On the table were 10 little farmettes, comprising the Serbian town of Zgroshk. Serbian President Jim 'Slovabotchavik' Butters had five 5-man squads to take over the town. Opposing the Serbian leader was the famous Croatian General, Cliff 'Dorachoshlamovitch' Sayr, also in charge of five 5-man squads, and his mission, too, was to secure Zgroshk. This was a 'current history' scenario, based on the goings-on in Yugoslavia. On CNN, it appears that everyone in Serbia is a general or colonel, hence it wasn't too surprising that the Serbian President himself, or the Croatian General himself, was in the field, directing troops. I have a small collection of 25mm troops, enough for 25 figures per side, and so I divided the units into squads of 5-men each. Each side had a couple of sergeants, and two MG's which could be brought onto the field to support the infantry. And that's all the weaponry there was. Assault rifles and machine guns... no artillery, no mortars, no grenades... these will be added in subsequent editions. At the present time, I'm in my 'clocking mode'... which means that every time a side become active, it tossed a 10-sided die, and the result was recorded. The accumulated total (defined as 'elapsed time') was tracked. When the total elapsed time surpassed 15, the turn was defined to end. Why the number 15? I have no idea, other than that it seems to work. When a squad suffered a casualty, one figure was removed and replaced by a casualty figure. During the turn, as the initiative passed from side to side, casualties accumulated for both sides due to firing and melee, and the casualty figures placed during the cycles in the turn mounted up. It was only when the turn ended, that the actual result of the casualties was assessed. At that time, dice were tossed for each casualty: TABLE 1 01 to 33 Man has light wound, immediately recovers 34 to 66 Man has light wound, and must be assisted by a fellow squad member. Will recover on the next active phase. This means that along with the wounded man, one of the still-active members of the squad is also temporarily taken out of action. 67 to 100 Man dies. Serbian President Slova... ah, well, we'll call him 'Jim' for short... quickly occupied 4 of the farmettes. Croatian General Dorachosch... and him, we'll call 'Cliff'... was a wee bit slower getting off the mark. When a side became active, it had to select one of two options. (a) Go into an 'attacking' mode. It could go on the offensive. Units could both move and fire and close assault. But the side could not bring on reserves, nor could it perform other coordinating actions. (b) Go into an 'adjusting' mode. It could coordinate its forces. Here, units could move, reserve squads could be brought on the field, MG's could be assigned to a squad, sergeants could reorganize their depleted squads into new 5-man units, etc. But the penalty was that the side that selected 'coordination' couldn't fire, nor could it assault and enter into hand-to-hand combat. Having selected its mode, the active side now determined how many of its squads would be affected. This could vary, and again, a dice throw told all... TABLE 2 01 to 33 'Attack' or 'coordinate'... all squads function. If 'coordinate', 2 reserve squads appear. 34 to 66 'Attack' or 'coordinate'... all but 1 squad functions If 'coordinate', 1 reserve squad appears 67 to 100 'Attack' or 'coordinate'... all but 2 squads function If 'coordinate', no reserve squads appear You'll note that in the two tables given above, low dice tosses are favorable, and it's possible that some men would hang back. The same sort of table was used for the firing phase, i.e., not all the men in a given squad would obey the order to fire, and the same table used when engaging in close assault. Several turns into the game, one of the Croation squads charged a Serbian unit entrenched in a house. This was a desperation charge, since the charging squad, accompanied by a sergeant, had only two men left in it. In truth, the defenders were little better off... the defending squad had three men, but no sergeant. When the dice were tossed to determine how many of the charging 2-man unit would actually fight, the result was "all but 2"... and "all but 2" in a 2-man squad says that nobody fights... which meant that the 2 men, thinking better of the entire affair, held back, and let the sergeant do their fighting for them. Can you get any more historically realistic? When the defenders diced to see how many of the three would strike, a favorable dice throw said that all would join in. Which thus pitted the three against the sole attacking sergeant. He lost the melee, and he and his two do-nothing men fell back 10 inches. I could hear the sergeant swearing in Croation: "Just wait