USE ME WWII: Pacific Theater BatRep

Our Saturday night plans to see Lincoln were cancelled due to my prelude-to-bronchitis, so Lady Shadowmoss went to visit some friends and I stayed in, drank hot chocolate and played a wargame while wearing my pj's. Saturday nights are definitely not like they used to be!

Scenario: The Japanese are holding a ridge and the USMC want them off. There is a 10 turn limit.

OOB:

• Japanese - 1 infantry section (10 figures) dug in, 1 MG crew (2 figs)  in pill box, 1 MG crew (2 figs) in bunker
• USMC - 3 infantry sections (8 figures, 24 figs total, 2 of which had flame throwers, each section leader carried an SMG), 1 MG crew (2 figs)

Rules: USE ME WWII, all ranges modified x1.5 for 1/72 figures. Green markers mean "winged", any other color means "struck".

I placed the Japanese in defensive positions and randomly determined the entry points for the marines.

That big blue strip is actually a creek not a river!

The Japanese wait for their prey.

The Marines prepare for their advance.

The left advances safely in cover to engage the MG in the pillbox.

The right comes under fire from the HMG and the infantry squad on the hill.

With the pillbox MG crew eliminated, the Japanese right moves to get shot at the advancing Marines.

Marines storm the entrenched Japanese infantry under fire from the bunker MG.

The Marines' rifles make fast work of the Japanese squad.

They overrun the Japanese left with an eye towards silencing the MG in the bunker.

Meanwhile, on the Japanese right, Japanese charge to intercept and fire on the advancing USMC.

A gratuitous close-up.

After fierce hand to hand fighting on the USMC left and inside the bunker, the hill is cleared!

Total turns played: 9
Total playing time (including picture taking and re-learning the rules): 1.5 hours
Results: Japanese - 14 KIA, USMC - 6 KIA, 7 wounded (5 winged, 2 stunned)

Editor's note: I really need to do two things: 1) get a new piece of fabric for the table that photographs as green and not blue and 2)do something about all of those cat hairs stuck on the fabric and felt!

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She's not nearly as convinced that breaking my oath to not buy more minis in 2012 is, in fact, making the world a better place.

First thoughts on USEME WWII

This is not a review of USEME WWII ( available from 15mm.co.uk) properly speaking - for one I've only played the game once. Second, and more importantly, this game took place around 2:30 am Sunday morning and to be fair, my brain may not have been working properly. I think the fact that I set up a game at 2:30 am is reasonable evidence of this.

I pitted two units of German infantry and a Panzer IV on a ridge against three units of Soviet infantry and a T-34/76 tasked with getting the Germans out of there. All were rated Elan 3.

Since I felt like using the 1/32 figures, I tripled the distances and ranges (I probably could have gone up to 4x but 3x worked fine). Infantry Movement =  12", Tanks = 18".

One other note, for grins, the game was played on the living room carpet using large throw pillows and the coffee table to simulate the ridge and other large green  sofa cushions to act as woods. It was very much a "toy game".

No pictures were taken but here is an artist's rendition of the setup (force images provided by JuniorGeneral.org):

Grey areas are impassable and block LOS. The tan-ish trapezoids in front of the German units are sandbags.


The Soviets advance using the woods as cover. The tanks exchange ineffective fire.  The German infantry, unable to use their rifles any time soon, hunker down, and will do so every turn until the Soviets start heading up the slope to their position.

I watched several war documentaries this weekend. Hence the arrows.

The T-34's crew dialed in the Panzer - hitting it once on turn 3 and again on turn 4, destroying it. The crew would then set their sites on the hunkered down infantry on the hill and score no more hits the rest of the game - hitting hunkered down infantry in cover from long range is not easy.

A battle of attrition ensued as infantry fired on each other from cover. It was slow going at first, but once the winged and then struck markers started piling up, every shot seemed to take another figure out for one side or the other.

Overwhelmed by superior numbers, on turn 8, the German commander seeing his forces down to 40% of its starting strength (not counting the loss of the Panzer), opted to leave the field to the Soviet force which still had 75% of its strength left.

*****
As I said, this isn't a review properly speaking, just my first impressions. And they are:

If you've already played USEME001 Science Fiction rules, then the basic rules for USEME003 won't throw you any surprises. If you've downloaded some the free additional material you can get for USEME001 (like civilians and firing for suppression for instance), you'll notice that these seem to come directly from USEME003 WWII's Advanced Rules section.

The solo section is a little skimpier than the one in the Sci Fi rules, but the game doesn't suffer for it.

So is it worth $5 for the PDF if you already have the Sci Fi rules?

If you're a rivet counter, you'll want to go elsewhere. These rules aren't targeted at you. That said, I'm not a rivet counter - I lean heavily towards the "game" side of the hobby, in spite of the reading and research I do to the contrary. I believe it is safe to say that the USEME rules are game oriented but they don't totally neglect history.

