Jeff Wiltrout was opposite me, and my plastic, skinny, single-mounted, WW II 40mm MERTENS were on the table. We had some woods, some hills and three key villages. Both of us started on our baselines, and moved 10 inches on our active half of the bound.
The Jeffites moved first. He decided to focus on the eastern-most village, Eastburg, and his three companies advanced their 10-inches. A 3-man group of figures was defined as a company, and somewhere around 5 companies was a battalion. We each started with only three companies, a wee bit less than a battalion.
The active side's movement was followed by three firing phases.
- a. In the first phase, the non-active side received 'opportunity fire'. He diced for the number of companies he could fire, from 2 to 6. He was permitted to coordinate the fire of these companies in pairs, i.e., fire 2 of them by adding their fire factors together.
b. The second fire phase was a simultaneous one. Both the active side, and the non-active side, could select 2 companies and coordinate their fire.
c. The third fire phase was a 'card phase', during which other companies arrived to supplement our forces. We both started the encounter with 3 companies. Each bound we were given 2 cards, on each of which were listed our additional reinforcements. These reinforcements were, in essence, 'pop up' units... the cards denoted whether the companies would appear in the open or in one of the towns. The cards also gave the new units a chance of firing first... perhaps 60 or 70 percent. If they failed their 'first fire' test, firing would be simultaneous.
I received more than my share of lousy cards... instead of reinforcement companies, my cards would state that Jeff's troops walked into a booby trap, with 60 percent chance of injury. Or they wandered into a minefield with 70 percent chance of injury. Big deal! I didn't want mine fields... I wanted additional troops.
Even so, I managed to drive the Jeffites out of the most western village, Westburg, and occupied the middle town, Midburg. I had 2 of the 3 towns, things looked good... except for the fact that I was short on troops.
Jeff suddenly played a card which gave him a tank, and to counter this, since I had been fortunate enough to also have a 'tank card', on rumbled my vehicle to counter his. He had placed his tank near one of my infantry companies, and his card stated that the infantry had a 70 percent chance to fire first at the tank... which told us that that particular company had an anti-tank capability. BOOM! My infantry put 2 hits on the tank.
In the firing procedures, each weapon had a probability of hit (POH):
- Rifle 10% per man firing
Lt MG 30%
Hvy MG 50%
Tank HE 50 %
Anti-tank 60%
A 3-man rifle company that fired had, therefore, a 30 percent chance of inflicting a hit. By coordinating the fire of 2 companies, and adding their POH's, the total POH rose to 60 percent. A heavy weapon (Lt MG or Hvy MG) attached to a company could add another 30 to 50 percent to the POH.
There was a 3-tier fire effect:
- a. If you tossed under half the POH, you'd inflict one casualty figure, and send one of the target figures to the Rally Zone.
b. If you tossed from half the POH to the POH itself, the target would receive one casualty figure.
c. If you tossed over the POH... no effect... a miss
There were, therefore, two ways of indicating injuries... casualty figures placed with a unit, or men sent to the Rally Zone to be rallied back to their unit at the end of the bound.
On the end-of-bound rally phase, the battalion sergeants played a role. It was important to remove existing casualty figures and not let them accumulate, for 3 of them sent an additional man to the off-board Rally Zone.
To remove a casualty figure, you started with a basic 50 percent chance of success. This was augmented by the sergeant's assistance... you'd toss dice:
| 01 to 33 | The sergeant added another 20 points |
| 34 to 66 | The sergeant added another 15 points |
| 67 to 100 | The sergeant added another 10 points. |
My man, Sergeant Butt, helped out everywhere, but his dice throws were horrible, and time after time, he'd add only 10 points. Each time a sergeant helped out, he was at risk... and the percentage chance he was potted was the number of points he had contributed. Sergeant Butt assisted his men about 15 times before Jeff tossed his pot-the-sergeant dice low enough to take Butt off the field.
I had another officer to help out... Lt. Wobble... but he didn't last long either. And now, with no sergeants or officers, I was in trouble, since I couldn't remove casualty figures. Another sergeant would appear if you had more than a battalion (5 companies) on the field, and this was where my lousy card draws hurt. Since I wasn't drawing reinforcement cards, but only 'booby trap' cards, I didn't have enough troops to support an additional sergeant.
Finally, I lucked out... a '3-company reinforcement' card appeared, and with it, Sergeant Arm. Since I was doing fairly well in Midburg and Westburg, I took my newly arrived reinforcements and had them attack Eastburg, which Jeff had occupied since the beginning of the battle.
A bad decision... I lost the war in Eastburg. My 3-company attack, although well planned (if I do say so myself) , was poorly executed.
- a. In the melee procedures, despite the number of companies we desired to participate in the attack, we each selected one single company to act as the lead unit in the combat.
b. Then we'd draw from a deck of cards which told us if the defender fired or the attacker fired, or if... most importantly... an allied company would be drawn into the combat to assist the lead company.
c. And so we'd draw and fire at each other, and inflict casualty figures, and cause men to flee to the Rally Zone, while waiting for reinforcements to be drawn into the fight.
d. During these card draws, the Jeffites drew into the fight 2 additional companies, while my cards provided no assistance to own lead company.
e. I was, therefore, outnumbered 3-to-1, and when the time came to determine who won (a function of the number of men engaged, plus the number of casualties inflicted on the enemy) ... no surprise that I lost, and my newly arrived troops fled from Eastburg. You just can't rely on fresh recruits. I'm going to have to put them through some vigorous training exercises.
What I should have done was use the recruits to reinforce my holdings in Midburg and Westburg, for Jeff was building up his units for a grand attack on these locations.
And sure enough, one bound later, in came the Jeffites, smashing all before them.
One item of interest concerned the fate of the men in the Rally Zone. At the end of the bound, both sides tried to rally their men... each man was diced for separately and there was a 50 percent chance the man would rejoin his unit. If he failed the rally test, he died.
The result of this rallying procedure was that several of the original 3-man companies were down to a single figure... two of their 3 men had previously failed to rally. I had a couple of these single-man companies on the field, and they were virtually useless.
If you look on the POH chart, one rifleman fires with a 10 percent POH, which makes him pretty impotent, unless he fires in concert with other people. In the 15th edition of these rules, therefore, we'll have to make allowances for these puny, single-figure, under-manned companies.
At battle's end, the entire Simonian force ignominiously retreated from the field, vowing to come back at a later time.
At that time, Jeff, starting with his original 3 companies, had drawn onto the field via his cards, about 14 companies (3 battalions), with an appropriate number of sergeants and officers. In contrast, I ended up with slightly less than 2 battalions.
You'll note there are no provisions for off-board artillery, for aircraft, and only a minor provision for armored vehicles. I've experimented with such procedures, and have never really found a satisfactory method for introducing them into the battle. The easiest way is to toss in a couple of cards for these ploys, but it doesn't always work.
We'll keep experimenting.
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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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