until I get you @#$%&! back in the barracks!" As I indicated before, this is the epitome of historical accuracy! Croatian General Cliff was playing 'catch up', as he tried to evict the Serbian President's units from the town. But 'catch up' didn't work. Cliff had two MG's to support his troops, and it took about 4 of his active player phases to bring in a single MG. He never could get the other MG into the fight. Bringing an MG into combat required (a) First, the side chooses the 'adjustment ' mode, i.e., coordinating his troops. One of the permitted actions here was to attempt to assign an MG to particular squad. (b) Second, a toss of 70 or under on percentage dice was necessary. If successful, the machine gunners got their orders, dashed out, joined the squad, and set up their weapon. If they failed, they remained where they were. An MG added an appreciable amount to a firing unit's probability of hit (POH). A squad always started out with a basic POH of 30%, and each rifleman added another +5, so that the total, if all 5 men fired, added up to 55%. The MG added another 30% bringing the final POH to a respectable 85%. Remember, however, that before a squad let loose a volley, it had to determine how many men actually aimed and fired... and a bad dice toss (a high throw) could knock 2 men out of the firing line, reducing the POH by 10%. Another reduction to the POH was 10% if the target was in cover. In the rules, there were two ways to actually 'kill' people, i.e. eliminate them and remove them from the field. (a) The first method involved the end-of-turn casualty assessment, given above in TABLE 1. This needed a high dice toss during the assessment phase, otherwise the wounded man would eventually recover. (b) The second method involved the use of Victory Points (VP). Each time a target was hit, the firing side collected 1 VP. When a total of 10 VP were gathered, the side, if it chose a 'coordination' phase, could select one enemy figure and remove him. We played 4 turns in the battle. This was not, however, the usual 2-half-turns-per-bound game. Here, each turn consisted of several cycles, and the turn ended only when the accumulated elapsed time totaled more than 15. Due to the way the end-of-turn was defined, it was impossible for the players to predict when the turn would be over. Since casualties were piling up during the turn, unit strength gradually diminished as we went through the cycles within the turn. A tally of the cycles within each turn showed two turns with three cycles, one turn with only one cycle and one turn with two cycles. In deciding the victor of a close assault, the number of casualties attached to the units in combat was a determining factor. Since the sequence called for movement before firing, an assaulting squad would first charge forward, and then undergo a round of fire before contact. Any casualties so produced counted against it in the determination of which side won the melee. Cliff's Croatians didn't do as well as the opposing Serbians simply because Cliff's dice, during the fire phases, were, in a word, rotten. As explained above, the POH for a squad depended upon the number of men that decided to press the triggers of their rifles, and it varied between 35 percent to 80 percent (if an MG supported the squad). The average required toss, therefore, was around 50 percent, and Cliff rarely seemed to be able to toss below 50. At battle's end, the Serbs controlled 6 of the farmettes, while the Croats had only 2. The remaining 4 houses (there were 10 total) were too far out on the flanks to bother about. One reoccurring item that popped up during the battle, was that, after a number of cycles and turns and consequent casualty assessments, several squads were left with, perhaps, 2 or 3 members. Initially, there was no provision for any squad reorganization, and these depleted units had to make it on their own. We discussed this table-side, and determined that one of the functions to be accomplished during a 'coordination' part of the sequence was to permit the sergeants to reorganize the squads on the field, and build them up to strength. A final summary of the total KIA tallies (both sides started with 25 men) is: Side Survivors Killed Jim's Serbs 21 4 Cliff's Croats 19 6 As with any skirmish game, one of the key items of the presentation, to my way of thinking, is the availability of casualty figures. Here, I used two types... a prone figure, and a 'help your buddy' figure. This second token showed one squad member assisting another. Whenever they were used, the appropriate number of men was deducted from the squad. Back to PW Review February 1999 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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