Don Bailey sent me a set of his rules called STURM, for 'small' action WW II combat. How small? I'm not sure. An infantry token wasn't really defined, nor was a tank token. They were simply called 'units'. Which is OK with me, but for purposes of describing a battle, you've got to have some sort of moniker with which to tag the stands involved. I chose to call 'em 'platoons', and 'platoons' it was. For a test encounter, out came my Lannigan Brigade of 20mm figures, and I selected a number of British platoons (attacking), and Highly Imperial Japanese Marine platoons (defending). Where did the Brits fight the Japanese? I defined the encounter to take place in Malaysia, and set out the terrain as shown on the map. In addition to its infantry, each side was given two tank platoons and an anti-tank (A/T) gun. The Brits outnumbered the Japanese slightly, but they were attacking, so that evened it up. The Japanese were distributed around the field. Each of the four towns... Melap, Bangor, Tual and Pinpin... were occupied. I also tossed in a couple of heavy machine gun stands (platoons?) for the sides. STURM requires hits on a unit to be tracked. There are three grades of troops... green, veteran, and crack. And to eliminate a stand, each type requires a specified number of hits. A stand of green troops is destroyed with 2 hits, 3 hits destroys a veteran stand, while 4 hits eliminates a crack stand of troops. For my battle, each side had one green unit, and most of the other units were of veteran status. STURM can be played either solo or with multiple players... in this first outing, there was only me at table-side, hence I pushed the tokens of both sides. The Brits came on from the south, and their first objective was the town of Melop. They saw nothing in the town from their initial approach distance of 10 inches. The Japanese defense of the town consisted of two platoons... one was a tank platoon, a crack unit. The other, a veteran unit, was a heavy machine gun platoon. It was the Japanese half of the bound, and 10-sided dice were thrown for the defenders, which determined: (a) The number of actions the side received... either 1, or 2, or 3 An action permitted a unit to fire or move. (b) The number of units that could move and fire, either all or 1/2 or 1/4 of them (c) The number of 'clock cycles' that incurred. This last item, 'clock cycles', had to do with damage assessment. Die rolls for the 'clock' would be totaled and accumulate from half-bound to half-bound, until the 'clock' totaled 15, at which time all current casualty figures placed on the units during the previous half-bounds would be assessed in terms of the actual hits received by the stands involved. It was here that the status of the individual platoons came into play, i.e., 3 hits eliminated a veteran platoon, 4 hits wiped out a crack platoon, and so on. On this turn, the defending Japanese in Melop received a single action, meaning that all units could fire once. The HMG fired first... resulting in some superb marksmanship! The HMG placed 4 Temporary Hits (TH) on one of the approaching British infantry platoons, Platoon A. Note I call these Temporary Hits (TH), since, normally, they would remain with the unit until the clock cycle mandated they be assessed. But here, so devastating were the hits, that we didn't even wait until the damage assessment phase to see what was up... the 4 TH were evaluated instantly. When a unit fires, the usual result is either 1 or 2 TH... 4 TH are quite unusual. What followed was also unusual... Platoon A checked on the damage chart. This was a veteran unit... 3 Permanent Hits (PH) would destroy it. But Platoon A's percentage dice toss was exceptionally high... and the damage chart indicated that none of the 4 TH were effective! Platoon A lived to fight another day! If the dice throw had been low, all the TH would have been effective, producing 4 PH, and Platoon A would have been removed from the table. And now, having been fired upon, Platoon A took a reaction test. Unit reactions are triggered by one of five events: (a) A unit is fired upon (b) A unit is close assaulted (c) A friendly unit within 10 inches retreats (d) An enemy unit moves within 15 inches (e) An enemy unit within 10 inches retreats The reaction function is determined by a deck of cards. There are 20 cards in the deck, and on each card is cross-referenced the type of reacting unit and the event (see above) that triggered the reaction. Platoon A drew its reaction card... and the result was that the unit fell back 5 inches. But now, the second defending unit in Melop fired. This was Japanese Medium Tank Platoon San, a crack unit. It fired on Platoon A... the British unit's 5-inch withdrawal hadn't carried it out of the range of the tank. Platoon San placed 1 TH on Platoon A. Again, Platoon A, having been fired upon, took a reaction test... it drew its card, which said that it fired... but although Tank Platoon San could strike at Infantry Platoon A, Platoon A, being infantry, was too far from the tank to hit it. What STURM produces is a continual series of unit reactions, as each platoon reacts to enemy actions. This showed up a couple of bounds later. Here, it was the Japanese turn, and Japanese Tank Platoon San, still in the town of Melop, fired out at British Tank Platoon C, and got 1 TH on the unit. Platoon C, having been hit, had a reaction... its card stated it would advance 5 inches. The advance of Platoon C toward Melop was a 'threatening action' (see the list on the preceding page) for Platoon San, and it drew a card, which mandated that it fire upon the approaching platoon. Platoon San got 2 TH on British Platoon C, which, in turn, reacted and drew its own card. "Fire!" said the card, and the Brits placed 2 hits on Platoon San. Yet another reaction by Platoon San... its card stated it would fire on Platoon C. And so we had a small fire fight develop between the two units. The final result was that Platoon C suffered a total of 3 TH, while Platoon San took 5 TH. How long does this reaction cycle keep up? A unit can draw reaction cards only three times per half-bound... at that time it is defined as 'exhausted'. If fired on again during the bound, it will not react... it withdraws. I followed the STURM rules book fairly strictly, except for one item. STURM says that at the beginning of a side's turn, the first thing it does is go to the damage assessment chart and translate its existing TH to the actual Permanent Hits (PH) on its units. I deviated from this. Only when the clock cycle was completed (the clock totaled 15) did I have the sides assess damage. Which meant that units could accumulate a number of TH over several half-bounds before they determined what their PH were. Many years ago, I wrote an article for THE COURIER in which I described a similar reaction cycle. This was a man-on-man skirmish game, and when a man was fired upon, he took a reaction test and determined his own response... he could fire, fall back, etc. STURM takes this concept into the WW II era. And it seems to work. For a solo game, it works extremely well, as the reaction deck tells the solo player who's doing what to whom. In a multi-player game, with several players and many units on each side, there may be a wee bit of confusion as to which unit is doing the firing, which unit is provoking a reaction, which unit is reacting, and so on. Back to PW Review October 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