Ghost Panzer Training Mission

This week, I had a chance to put Ghost Panzer on the table twice. I should note that I am a fan of Worthington's Hold the Line and was fairly certain even before receiving my copy of Ghost Panzer that I could trust the rules to be comprehensible and to give a good game. I was not wrong.

The first scenario is an all-infantry scenario, pitting a few German squads with HMG against a greater number of Soviet squads with an HMG battling for control of two building hexes. I played the scenario both times I played as I had made a few errors the first time.

The rules are far simpler than Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #1 and play a great deal faster. There is no Infantry Fire Table to consult and the rule book actually makes sense as a reference document (unlike the one which accompanies ASLSK). At least as far as infantry rules, for comparison, I'd say it's only moderately more complicated than The Portable Wargame.

The game includes a suggestion for solitaire play - which I gave a try. The gist is to use Conceal markers for everything for the opposing side, including any Decoy markers and then draw from a cup when one would be revealed. It works - if imperfectly. I may try some other ideas later, but for now I'll stick with it.

Here you can see the Germans are still mostly conceal markers Foolishly, the Soviets put their HMG on their left flank rather than opposite the objective buildings.

The German unit at the top of the map dominated the roadway, stopping multiple Soviet attempts to flank. You can see in this picture that the Soviets have made it into the destination building - the result of a decoy being present in the space. 

Morale is the driver in this game - with units having to check before attempting any action. I've played several miniatures games that do this as well, and while I find it can sometimes be annoying in a minis game to not be able to activate a unit, with a boardgame, I find builds tension and adds to the narrative. This might be a result of my fielding far fewer units generally when I play minis games.

I really liked that suppressed units could at least sometimes then, still perform an action, with no additional modifiers, if they passed their morale check. It prevents units from being dinged twice for being suppressed. Passing the morale check is good enough.

Despite this focus on morale, at the end of the turn, units that are Suppressed automatically return to normal, and units that are Fully Suppressed become Suppressed. That is, no die roll required. That might seem a little odd, given how important passing morale checks is, but in play though, it works - you just assume that the squad leader is doing their job.

End of game. Only four turns are allowed, so too much caution is costly. Then again, in trying to rush the German positions, multiple Soviet units were eliminated by Op Fire. In the end, the Germans had lost one unit in close combat (the Soviet unit was eliminated too), but the soviets had lost something like 4 and the Germans retained control of the objective.

As much as I enjoy ASLSK #1 (Residual Fire and heavy weapons breakdowns are pretty cool features), I think this game is more my speed, most of the time. Infantry combat only takes up a few pages of the rulebook - the remainder covers guns and vehicles. I'll give it a read through a few times before I try the armor training scenario. I am quite looking forward to it as I hope to be able to play the types of scenarios I could never field with 54s, even using 1/43-1/50 vehicles.