In the magazine WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, Number 3, of November 1987, a fellow named Andrew Mulholland authored an article, complete with rules, titled 'COMMANDO'. He termed his rules set 'a simple solitaire game', and it looked quite playable. Mulholland had structured his game around a coastal commando raid, with several squads assigned the task of blowing up a series of coastal guns, and then making their way back to the shoreline for pick-up.
As in any solo game, there were defending German 'pop-up' units which could be triggered during one phase of the turn... the German reaction phase. These 'pop up' units remained in place... they couldn't move and their sole function was to provide defensive fire as the commandos moved across the field.
COMMANDO is essentially a rifle-squad-versus-rifle-squad game. The heaviest weapon employed is the German mortar, and it commences to fire only when, during the German reaction phase, a dice throw draws it into the scenario. Commando squads have only small arms, while one third of the German pop-up units are MG's.
Mulholland employed 6-sided dice, and I changed the tables and numbers to accommodate percentage dice throws. I modified COMMANDO as I saw necessary, and then tried a quicky scenario, consisting of 10 commando squads, which (a) entered the field via the south baseline, (b) tried to blow up as many of 6 ammunition bunkers as possible, and (c) tried to exit via a small area (the pick up zone) located in the center of the north baseline.
The sequence kept changing on me, as bound after bound, I saw the need to include phases which I had initially attempted to ignore. I had thought I could get away with a simple sequence of 'Commando move', 'German fire', 'Commando fire', but more and more, I found out that 'simple' was definitely not 'complete'. Eventually, 8 phases established themselves.
- 1. All active German units fire. These were the units previously 'awakened' on the German reaction phase.
2. Commando units fire. Squads could fire on un-activated German units, but, if so, they'd awaken them.
3. German reaction phase. Here, I referred to a chart which had 9 entries, and listed all 12 of the German units in random fashion. Dice throws told me which of the listed units were activated, and they could fire immediately. A couple of the chart entries contained reference to another dice throw, which, if the commandos were unlucky, would bring in off-board German mortar fire for the rest of the battle.
4. Commandos move 10 inches. There were no terrain modifiers. On these phases, squads would set their demolition charges to blow up the target ammunition bunkers.
5. If, on their move phase, the commandos passed within 5 inches of an as-yet un-activated German unit, determine if the unit 'awoke'. In the first test-play, I noticed that my commandos were silently tippy-toeing right past un-activated German units. This didn't seem quite right, and I changed the procedure for the second game.
6. Close assault. I had thought to leave out hand-to-hand combat entirely, but no... if a commando squad couldn't finish off a German unit during the fire phase, the temptation was too great to ignore to finish 'em off in hand-to-hand combat.
7. See if previously planted demolition charges blew up.
8. Both sides see if their 'suppressed' units can recover.
I had 3 squads on my right flank, 4 in the middle, and the remaining 3 on my left flank. On the very first turn, during the German reaction phase, the commandos on the left flank were unlucky enough to see the men in defending German Rifle Squad 527 stir themselves into action.
The men in Squad 527 turned out to be the German equivalent of 'those devils in baggy pants'. These guys were tough. They had been assigned to defend a bunker, and defend they would. Immediately they were activated, they fired and in their first volley, completely wiped out one of the attacking squads!
All rifle squads started out with 50 Fire Points (FP). Deduct -10 for cover, -10 if you're suppressed, etc., etc., and add the modified FP to a percentage dice throw. The objective was to toss high and get a total above 100. The results were:
- Under 100: no effect
100 to 130 : target is suppressed
Over 130 : target is destroyed
Squad 527, firing at commandos advancing in the open, had no modifiers for its 50 FP, and the total came out to be 142 (they had tossed a 92). Note that with a basic 50 FP, to reach a wipe-out total of 130 as indicated on the chart, a toss of 80 or better was required. In other words, Squad 527 had only a 20 percent chance of destroying the enemy squad.
Looking at the above chart and the percentages, and using the squad's FP of 50 points, the following probabilities arose:
-
50% chance to have no effect
30% chance to suppress the target
20% chance to destroy the target
These would change some, what with cover modifiers etc., but it gives you a basic indication of how the probabilities-of-hit were distributed. An MG squad was given 60 FP, while the mortar was given 40, and so the probabilities went up a little and down a little, but not by much.
I wanted no markers, no tokens other than the active squads on the field, and so initially, each squad was represented by 2 stands. The stands were inseparable, and they fired and moved as a single entity. When a squad was suppressed, one stand was removed, hence it was easy to tell which units had been suppressed in previous fire phases.
The game was played with 15mm figures, and the ping-pong table appeared to be fairly empty of troops. 25mm figures would have given a better presentation.
On successive turns, Squad 527 kept hammering away at the commandos advancing on it. High dice throws destroyed another commando squad, and suppressed a third. Suppressed squads cannot move, but they fire with a negative modifier. The commando attack on my left flank came to a halt.
On my right flank, I managed to blow up two bunkers, and most of the commando units on that side were still intact.
