Again with One Hour Wargames and WW2

It's a good rule of thumb that if you're familiar with a period, and especially if you have played other rules in a period, that the One Hour Wargames rules for said period will feel lacking. 

That said, Saturday afternoon, I set up one of my favorite One Hour Wargames scenarios (Fighting Retreat) in hopes of luring my son away from meme videos and Roblox for short bit at least. My plan was to use the rules as written, figuring they would be easy to teach and grasp. Simulation, tactical options, and overpowered mortars, were the least of my concerns. 

I called him out to the living room. Repeatedly until I finally got a response. He looked at the table and then went back to his video games. 

Oh well. 

That was an epic fail as the kids say (assuming the kids do indeed still say such things).

 However, not one to waste a perfectly good scenario, I decided to play it out using the rules as written just for giggles. 

Germans at the west east crossing.
(Please ignore the grid - it's the cloth I grabbed, but has no bearing on the game.)

Soviets in hot pursuit!

German infantry took the woods on both sides of the hill. They would prove intractable.
(I also like how in this picture the hill looks so tall, but it's just 1" of foam)

The Soviets push across, with some units bypassing the Germans in the woods. At their own peril.

End game. The Soviets were soundly beaten.

The game went 12 turns and really felt up in the air until the end of turn 11, where I felt like the Soviets had only the slimmest of chances left. Turn 12 was the final nail in the coffin.

My usual complaint about stopping observation distance apart to blaze away at each other was mitigated by the need to capture the hill and not forgetting (as I usually do) the rule that units can only move or shoot, not both. It was not enough for the Soviets to shoot the Germans off the hill (assuming they could do so), they would need to move to actually capture the hill before time ran out which meant exposing themselves to withering fire. This in turn made the woods highly valued secondary objectives for the cover advantage they provided.

In the event, the Germans who had taken root in the woods could not be budged.

True, there was at least one occasion where close combat might have made sense - and certainly it would have made for a more cinematic game had the Soviet armor been able to charge the German armor on the hill to dislodge them, but I'm not sure that is a better narrative necessarily or just one that I tend to prefer because most of my WW2 gaming inspiration is war movies, not history books.

It also could be argued that I *could* have advanced the Soviets into base to base contact on their phase of one turn, allowing the Germans to fire on their phase, and then the Soviets would fire on their next phase assuming they survived. If the Germans were eliminated the Soviets would already be on the hill. This is kind of what happens in close combat rules generally, albeit in a single game turn. 

What's missing then isn't a way to handle close combat in the WW2 rules, but an explicit mechanism to encourage players to move into close contact - in early period rules in One Hour Wargames, there are bonuses for flank attacks with close combat, for example.

In any case, the lesson I came away with was that, even as written, One Hour Wargames's WW2 rules can yield an enjoyable game for someone even if they have expectations from their WW2 rules,  provided the chosen scenario does the lifting and eliminates the sticking points. 

I suppose it helped too that neither side had artillery(mortar) with its devastating 48" range or the game might have gone differently and I would be espousing my usual complaints. But as it was, it gave me pause to consider whether the WW2 rules are as flawed as I often say they are, and reason to consider how the scenarios act to compliment the rules and shore up apparent oversights.

All of this might seem an unnecessary thing, given that there are other rule systems that are simple, such as Martin Rapier's modified OHW WW2 v2 rules, or Joseph Morschauser's rules (they may raise more questions than they answer, but the book as a whole is my favorite wargaming book bar none),  or only moderately more complex, such as The Portable Wargame and Developing the Portable Wargame books, that provide more tactical options from the get go and don't favor mortars/artillery quite so readily. 

However, I think there's a benefit to revisiting One Hour Wargames from time to time (never mind that I did so by accident this time):

One, there are lessons to learn from Neil Thomas's approach to teasing out the essence of a period, even if we think he may have gone too far for personal taste with our pet period(s). I believe it's good to revisit this from time to time if you're a rules writer/tinkerer especially as we get caught up adding rules for this or that aspect of the period.

Two, that the scenarios work as well as they do with other rules, often with minimal or no tweaking, is a testament to how well-designed they are. Indeed they are not over designed and that is a saving grace. If they were intended to complete the rules included in the book, then their universality is perhaps the unintended success story.

Three, the interplay between the One Hour Wargames rules with the scenario design is an interesting design factor in itself worth examining, regardless of whether or not this is what was intended by Neil Thomas. I am sure other rules do this -probably a board wargame or two - and explicitly too, but alas none come to mind immediately. 

I can't say I'll pull out the WW2 rules as written again anytime soon, but my feelings for them have moved in a positive direction and it has given me inspiration to gently modify the Machine Age rules to make them more suitable for 1916-18 in Italy.