I have been using Combat Cards and Crossfire for my 1970's Africa games. However, after playing Chain of Command (CoC) I have been thinking about what is important to me, in gaming at the platoon level. CoC is one of the best sets of rules I have played, but for a club-night game CoC is just too long and hard. Partly this is due the time and the brain-bandwidth I have on weeknights; but it also has to do with my view of simulating platoon-level actions.
My impression of platoon-level skirmishes was that they often lasted no more than twenty minutes before one platoon or another gave way. My concern with CoC is that this little action is taking us three hours at least to play out, or about one sixth of real time.
So I started to ask myself "What game can I play in twenty minutes?" and the answer was to use the semi-boardgame Memoir '44 with my "little friends".
Of course it had to be updated a little to Memoir 74'; but Memoir 74 had two other attractive advantages other than speed.
1. You can play two games in one night. This means the skirmish can be as unfair as you like, since at the end of the game you are going to cross the table and play it again from the other side. Seeking game balance, wargamers tend to be obsessed with finding the few instances of warfare that were evenly matched, but warfare is rarely so. In fact most actions at the platoon level had to decidedly unfair (or they simply wouldn't have taken place). Removing the need for play-balance removes the need for many rules to a large degree. It also removes the contentious requirement for a points system; instead players can just turn up with whatever they have got painted so far.
2. Scenario design. It is really easy to come up with scenario's for Memoir 74', in fact I find I can cook them up as I set up the terrain.
With all that in mind, here is a scenario I devised up in four minutes. It is set in the long suffering imagi-nation of Maroubra. A regular mechanised platoon has been ordered to attack the camp of the Maroubran United Marxist Peoples Squadron or MUMPS.
Figures by Eureka and Mongrel:
My blog:macslittlefriends.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/memoir-74-in-africa.html