total of 7 columns to be crossed out before it was required to exit the field. With my 6 units, that gave me 42 columns in all. And when I finally hauled up the white flag, I had a total of 14 columns remaining out of the original 42. First Cut This was a first cut at this low-level skirmish action. I'm not sure that a scenario in which one side is outnumbered 2-to-1 constitutes a proper setting in which one can 'test the rules', but I was content. General Haub's comments about the restrictions of the Fire Deck cards have been duly noted. In fact, Mod 2 of the rules (hurriedly being typed in the editorial room of the REVIEW), doesn't even contain a Fire Deck. One item that I did like was that there were three separate and independent methods of tracking FG casualties: a. First, there was the data sheet itself. This truly limited the life of the FG... 7 hits (columns crossed out) and off it went. b. Second, the use of casualty figures, indicating temporary disruption and losses c. Removal of a man to the Rally Zone. Even if the man failed to rally (there was a 50 percent chance of success), he still remained in the Rally Zone and could attempt to rally again on the next bound. The firing percentages should also be beefed up... not necessarily to increase them, but to speed up the game. For example, the probability-of-hit of an HMG could be increased to 60 percent in contrast to its current 30. Back to PW Review October 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. 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