The above was the message relayed to headquarters by Jeff Wiltrout after some 8 bounds of a WW II scenario in which we engaged. We used my Merton collection of 40mm plastic figures (augmented by my TOYS R US collection), all singly mounted. Units were defined to be made up of three figures, and the rules I had typed up referred to each group of three as a 'company', but Jeff kept referring to them as a 'squad'. After awhile, I acquiesced, and we both used the 'squad' terminology. Three squads comprised a platoon, and each platoon was provided with a sergeant. Jeff had 12 squads (4 platoons), and his objective was to advance on the village of Grobny, blow up the radio tower and pull back. Grobny consisted of 6 houses, and my defending forces were permitted to set up shop in any of houses. Up the road came the attackers, with the first platoon riding in tracked vehicles, and they smashed into, and through, the road block set up by my A Squad, perched in the middle of the road. Each of the three members of the squad diced to see if they were injured (70 percent chance to evade), and two of the three were adroit enough to dodge the halftracks... one heavy-footed clod was injured, A Squad received a casualty figure, and the battle was on. My defending forces were quite restricted by the set up. First, until Jeff's troops performed a 'hostile act', my people were not permitted to fire on them. This meant that, even though A Squad saw Jeff's 12 squads (4 platoons, an entire company) racing up the road toward the road block, all that A Squad could do was to shout "Halt!". Once the road block was breached, however, we thought that a sufficiently 'hostile act' had occurred, and A Squad could fire defensively. Second, in describing the village of Grobny, I stated that my troops could set up shop in any of the houses. This was not quite true. Primarily because, initially, the only troops I had on the field consisted of Squads A, B, and C... 9 men, one lonely defending platoon. I also had a deck of 20 cards on each of which was annotated such items as "1 squad appears", or "1 HMG appears", or "Friendly fire", or "Mine field", and the like. During my firing phase, in addition to having the forces already on the field fire, I could draw a card or cards, and receive reinforcements. The first few turns, the card draws did not favor me... I drew such items as "Mine field", or Booby trap", etc., which although causing a casualty or two to the attackers, did not provide me with much needed reinforcements. I needed people, people with guns to defend Grobny. There were only two types of weapons used in the battle... rifles and machine guns. Occasionally, one of my cards called for a mortar burst, but that was a rarity. Each rifleman in a squad had 10 'fire points', so that a squad of three riflemen had a 30 percent chance of hitting the target. A light machine gun could add 30 points to this total, and a heavy machine gun could add 50 points. As explained below, there were provisions for coordinating the fire power of two squads to increase the probability of hitting the target. Sequence The sequence we used consisted of 5 phases per half-bound: (1) Side A, the active side, moves all his troops 10 inches (2) Side B, the non-active side, gets 'opportunity fire'. He dices and may fire either 6 or 4 or 2 squads. He can combine pairs of these firing units, adding their fire points. (3) A simultaneous fire phase. Both sides can now have 2 squads fire. They may combine the fire power of the 2 firing squads. (4) Side A closes for hand-to-hand. (5) Both sides rally their men. During the firing and melee phases, casualties to a squad were indicated by two different methods. One was simply to place a casualty figure beside the affected squad. The other was to place one of the squad members in the off-board Rally Zone In the final phase of the half-bound, it was important to remove casualty figures. Three such figures placed with a squad and one of the squad members was placed in the Rally Zone. Removal of casualty figures was done with the assistance of the platoon sergeant. The basic chance to remove a figure was 50 percent, and to this, the sergeant would dice for his augmentation: 01 to 33 20 points 34 to 66 15 points 67 to 100 10 points If, for example, the sergeant added 15 points, the percent chance of removing the first casualty figure was 50 + 15, or 65 percent. Removing the second casualty figure was 55 percent, the third was 45 and so on. If the attempt to remove a figure failed, an additional casualty figure would be added to the squad's total. The percentage risk to the sergeant was the number of points he contributed. If he was killed, no additional casualty figures could be removed until a new sergeant showed up. For men placed in the Rally Zone, the potential penalties were quite high. Each man in the zone had a 50 percent chance to recover. If he succeeded, he rejoined his unit, but if he failed, he was dead. Note that the Rally Zone was the place where unit attrition actually occurred... in effect, 50 percent of the men placed in the Rally Zone never recovered. In the town, I finally began to draw cards increasing my force size... but not enough. My reinforcements appeared piecemeal, and I couldn't get my act together. One of the cards I drew, for example, stated that a fanatical squad appeared on my side and, without firing, dashed forward to attempt to contact the enemy. Unfortunately, the place where the squad materialized was outside of a movement distance from the enemy, which meant that the squad had to continue to charge over several bounds, presenting a wonderful target to the enemy. My fanatics never made contact... shot down in the streets of Grobny. In the center of Grobny stood the radio tower, and despite my efforts, Jeff's troops converged on the site. They captured the radio station and on their move phase, the explosives were set by the ordinance squad, which then moved off. On my move phase, I had no troops nearby to run in and defuse the bombs... I had been driven off to the outskirts of town. On Jeff's next move phase, we tested to see if the explosives went off... 80 percent chance to go BOOM! And, yes, the battle was over. Back to PW Review November 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