Planning Considerations for BIG Tigers at Minsk Games?

 With the big "Hill 80" Crossfire game still set up on the table, I went down to the gaming bunker early this morning before the family was up to play around with an open (non-gridded) game of Norm's outstanding "Tigers at Minsk," albeit with a Company's worth of troops on the table!  So how did this hairbrained-scheme go down?  What changes, if any, did I use?  Press on to find out!

The battlefield.  German 1st platoon (off camera on the left), 2nd platoon (middle in the wheatfield) and 3rd platoon (right) moving up to assault the village and seize Hill 80.

2nd Platoon massing in front of the hedge to move forward under fire

There is an old saying that "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" and that certainly applies to today's game.  Norm's Tigers at Minsk are an excellent, free set of World War 2 rules that put the emphasis on decision making and command focus.  Norm's scenarios are smaller-ish battles and my aim was to expand the scope of his rules to incorporate a company's worth of troops on the table.  What changes did I want to try?

Company Morale vrs Stand-Based Morale Breakpoint.  

Tigers at Minsk has a roughly 50% morale breakpoint that, when reached, forces every unit to check their morale, and continue to check as more casualties are accrued.  A company would equal 9 infantry "squad" stands, and 2 heavy weapon "HMG" stands equating to 5 or 6 for a morale BP.  What if you made it by platoon?  The German company consisted of 3 line platoons, plus a heavy weapons platoon.  Total would be 4 platoons.  BP would be reached when 2 platoons were out of the fight (Still 6 total stands, but it allows platoon formations on the table).

Platoon Leaders

Norm's rules use a command stand to represent Command emphasis, and where you plop your leader hex down guarantees one or two in-command hexes (units in that hex don't have to check command and may take an action).  For bigger games, placing the company commander seemed cool (the entire platoon, 3 stands, could be in command) and this is probably more in the spirit of Norm's rules.  My thoughts were to treat each platoon independently.  That is, each platoon had a Platoon Leader stand which could be placed touching a squad in his platoon, therefore enabling it to be in command (the other 2 squads had to test for command).  I also had a cool "guaranteed advance" rule, where the Platoon Leader was not placed with a squad, but if invoking the guaranteed advance, all 3 squads could move forward.  None could have any pins or opportunity fire markers on them to do this, and all 3 squads have to move, not just 2 or 1.

Company Commander

 Acts like the traditional leader stand in TaM and guarantees any action for any squad he touches.  My thoughts again to keep in the spirit with Norm's rules, you could forego Platoon Leaders and simply use the Company Command stand as the leader, but I like independent platoons.

Moving and Shooting Ranges

I allowed infantry to move 8" (for brevity) and fire to be 16" for 2D6, and 1D6 beyond.

These were pretty much the only changes I wanted to mess with today.  How did we get on?

Soviets defending the house - black bead is Out of Command

Using a "guaranteed advance" with the platoon leader, 3rd platoon moves up!

Soviet white beads were opportunity fire markers.  They did not score any hits and 3rd Platoon makes it to the cornfield!

Soviet HMG goes out of ammo!  In the spirit of Norm's rules, I selected a base target unit to assign the first hit, and since they were close (within 1 basewidth) to a sister squad, I assigned a hit to it as well.

2nd Platoon - their position for virtually the entire battle!  Red beads are "pinned"

So far, so good although with more units to command and more command rolling constantly going on, it was choppier than "regular" TaM and not quite as smooth.

1st Platoon working their way up the left flank behind the woods.  They are about to cross a Linear Danger Area between the 2 x copses

While the 1st Squad makes it clear, the 2nd squad is pinned by Opportunity fire!

On the Soviet turn, the Soviets take out a squad from 2nd Platoon with good shooting.

I also did not play with a time clock or events today, simply because I wanted to try the expanded command rules out.

German squad knocked out

Meanwhile the firefight on the German right ends up killing 1 Soviet squad but a second remains, stubborn as ever and not giving up!

Kill on the German right.

On the left, the Germans capture the woods and can see Hill 80 but are nowhere near close to assaulting it.  The Soviets have reinforced their right flank with a reserve squad and are holding the Germans for now.

So far the battle is going well.  It plays like Tigers at Minsk, albeit with more leader stands on the table (so way more units in command).  Not bad.  the Guaranteed Advance rule wasn't too overpowering (and by now there are so many pinned or out of command, or opportunity fire markers that the Germans couldn't use it most turns).

The advance really stalled as the Germans pressed an assault on their right flank against the Soviets in the woods but were repulsed by a pinned, lone squad!  I called the game.  Had I massed the German platoons a bit more efficiently (like the Crossfire Hill 80 game) this may have turned out differently.  Still I wanted to try out these rather "different" but similar command mechanisms to Norm's rules.  

So how did these "rules" work out?  The changes were, perhaps, unnecessary.  Command emphasis is probably better served with a single leader stand (and it gives you more decision making to ponder).  Additionally, the morale rules were the exact same amount of stands regardless of what was used.

I would probably only have out of command on rolls of 6 but otherwise the game is fine as it is!While successful, I will likely be sticking to "regular" Tigers at Minsk but this was still a very fun exercise. 

Next up on the table?  A Blood Red Skies game with Ken today, and more Crossfire coming up!  I would also say my loyal readers deserve a Napoleonic update to the rebasing project!  Lots of good stuff coming up so stay tuned!