Morschauser Modern for the Win

A few nights ago, I had the opportunity to play a game, but found I had trouble finding rules that were satisfactory. Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargame WWII rules are my fall back so that's what I played, but they leave me wanting as often as they scratch the itch.

By some miracle, I was able to play another game last night and this time I decided to use Morschauser's moderns with roster, but with Neil Thomas's OHW 6-unit standard.

To make the stands last longer than one or two turns of combat, I still rolled only 1 die per unit, rather than 1 per strength point. I also used the ranges from OHW for movement and shooting. As I'm going for a game with toy soldiers look, with my 1/32 figures, this works fine.

The scenario was one of my own design, inspired by my current re-watching of Band of Brothers. In this case, the US is approaching a German occupied village with orders to capture it, the Germans need to defend it (I arbitrarily set 10 turns as their victory condition). The US has 4 units of rifle infantry, 1 unit of mortars and 1 unit of HMG. The German defense has 2  units of rilfe infantry, 2 HMGs and 1 tank unit. The US begins with 3 units in column on the road heading towards the village, contact has already been made.

The German platoons were stationed in the buildings closest to the attackers, while the HMGs occupied the other two buildings. The mortar was stationed at the edge of the woods, and the tank just above the rightmost building:

Yes, that's a birdhouse.

The first of the US platoons made it to the buildings relatively unscathed, but Morschauser close fighting was pretty devastating for both sides. Both sides benefited from getting their MGs into the fray.

As turn 10 concluded, the Germans were down to a mortar (still in the woods and not technically in the town) and tank (threatening the US MG team - also outside of the town limits), and the US had 1 platoon (which had gone after the mortar), 1 MG (the only unit in the town) and 1 mortar (which was peppering the tank ineffectively)

This was too indecisive for me.

So, I played one more turn: the US wiped out the tank and I figured that meant the mortar unit would fall back through the woods and swamp. US victory.