Bastogne Rules.indd - MMP Gamers Archive

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Bastogne, SCS #13 5.4 Scenario Variants: Use these to make for variations on the campaign scenario (5.3) and to adjust the game’s balance to taste. No variant has a Victory Point cost, but each notes how greatly it offsets the original scenario’s balance. 5.4a 2 nd Panzer Division Lends a Hand. Historically, parts of the 2 nd Pz Division (KG Guttman and KG Holtmeyer) did not participate in the battle to reduce Bastogne, and the portions of the division that did fight here, did so as an afterthought on their way west. If you use this option, allow KG Gutt to arrive at Entry Area E on turn 4. Balance: This option shifts the game a quite a bit toward the Germans. Notes: I chose to only bring Guttman on here as Holtmeyer also contains the divisional reserves and decided not to allow any changes to the removals of the original 2 nd Pz Division units. This was done to nudge the balance in the favor of the Germans, but to avoid turning the game into a blowout. It is a pretty strong nudge, so be careful when you use this one. 5.4b 101 Abn Troops Returning from Field Dressing Stations. As is often the case in games with units with limited numbers of steps available to take as losses, the resolution of “who is dead” is a bit coarse. When rolling on the SNAFU Table each turn, roll once normally (for SNAFU units) and once again to see if any 101 st Abn companies return to the line because their walking wounded returned to battle. In this second roll, return one Abn Inf or Glider Inf Company out of the available dead 101 st Abn units for each SNAFU Company result the table provides. If there are none, then none return. They return at reduced strength at Entry Area I. Balance: This option shifts the game toward the Americans by just a touch. 5.4c Late Arrivals. Instead of having the entire 101 st arrive on Turn 2, have the 501 st and 502 nd Abn Regiments arrive on Turn 2 and the rest of the division arrive on Turn 3. Balance: This shifts the game toward the Germans. 5.4d S-4s do business like always. Historically, the supply officers in charge of the 101 st Airborne’s artillery sensed that their typical mission might change in this deployment to Belgium and as a result brought far more artillery ammunition than their normal load. Here, we assume they followed the same old checklist and didn’t think anything would be different. Give the US 12 Artillery Ammo Points at start instead of 20. Balance: This option is a big shift in favor of the Germans. 5.4e Free Deployment. Allow the US player to set up as desired at start. Balance: This option shifts the game a touch towards the Americans. 5.4f Ja, Wir haben deine Nutz hier! (Yeah, we got yer ‘nuts’ right here!). German dream scenario (can be combined with others above for a real nutty affair). Ignore all German Removals. Balance: This option gives a massive shift in the favor of the Germans. Note that the German player will not get any VPs for unit removal in this case. Designer’s Notes This was one of the rarest of rare game design projects for me. It was a simple joy to work on, playtest, and think about from the very beginning. I can’t honestly remember another project that came together as seamlessly and with so much simple fun as this one. I hope you find it to be as much fun as we did. For the first time, I designed a game under the overall rules protocol that no rule would be added unless we found in testing that we needed it, the goal being as simple of a game as possible. This is the opposite of the usual technique of creating all the rules you think you’ll need and then paring them down as testing proved they were not needed. That was a tedious and sometimes painful process that risked little remnants from obsolete rules being left in by mistake. I must say, I rather like the ‘build up’ approach. The basis of the rules here was the earlier SCS game Fallschirmjäger. Many of the special rules there were not needed here (airdrops, anti-aircraft fires and such) and a few of the rules that were ported over could be simplified in ways I rather wish I had done in FJ’s development. All in all, the chassis of rules that exists here is something I am very excited about, and I am already looking for new situations and projects to which to apply them. I suppose the biggest “what the heck?” rule in this game is Road March. This was the result of two very interesting problems in the early playtest games. First, with hexes only 400m across, even infantry units could move ‘enormous’ (in terms of hexes) distances in a day—literally all around the map. Vehicular units were even worse. I toyed with the idea of giving units huge MAs, but this was doomed as units would then be able to use that MA in situations where it just wasn’t appropriate. I needed to give them a lot of movement, but only under the ‘right’ conditions. Road march allows this. Page 10 Multi-Man Publishing, Inc 403 Headquarters Drive, Suite 7, Millersville MD 21108 © 2008 All Rights Reserved.
