Scenario MO/01: The Observer

In my last post I described a small action in a narrative style.

I created the Scenario to try out some new figures. As I have no heavy weapons the challenge needed to be simple.

Also I game solo or rather ZERO. So the scenario had to meet certain specifics. The main one was that surprise or chance was needed to animate the game.

Most solo players are more than happy with rulesets that randomise outcomes far more than the norm for two player games. The reason is easy to see – deprived of your human opponent you need to substitute what would have been their random or unknown acts.

The following Scenario details will help you to apply this to your chosen rules and any number of players you chose.

RED v BLUE – for convenience I have used these terms. In the narrative the Azorians were RED and the Vossackians were BLUE.

RED objective: Place observer on hill to view valley below and call in an air strike against expected enemy concentrations.

BLUE objective: defender may or may not appear!

You can see immediately I have made this one sided in the sense that RED is the active party and BLUE the reactive party – well initially.

notable rules:

• you should specify a distance for sighting or observing enemy units. This might look odd on the table when you can plainly see opponents in direct sight. This abstraction is fine – no different to the out of scale scenery versus figures or weapon ranges v movement. Distortion is the whole point of table top wargaming.
• The defender throws each turn after RED has moved to find out if a part of its force has appeared
• defenders appear at certain points (marked 1 to 8 on the map)
• if RED pass through a marked point it ceases to be a point of entry for BLUE
• to add variety troops can be of different qualities
• movement was not hampered by the hills
• movement was hampered by the woodland which covered all the hills anyway

I thought about which rules to use. Having returned only recently to the WW2 era I had previous rulesets to draw upon as well as new ones as yet untried.

• Poor Bloody Infantry by Peter Pig
• Chain of Command by TooFatLardies
• One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas
• Various Featherstone rules – notably the set from Battles with Model Soldiers
• “Battle” practical wargaming by Charles Grant Senior
• “Operation Warboard” by Gavin and Bernard Lyall
• Rapid Fire reloaded

To confound matters I remembered Neil Thomas published Wargaming an Introduction (WaI) that had a WW2 ruleset.

I opted for this ruleset feeling that One Hour Wargames might be too “lite” for my needs.

WaI is maybe not familiar to many people. It has similar mechanisms to other rulesets.

Dice were always six sided except a 1d8 for defender unit location

Back to the Scenario the following were added to the rules

• I permitted double moves at the start as my 6×4 or 1.8m x 1.2m table had a lot of distance to be covered for no response due to the sighting rules.
• Essentially the units could sprint (double move) once followed by a minimum two moves at normal speed.
• Sections comprised separate figures spaced up to 3cm apart
• 3 Sections equalled a Platoon
• I diced for observation distance on the day
  • 20cm on a 3
  • 30cm on a 4
  • 40cm on a 5
  • 50cm on a 6
• After each RED move BLUE threw 1d6 to appear
  • 1= throw a 1d8 for location of defender appearing
  • throw 1d6 again to find out whats there
    • 1 nothing ! (this is logical confusion when solo gaming)
    • 2,3,4 means a rifle section
    • 5 means SMG section (could be another rifle section of course)
    • 6 means LMG or on a second check =6 again you get (1,2,3 HMG or 4,5,6 Heavy Mortar). In my game these would never have actually appeared – simply their effect being used.
  • I also tested units for grade/quality as WaI requires this info.
    • 1,2 2nd rate
    • 3,4,5 average
    • 6 elite

What Happened?

Lieutenant Grabern set off with his platoon and the observer team. The game lasted 17 turns including some double moves at the beginning. That also meant RED closed at a faster rate per BLUE chance of generating defenders.

On turn 2 a defender location (3) was generated but at this stage its type was not diced for

On turn 7 another location generated (5)

Location 1 was overrun early on so could never activate any defenders

On turn 8 location 4 was also neutralised by RED

Location (6) generated on move 9 along with (2)

On move 11 location (3) was discovered to be an LMG and an elite unit into the bargain. They quickly pinned White Section.

(5) produced elite riflemen and (2) became another LMG – also elite!!!!

Donovan wiped out the LMG at (3) on move 12.

But this was soon replaced by an average rifle section (6) generation

The Azorians were all average troops and once effectively surrounded started to withdraw from move 13 onwards. On move 15 White Section was destroyed while on move 16 the Platoon Leader (Grabern) Section was nearly wiped retreating to the enclosure.

The difference in the “Observers” moves forward and then back is due to the action ending for the Azorians at the enclosure and not behind Hill 90 which was still several moves away.

So there you have it. A simple scenario for a platoon type action.

I was surprised and pleased at the fun levels without heavy weapons or any armour present. They can wait their turn.

Finally the satisfaction is also in selecting, acquiring, painting and then gaming the figures.