The town of Plasdorf has recently been mentioned rather frequently in the pages of the REVIEW. It's the site of several battles in a WW II campaign which I've been conducting through the e-mail with Don Bailey, who lives in Colorado. Both of us fight each battle, and we compare notes and work out a compromise... 'compromise' in the sense that we each use different rules sets, and the results with which we come up for the 'same' encounter, i.e., the same forces, the same site, may vary radically. Our campaign is taken from an article in the November, 1979, issue of the LONE WARRIOR, written by a British friend, Robin Peck. The campaign background presents the Allied commander (me) with three parallel routes to the south... my objective is to reach the town of Dorflin, however I choose to go. I've got enough forces to make a three pronged attack to the south, and Don's goal, as the defending German commander, is to spread his forces out along the three routes sufficiently to stop any thrust along any of the corridors. Plasdorf is the first town on the western route, and my first attack there resulted in my driving the Germans back south. I suffered heavy losses at Plasdorf, and took a day or so (campaign battle time) to recuperate and rush forward several reserve units for the attack on the next western corridor objective, the Rendal Bridges. Accordingly, my troops advanced south through Plasdorf to the outskirts of the Rendal Bridges, ready to start the grand attack. And then, I suddenly received an e-mail message from Don, who stated: a. He had dropped three battalions of German parachute troops in Plasdorf, behind my lines, to cut off my supply lines to the Rendal Bridges. I wasn't sure of the effect of reduced supplies on my forces (we'd never discussed this), but it certainly couldn't help the Allied cause to have the troops' gasoline and candy bar and chewing gum supplies cut off. b. Dan had also ordered a huge counter-attack at the Rendal Bridges, in an effort to surprise my own troops who were just ordering up for their own advance. I immediately ordered my boys at the Rendal Bridges to abandon their attack plans, and go into a defensive mode. The reason for temporarily abandoning the attack was that I had diverted several units back to the north to Plasdorf to whomp the paratroopers. Until I got rid of this diversion to the north, and the units returned to the force at the Rendal Bridges, I'd play defensively. The attack on the paratroopers at Plasdorf was, basically, an infantry battle. Fred Haub appeared to take over the command of Don's Germans, and so I was saved from fighting the battle in solo fashion... it was a pleasure to see someone opposite the table from me. For the Plasdorf fight, I took out my 40mm plastic Merten collection... single-mounted, scrawny, skinny, anatomically-disadvantaged WW II fellas. I had previously developed a basic set of "Merten Rules" for WW II, but there was no provision in the system for any armored vehicles. Since, among the units I had sent back to Plasdorf, there was an armored battalion or two, Fred and I had to 'wing it' as we went along, adopting the skirmish procedures to include the vehicles. Don hadn't specified the particular weapons which his paras carried, but I assumed that the units were rather lightly armed and set out the opposing forces thusly: a. 3 figures were defined as a 'rifle company'. b. 3 to 5 companies (maximum of 15 figures) were a 'battalion'. c. The paras were given one 'mortar company' d. The paras were also given one 'machine gun company' e. 3 tank models were an armored battalion In essence, the Germans had about 14 companies, divided into 3 battalions. I attacked them with three 5-company battalions of infantry, plus my armor. We were, therefore, about even in infantry, but I had two advantages... I had more machine guns than the Germans, and I had the armored unit. I had actually sent two armored units back to Plasdorf, but I only put one on the field. All units moved at the rate of 10 inches per half-bound. It is my thought that, on the battlefield, tanks don't go whizzing around much faster than the foot soldiers... the vehicles will purposely slow down to let the infantrymen keep up with them. Plasdorf was composed of five adjacent 6-inch-by-6-inch 'town blocks'... each town block could contain only one 3-man company. Dividing the town into blocks meant that I had to capture each individual block before I could announce that the town was mine. The town was packed with paratroopers... and all those who couldn't squeeze into the town were hidden along a ridge (to the east), and in a woods (to the west). The sequence for the half-bound consisted of 5 phases. At first, I had wanted to coordinate troop movement on a battalion basis, while fire power was to be coordinated on a company basis: a. First, the active side rallies his troops b. Second, dice to see how many battalions the active side could move. You could coordinate the movement of either 1, or 2, or 4 battalions. After we had played 3 turns or so, we decided that to restrict the number of units which could be moved by the active side slowed down the game too much. Thereafter, the active side moved all his men without dicing for coordination. c. Third, there's an opportunity fire phase by the non-active side. Here, the toss of percentage dice resulted in either 2, or 4, or 6 companies firing. Two companies could 'coordinate' their fire, adding their fire power values together. d. Fourth, a simultaneous fire phase. Here, each side could have 2 companies fire, coordinating their actions as desired. e. Fifth, resolve close assault Each type of weapon was given a number of Fire Points. Each rifleman had 10 FP, a heavy M/G had 50, and so on. Coordinating the fire of 2 rifle companies (each of 30 FP) thus gave a total FP of 60%... and a toss below half of this number resulted in: a. The company received a casualty figure b. One man in the company was placed in the Rally Zone c. The company took a morale check. Failure meant it received another casualty figure The town was too jam-packed for me to attack it directly, and so I concentrated my initial efforts on the Germans on the ridge to the east of Plasdorf. There, the defenders had stationed 3 rifle companies, and the M/G. Since the M/G was attached to one of the rifle companies, it was permitted to add its FP to that of the company's. This would give a total of 80 FP... and if yet a second company coordinated fire with the first, and its points were also added, the total FP for the coordinated units would amount to 110 FP. Which meant that a percentage dice toss of 55 or below would result in the three items listed directly above. The M/G company was a single-stand unit, and the rule was that if it took hits, a nearby infantry unit (within 5 inches) could 'absorb' the hits, in effect, sacrificing itself, but protecting the M/G crew. The thought in my mind, therefore, was to eliminate the infantry units near the German M/G on the ridge (either cause the infantry companies to fall back, or have their men sent to the Rally Zone), at which time, there would be no one around to shelter the heavy weapons crew. I finally accomplished this on Bound 6 with an all-out 2-battalion attack on the ridge, bolstered with two M/G units of my own. Heavy losses for both sides on the ridge, but I cleared it, and could now come in on the town from two directions... from the south and from the east. Men that were placed in the Rally Zone had a 50 percent chance to rejoin their units... a failure put them out of the game completely. As the German commander, Fred had very poor success in rallying his men... bound by bound, his defending force became smaller. In the close-assault phase, I took a different tack than usual. Here, we randomly drew from a 12 card 'Melee Deck'. Each card had a different result noted on it, and finally, when a card annotated "End combat" appeared, we determined who actually won the fight. The cards stated results such as "Attacking unit takes one casualty figure", or "Defending unit sends one man to the Rally Zone", or "One support unit within 5 inches of the melee may join the combat for the attacker", or "Defending unit takes morale test", and so on. Thus the card draws comprised the casualty phase of the melee. After the card draws ended, the actual winner was decided by the number of men remaining on each side (counting men in supporting units), and the number of casualties they had inflicted on the enemy. Infantry companies were all given a 'zero-range' anti-armor capability in close assault (a probability of hit of 60 percent). One of the mistakes I made in the battle was to have my armored units assault the town while the outcome on the ridge was still undecided. Bad news for me... for the paratroopers fought as they had never fought before... drawing all the good melee cards, tossing good dice, and smashing my poor armor, causing it to fall back. It took a full days fighting, but eventually, the paras were rounded up... they didn't even have enough men left to fill the town blocks of Plasdorf. A hard day's work. Back to PW Review March 1998 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 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