The Gamers, Inc. The second problem in the early tests was that the US player was lacking any kind of edge of his seat nervousness about the overall situation. Units creeping along during regular movement doing a flank march could be spotted many turns in advance and counter moves made at one’s leisure. Road March allows the Germans to ‘suddenly’ arrive at some critical point with no warning at all. This makes the US player appropriately paranoid and have a greatly interested in making a real perimeter. Interestingly enough, to eliminate much of the German zip-around-the-map capability, the Americans must occupy the rather large pocket they historically did. Next on the list of seemingly odd rules is the complete lack of normal trace supply. While at times this means some isolated pocket of US troops will hold out until the Germans destroy them, I’ve seen very, very few units that would rate as “out of supply” using the usual sorts of rules. The few that did were either hunkering down someplace hoping the enemy wouldn’t notice them or were busy being crushed by the enemy. Either way, there wasn’t much ‘good’ they were doing for their side and they certainly weren’t in a position to pull some sort of gamey stunt. Trace supply failed the necessity test to justify its rules weight. The game went through an absolute minimalist phase where with no stacking at all. This worked fairly well except in two matters: arranging the rear areas and reduced units. The rear areas take some management here (to make sure the roads are clear allowing road marches when needed) and it was silly at times to see large swathes of land used up in parking small artillery units and such. With no stacking, there was no way to assemble two reduced units so that players could afford the space in the line to hold them (putting them up there by themselves was dangerous). Allowing the minimal stacking of two steps cured both problems while keeping much of the original minimalist approach in play. It makes everything go faster as you’ll see. Artillery is handled much the way as in FJ except that only one kill roll is made per stack instead of rolling for each unit. (This is one of the side benefits of the limited stacking.) The tree-burst terrain effect modifier makes for some interesting feelings among players about being in the woods. Yeah, you get a defensive benefit there, but suddenly they are strictly unfriendly if you get barraged. It’s an interesting little conundrum. Finally, there are a couple of direct fire weapons (like the 88’s) that can fire from wherever they are to whatever hex there might be in range with no Line of Sight requirement. Basically, we just aren’t getting into LOS at this level and we’ll just have to assume the guns “found a way” to engage the target. US Player’s Notes by Dean Essig Your first job as the US player will be to avoid trying to do too much at the very beginning when you get an entire Airborne Division dumped in your lap while the Germans still look small and weak. The urge will be to try to take the war to them and block them along the east map edge or engulf them in the middle. Avoid falling into this trap. Not only can you ill-afford the losses of an offensive strategy, but all-too-often the US player trying this will be unable to break contact adequately to avoid getting sucker punched by the flanking German columns. The result is usually a nasty city fight inside Bastogne. This is not where you want to be. Once you avoid that trap, you’ll need to decide how big of a perimeter to set up. Larger ones allow for more ground to give up before you are in deep trouble. Smaller ones have less ground area to cover allowing more combat power per unit of distance. The fairly historical one is a good choice. There is value in being able to maneuver around the edges of the perimeter, having space to redeploy, and being able to give up a little ground when needed without creating a crisis. It is actually important to generate a real perimeter (as opposed to a string of little isolated outposts). Between the road march and regular movements, the Germans can make quick work of going around a weak outpost line. Salvage as many of your armor and mech units as possible and set them up in a fire brigade inside the perimeter. You’ll need them to counterattack. Avoid falling into the trap of leaving those at-start Team Cherry units isolated in Longvilly. Sure, there are no supply rules to make them disappear, but the imaginary thorn in the side of the Germans just isn’t worth leaving them outside the perimeter. Escape with them as soon as you can and get them in with the other US units. Your artillery is your lifeline. Keep a good eye on your ammo supply to make sure you never actually run out. This requires some budgeting and good target selection. It is worth it to hunt tanks and blunt spearheads. It is not worth it to blow up VG infantry. You don’t have a lot of free artillery, but make the best use of it you can. Look for targets in the woods. Your Air Strikes are an important offensive weapon late in the game as you’ll be able to use them (as opposed to other types of barrage) during the Barrage Phase of your turn. Toward the end of the game, you’ll be running out of space, units, ammunition and time. Wait, time running out is good for you and bad for the Germans. Your key to winning is to not run out of the first three before the Germans run out of the last. Multi-Man Publishing, Inc 403 Headquarters Drive, Suite 7, Millersville MD 21108 © 2008 All Rights Reserved. Page 11
Page 1 and 2: The Gamers, Inc. Designer: Dean Ess
Page 3 and 4: The Gamers, Inc. dot). Artillery un
Page 5 and 6: The Gamers, Inc. Multi-Man Publishi
Page 7 and 8: The Gamers, Inc. 4.0c VP for Bastog
Page 9: The Gamers, Inc. German Information
Page 13 and 14: The Gamers, Inc. clearing a railroa
Page 15 and 16: The Gamers, Inc. Multi-Man Publishi

Bastogne Rules.indd - MMP Gamers Archive

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?