I’ve continued to think about the WWII skirmish ideas while running. Today I had both a six-mile run and a two-hour plane trip to think about this. I have been wanting to simplify the cards a bit while also wanting to address indirect fire in a more streamlined fashion.
In the top third of the card, I thought all the modifiers and things looked too cramped and busy. It occurred to me that the players could start in the right “column” and then apply fewer column shifts. So in the example above, all the cards have the “EVT” labels under the first three “columns,” standing for expert, veteran, and trained, the three ratings for accuracy and melee.
I had envisioned a multi-step process using the existing mechanisms for resolving HE and other forms of indirect fire: flip a card to see if you hit the right area [if no, then scatter], then flip a card to see if where you wanted to hit is blocked (e.g., by a window) [if so, then scatter], then figure out which figures are in the short, medium, and long radii from the point of the blast, then flip a card to determine if each figure was hit, then for each figure hit, flip a card to determine wound location. Argh! One can imagine the game coming to a screeching halt and folks heading out for a meal every time someone throws a grenade!
It occurred to me that I could make three octagons that are just “rings.” These would be different sizes, representing different blast radii for indirect fire. While a bit of an oversimplification, the smallest one would be for grenades, the second would be for small mortars (say 81mm and below), and the larger one would be for large mortars and artillery.
The process for throwing a grenade, for instance, becomes flip a card and look at the small numbers above the row of checks and x’s. As with direct fire, the starting “column” used would based on the accuracy rating of the thrower. The top row of numbers indicates the number of radii of scatter and the little knife indicates the direction.
In these examples, a veteran unit with no other modifiers would scatter two radii, zero radii, and one radius, respectively. One can imagine that the scatter distance might be doubled for off-board artillery. Or, you might imagine that HE fired in direct fire would use the radii as indicated on the cards, on-board indirect fire would double the scatter distance, and off-board artillery might triple the distance. The beauty of this approach is that a weapon with a small burst radius thrown from a short distance, like a grenade, would scatter a smaller amount than a light mortar fired from some distance. This was a problem I’ve tackled in different ways in other rules, such as BAPS.
Now, here is another nuance. See the three blast symbols on the top figure? They represent small, medium, and large burst radius weapons. When all three are shown as indicated above, if the soldier is within the octagonal ring of either a small, medium, or large weapon, he has been hit, and you flip the next card for damage, just as with normal fire. You would flip a card for for each figure in the burst radius. Some convention might be used, like go from inside out or left to right. The manner doesn’t really matter as long as one card is flipped for each figure.
There are 50 cards in the deck (plus two extras). Twenty will be misses, meaning that the figure for which you are flipping takes no damage. Ten will have all three symbols, ten will have just large and medium, and ten will have just large. (I need to think about this math a little more, to make sure I’m including the right number of each type of effect.) One can imagine ways to reduce this to one symbol showing the smallest radius weapon that scores a hit, so instead of having to use all three symbols, the “small” symbol would be read as “small or larger.”
What does this mean mathematically?
If there are four figures in the large burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.6 x 4 = 2.4.
If there are four figures in the medium burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.4 x 4 = 1.6.
If there are four figures in the small burst radius (a difficult task), the expected number of casualties is 0.2 x 4 = 0.8.
It might seem odd that everyone within the radius has the same probability of damage, but on average, I think it will work out fine.
See how this gets away from complicated templates, having to break out the calipers to determine who is in the short radius and who is within the medium radius, etc.
The HE procedure now is significantly streamlined from what was discussed above. Now you flip one card to determine whether the round landed where you want it and determine the scatter direction and distance all on one card. Then for each figure in the burst radius you flip one card for damage effect, ignoring the counting (which figure is hit) diagram. Indirect fire, instead of being onerous, has just one more card flip (on average) than direct fire. Pretty cool.
I’m going to bed now.