They were intact because of the format of the German reaction chart. This chart listed 9 possibilities on it, and over a period of 9 turns, whenever I diced to see which German units were activated, the same squads kept popping up over and over again.
I had mandated that only one dice toss was permitted during the German activation phase, and if a unit that had been previously awakened was selected, that would be tough on the Germans, i.e., no 're-dicing' was allowed.
The result was that during the entire 10-turn game, only 4 of the 12 German units ever awakened. The others slept through the whole battle. What was unusual was that 2 of the 4 units were MG squads.
In part, the efforts of Squad 527 made up for the lack of participation of the rest of the German force. But even Squad 527 couldn't provide enough fire power to halt the commandos.
I stopped the encounter on Turn #10. At battle's end, I had destroyed 4 of the 6 bunkers, and had 4 of the 10 commando squads wiped out. Three of the 6 surviving squads were suppressed, hence, by definition, couldn't move and couldn't make their way to the pick-up zone, which means that only 3 of the original 10 squads made it off the table.
For Victory Points (VP), I gave the commandos 15 points for each destroyed bunker, and 10 points for each rescued squad. In the first raid, therefore, this gave them a total of 90 VP. I thought that 100 or more VP would be considered a successful raid, and that 90 wasn't quite enough.
Second Edition
But now comes the second edition of COMMANDO, at no additional cost to the public. You don't have to rebase your stands, you don't have to buy another booklet, you don't have to purchase a 'module'... all you gotta do is continue reading.
There were three key changes. First, as I mentioned in the listing of phases for the sequence of the turn, I didn't let the commandos, on their movement phase, tippy-toe past un-activated German units without a possible penalty... there was a 50 percent chance that the quiescent German unit would awaken and immediately fire.
The second change concerned two co-located German squads. If, during the German reaction phase, one of these squads awoke, there was a 50 percent chance that so did the other.
The third major change was to the German reaction chart itself. Now, instead of 9 possible choices, I increased it to 16 (a 4x4 matrix) which would lessen the probability that the same unit would be selected twice, and would increase the probability that more units would enter the battle.
Two percentage dice throws were used to determine the German pop-up units:
| - | 01 to 25 | 26 to 50 | 51 to 75 | 76 to 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 to 25 | 1, 11 | 5, 8 | 6, 10 | 7, 2 |
| 26 to 50 | 6, 9 | 2, 12 | See Table | 3, 5 |
| 51 to 75 | 4, 12 | 1, 6 | 3, 11 | 2, 8 |
| 76 to 100 | See Table | 7, 10 | 5, 1 | 4, 9 |
Do not dice again if designated units have already been activated. In the above chart, if reference is made to "see Table", use the following:
-
01 to 33 : German mortar fire is now available for the battle
34 to 66 : Commando squad nearest a German unit surrenders
67 to 100 : German unit nearest a Commando unit will surrender
In the above 4 x 4 chart, numbers 1 through 8 referred to infantry squads, while 9 through 12 were MG units. In the second battle, the 16 possible chances, versus the 9 in the first scenario, resulted in a much more active defensive posture by the defenders. As I diced for German reaction, turn after turn for a total game length of 13 bounds, only two of the 12 German squads failed to awaken... in contrast to the 8 that never showed up in the first engagement.
And in all my dicing, I was never referred to the second table, hence German mortar fire was never called in, nor did any units surrender.
But what did happen was that the poor commandos now took it on the chin. they were continually under fire from all sectors of the field, and had very few places to hide as they advanced.
I gave a rifle squad a 40 inch range, while the MG reached out anywhere on the table, as long as the target was within the line-of-sight. And mortars, should there be any, could strike anywhere.
Several times during the first and second battles, the commandos suppressed a target unit, and during their 'move' phase, which came after 'fire', decided to close with the Germans. A losing commando squad was suppressed and fell back 12 inches, while a losing German squad was eliminated.
Twice during the first battle, the commandos closed, and twice they were driven back. They started with a basic percentage chance of winning of 50 percent, and this was modified... deduct -10 because the Germans were defined to always be in cover, add +10 because the Germans were suppressed, add another +10 for each supporting squad, and so on.
In the second game, I should note that 'those devils in baggy pants', our old friends of Squad 527, proved superior again, beating off a commando attack. And finally, the commandos actually won a melee, and it took a coordinated attack by 3 squads to do it. The reason for closing for hand-to-hand combat was that this particular German unit was quite close to one of the bunkers, hence the commandos couldn't approach their target without 'going through' the defending squad.
At the end of 13 turns of the second game, a total of 4 bunkers had been destroyed (60 victory points), but there was no-one around to claim victory, for all 10 commando units had been destroyed. Two units almost made it to the pick-up area... they got within 6 inches of the pick-up zone... but they were gunned down during the last German fire phase of the game.
My thanks to Mr. Mulholland for his initial outline of the rules... he probably wouldn't recognize them now. In perusing old wargaming magazines, Mulholland's effort seemed, by far, to be well above others I've read. In fact, he seemed a wee bit apologetic about his creation, stating: "I hope (pray) the rules make sense." They do, they do.
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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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