Morschauser Moderns + One Hour Wargames Scenario 13: Escape.

The situation: it's early 1943, a German unit is pulling back to regroup after a strike into Soviet territory and are trying to outrun the Soviet forces  in the area.

The Soviet commander(Red army in the scenario and life, played as "my side") has three infantry platoons all with AT grenades, one of which has squads armed with PTRD-41s, a mortar platoon (three M1938's), and an HMG platoon (3 maxim teams), and a platoon of T-34/76's.

The German commander (Blue army, also played by me but aided by chance cards, so the non-player side) has four infantry platoons armed with AT grenades,one of which has an ample supply of panzerfausts. They also have a mortar platoon (3 81mm mortars) and a platoon of Panzer IVs (Ausf F2)

Lone platoon with PTRD take position by a rode running North-South.

The German Force appears on the horizon to their North . The Panzers see them and open fire.

A Soviet infantry platoon and some T-34s arrive on the German left.

AT grenades and Panzerfausts are brought to bear and the T-34s to a one are turned into smoking wrecks.

The German race down the road continues. Soviet reinforcements - a portion of the battalion heavy weapons company - arrive North of the woods - too late to do any real good there.

The Soviets fire their PTRDs at the Panzer column in ambush style from the woods. But, to no one's surprise, it's not enough to bring down the whole lot.

The Soviet  HMG and mortar platoons arrive too late to the fight South of the woods and suffering ammo shortages German infantry eliminate the remaining Soviet infantry platoons while the remnants of the Panzer platoon escapes - followed by the remaining infantry and mortars.

An exciting little encounter that was a joy to play.
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As mentioned above, the rules were Morschauser Moderns. I used the roster option as written, except with 3 strength points for the tanks rather than 2 to reflect three tanks per model

Initiative was a method taken and modified from the first edition of Two Hour Wargames Six Gun Sound. Use a deck of cards, assign red to one side, black to the other. Draw two cards. If both are the same color, then that side goes first. If different, higher card goes first. If different colors but same value, then maintenance tasks only that turn.

I have modified the rules to fit the scale of 1 base = 1 platoon where 1"=30 yards, rather than 33 yards (40 would work too I suppose) for ease of math, and the weapons ranges were updated to reflect that scale - although rifles stayed at 15" since that works out to 450 yards, a pretty solid effective range for rifles.

But for other weapons, except for infantry tank weapons, a lot of the table was in range most of the time.

In addition, since Morschauser includes no mention of cover, per previous discussions on this blog about that fact, I lifted Featherstone's saving throw rule from his "A Simplified Set of Rules for Modern War Games" as appearing in War Games: Battles and Manoeuvres with Model Soldiers.

Finally, I added a rally rule - At the start of each turn for each unit that has lost strength points but is still on the table, I rolled a single saving throw. If it succeeds they get one point back.


The scenario was number 13 from One Hour Wargaming - chosen because it's one of the one Neil Thomas recommends for solo play. I played the Soviets as "my side" and did my best for the Germans, but used chance cards to give the Germans advantages.

However, rather than using Neil Thomas's method, I used a method taken from Chronicles of Blood : a d4 is rolled each turn and on a 1,  a roll is made on a second table. The events I used on the second table came largely from Neil Thomas's list in the solo games chapter in OHW. However, all of the events were framed as positive benefits for "my enemy" - so nothing to thwart their advance would occur, but plenty could happen to make my life difficult.

Fortunately, I only rolled a 1 twice - but they had their intended effect, like when at the end of the game, an ammunition shortage held up my MGs and mortars from firing that turn.

I changed the turn limit to 10 turns, as Morschauser tends to play fast (as do the OHW rules for that matter) and the game ended on turn 9.

One final note, I played this on a 4' x 4' table because it was out and setup. A 3' square as intended with OHW scenarios would work just as well and might have improved the odds in my favor - my reinforcements would have had less distance to traverse to be brought to bear. Of course, the Germans would have had less table to cross as well.