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| An unlucky PzKfW MkIV hits a stray landmine! |
Presentation
Fireteam:Modern by Rory Crabb is a PDF purchasable from Wargames Vault for $12.99. It 101 pages of which the first half are rules, and the second scenarios and army lists. It's probably the best looking and best laid out set of rules so far, with some great DoD pictures, clear section/chapter dividers, although wargames pics seem limited to figure/vehicle examples and rules explanations. In use there was a bit of jumping around to find things (like all the weapon stats being buried mid-book), but not too bad, and the 2 page QRS had pretty much everything anyway.
Set-Up
A second run of Op Martlett Scenario Two - Pushing On. There is no explicit ground scale, but effective range for a rifle (~300m) is 24" (60cm), so call 4"(10cm) = 50m, so a tad smaller than BA.
Forces were as for Part 3, but this time the British decided to put more effort on the south/their right flank, beyond the road.
Fireteam:Modern is a modern set of rules, but includes stats for bolt action rifles and even Shermans, so adapted to WW2 fairly easily.
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| ENDEX Situation |
How It Played
The Germans started in the same places as last time - the plan worked so why change it! No 3 Section and the Cromwell pushed forward S of the road and cam under fire from the house. The Section took some casualties but the Sherman put HE into the building, putting then Under Fire in one go, and Suppressed by the next. No 3 Platoon meanwhile swung N to hide behind the hedge along the road. No 1 section again came under fire from the Germans in the copse, and smoke called in came a little bit S. With No 3 Section providing the fire base No. 2 Section assaulted across the N-S track and into the Germans and won the melee. About this time the PzKfw Mk 4 swings S and into view of the Cromwell. The Panzer is going to get the first shot off but the Brits play an interrupt card, shoot first and miss. The Panzer then misses in its turn, but in manoeuvring to get the next shot hits a stray anti-tank mine and brews up! This leaves the Cromwell free to focus on fire support. No 3 Section now passes through No 2 Section and assaults the Germans in the copse, with No 1 section on fire support. Again the melee goes the British way. The U/C has also moved up to the track, and deploys its Bren to rake down the lane into the German reserve platoon, but it's effectively all over. Victory to the Brits, and Scenario 2 is one all!
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| No. 2 Section reorganising after their melee |
Rules Impression
A pretty good set of rules I think. There were a few things where it struck me that there was one step to many, but otherwise rolls and DMs seemed fine, and all the results believable. I loved the random even (Joker) that ended up with the Panzer hitting the mine - just the sort of thing you can see happening! Activation was one of the cumbersome bits - you draw a card (red=Brits,black=Germans), choose a unit, then roll 5D6 to see how many activations (4+) you get. So you've drawn and card and rolled 5 dice before you do anything - for every unit! I found that by the end of the 1st utnr I'd just forgotten about dice rolling and was giving everyone 3 activations. For subsequent terms I thought of a better idea and did a simple table to map card value to activtaions, from 0 to 5, roughly matched in probability. That worked really well, the only thing you lost (gained) was that you knew when you had a duff activation so could assign it to a reserve unit, rather than choosing to activate the Cromwell and then rolling zero!
Overall
Good set. Didn't edge it over Bolt Action for me, but preferable for me to Chain of Command. A few ideas I may steal for my house rules for BA. 8/10.
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