Personally, I think there's enough period flavor in these rules  - on table ground attack aircraft, anti-tank and anti-aircraft rules, sniper rules, flame throwers and even partisans - to capture the WWII vibe. I suspect this is especially true if WWII is just a side interest and not your obsession (or if you're like me with a large number of interests scattered here and there such that you have no one obsession).

USEME WWII provides stats for a wide variety of infantry and armor types  for all the major powers - Japan and the USMC aren't left out as they so often are in other rules I've looked at. This is key for me as I finish up my PTO island invasion forces.

And while you might disagree with the stats given, they aren't official. There is no tournament standard to adhere to. They are just suggestions so you can spend more time playing and less time mucking about with force creation. If the later is your thing though, the rules support it.

After only one game it's hard to say if  USEME003 will become a favorite rules set, but they did give me a fun game in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and so at the very least, I think it was $5 well spent.

Thoughts on USE ME 001: 15mm Sci Fi Rules

As noted previously, I ran through a couple of games (4 or 5) of USE ME 001 Sci-Fi rules with the same scenario I've been using to test other rules(see USR and FUBAR  thoughts).

I admit, when I first purchased USE ME, I was somewhat disappointed by the writing and was reluctant to even finish reading it let alone try the rules. Still, it has gotten some love over on Drop Ship Horizon and I trust that they know sci-fi better than i do, so I gave it a go.

First I should correct my earlier assertion that it's similar to FUBAR in scope. According to the authors, USE ME functions both at the individual character scale but can also handle activation by squads- the latter being recommended for larger games. This is exactly what I'm looking for (if you consider 10 figures a larger game), so, so far so good. However, I thought the same for FUBAR and it took a bit of work to make it fit the 3-a-side game I'm using for my first test. Whereas FUBAR works with modification and then not entirely satisfactory, I'm happy to note that USE ME does indeed handle individual characters without any rules massaging required.

No set of rules is perfect, and there were two issues I encountered while playing that I noted:

First, the initiative system in USE ME works well when each side has mixed Elans and can provide some tension, which as a solo gamer I find necessary to have a satisfactory gaming experience. If, as I did in some of my tests, you have one side that has one Elan for all characters (let's say 4) and the other, a higher Elan (let's say 5), for all characters, well, you can skip the initiative roll entirely as it has no effect on the game and it breaks down into a very predictable IGO-UGO situation.

Second, with respect to armor, it is handled in a  rather unexpectedly broad manner. Whereas in role-playing lite systems like Risus or Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying, I can easily create gradations of armor, and everybody's favorite 1-page freebie, FUBAR, includes armor grades both in the standard and generic Sci-Fi rules, all infantry-worn armor in USE ME gives the same +1 to the defense roll. Even Chain Reaction 1 allows for armor differences!

Perhaps the game is geared towards low tech near-future combat where at most a flak jacket/SWAT armor is worn? It's easy enough to modify this part of the game, but allowing for any kind of granularity here means you should probably take a look at the other offensive and defensive bonuses and make sure you don't suddenly throw combat out of whack. In play, I found the generic +1 works well enough for me, at least for now, but it does seem like something that would be found in a set of sci-fi rules.

One thing others have pointed out in reviews, there is no attempt to detail close combat weapons or attacks. You could of course add this in yourself if it matters to you, but in my test games, melee had a nice back and forth feel, often neither side gaining the upper hand and then all of the sudden, a kill result. So, I see no reason to modify them myself. Indeed, melee seemed particularly deadly in my test games - something to remember if you're using USE ME for a campaign.

As I intend to play games with just 3-5 figures aside, and possibly using the same characters in linked scenarios, the key to making these games interesting from my point of view, is that characters can't be easily killed by one shot. After all , if one side is eliminated, the possibility of linking to a follow up game is eliminated. If rules allow one-shot kills, it should take some doing and a confluence of luck for the shooter and bad decisions on my part for the target.

Hit Points or a similar mechanism are the most obvious ways to extend the staying power of troops on the table but there comes a point where managing Hit Points bogs down the game (around 10 figures is my personal max). USE ME instead focuses on degrees of damage -  figures that are hit can suffer no effect, or be winged,  struck or killed. This gives a hit point-like feel as successive hits move a figure to the next worse status, while allowing a greater possibility of one hit taking down a figure as the range closes.  This status also allowed me to think about whether or not I wanted to commit a figure to combat, to have them hunker down, etc. Any time a game mechanism forces me to consider the implications of a tactical decision for a legitimate reason (i.e. it's not a rules flaw), I consider it a good thing.

Overall, my USE ME games played a little faster than I am looking for but not enough that I would rule them out of contention for these very small skirmishes. That said, for a campaign or series of linked scenarios with just a few figures on one or both sides, I would use the autofix, the hero and maybe even create a medic unique action to help extend the lives of characters and the length of a given game.

Needless to say I see myself turning to USE ME regularly. I think the PDF was something like $5 which is a steal for what you get: complete fun, fast rules for 1:1 skirmish from a few figures to several squads per side with vehicles and you get solo and campaign rules included. The rules are simple and fun and they don't get in the way of enjoying the game. I like the system so much, I'm considering buying the WWII variant to see what it has to offer!