"Five Men in Normandy rules. Soviet patrol." Topic

Going to run through a small game to showcase a little.
The battle will stretch over a couple of posts but I'll post a bit at a time, rather than try to fit everything in one posting.

Given today's date, the group will be a Soviet band of comrades.

We roll up five soldiers and get the following troops:

Andrei:
Bolt action rifle. Working class background, no real experience. Motivated by Revenge and has the Covering Fire skill.

A common draftee, after seeing the damage done by the Nazi invaders, he's burning to push them all the way back to Berlin and get even.

Viktor:
Bolt action rifle, inexperienced, was a soldier before the war but never saw any real action. Was originally stationed somewhere dull but his unit was rushed to the front.
He has found a family of sorts in the squad and wants to avoid them being disappointed in him (Motivation is Brotherhood)

Boris:
PPSH 41. Another proletarian, with some fighting experience under his belt. He's mainly concerned with surviving the war after seeing so many other men and women perish.

Matvei:
A political officer, armed with his trusty Tokarev. He came to the front straight of school and hasn't seen much of the war yet. He has a burning pride in the Motherland and want to see it victorious (Motivation Patriotism).
His naive belief in victory has inspired the group quite a bit, despite the older boys making a bit of fun of him. (patriots have a chance of raising squad morale and the dice roll succeeded here)

Pavel:
A truck driver who've ended up with the group. Carrying only a pistol, he's another proletarian without much war experience. He secretly dreams of earning a medal.

As extra resources, they have a medical kit available and have high spirits.

Part 2: The mission.

To set up the mission, I am using the random mission generator from the Rifleman's guide. Though you could just as well use the mission table in the main book.

As it turns out, the Red army group is tasked with disrupting the enemy mission. I roll again to see what the German's are up to and it turns out they are searching for something hidden in one of the terrain features.
During a previous patrol, a runner lost a bundle of maps and orders and the Krauts are eager to prevent it falling into enemy hands no doubt.

Opposition turns out to be:
1 bolt action rifle, 4 MP40. Yikes, a lot of sub machine guns there.
Neither side will have any additional support available, which fits the nature of a small patrol action.

Both sides will set up normally near their table edge, having entered the battle area on foot.

Our forces are permitted to disengage the battle after 6 turns. I take this to mean that there are additional German patrols approaching fast and we're mainly here to bloody Fritz's nose a bit.

Finally we roll for Battle Conditions and get "a bad feeling". However, we avoid a loss of morale. No doubt just Boris complaining as he always does.

Soviets in Normandy? I think they got lost

Sounds interesting, keep us updated!

My kid is having a playdate so I won't get to play through the game until tonight sadly.

A bit of a delay since I was running my mouth and got dawghoused like a bad boy :)

I'll try to get this up tomorrow.

great sounding game so far

And somehow my phone garbled the photo's. I'll have to try this again.

Argh

Okay, so photo's are gone and dead.

I'll try to summarize and do a better job for the second battle instead.

The battle ran pretty smooth. The red's got a few lucky Scurry turns early (allow all your troops to move) and managed to move into positions where lucky reaction fire kept the Fascists from advancing too far.

Viktor scored the only two casualties before I figured the Germans had enough and pulled back off the table. (one bailed straight off the table. Last seen running for Berlin)

Andrei and Boris both caught shrapnel from a german stick grenade and were knocked out of action.

I'll share the post-battle sequence with you instead.

First and foremost, we need to find out what happened to the casualties.

Boris got a dramatic scar but no ill long-term effects. I'm sure this will do nothing to improve his outlook on life.
Andrei got hit a lot harder and will spend the next 15 days in the infirmary. No doubt, this also won't do anything to improve his outlook on things. Now the Germans made it personal!

Since this leaves me with less than five troops, I get to roll up replacements. A roll on the Soviet force table gives me a trooper with a DP light machine gun.
This could have been very welcome in a defensive fight like we just completed.
He's a farmer, motivated by brotherhood so a Salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. He's also completely inexperienced. Why do we get all the new guys?

Winning the mission entitles us to roll for a boost in morale, while the casualties can inflict a reduction. In the end, I luck out and morale goes up by 2.
This means in each mission, I can ignore 2 "morale hits", keeping guys in the line when I need them to.
Clearly getting some exposure to combat and realizing they can take on the enemy and come out okay has done wonders for their spirits.

Next step is a new skill. I roll up Stealthy. I can assign it to any character where it makes sense. Pavel seems a good pick. He's the kind of guy to keep his head down in any event so sneaking about might be a bit of a talent of his.

Campaigns tend to be unpredictable so I roll up two events:

First, Viktor gets to meet the battalion commander. No doubt a bit of an intimidating experience but since we won the last mission, we now have a favour owed. We can use this to get a favour done or to avoid a court martial at a later point.

Secondly, Andrei gets a letter from home. Nice. This lets us roll for a morale increase but the dice fail. At least they sent him a sausage though.

Finally, I get to carry out a player action. This is open ended and lets me try for something interesting. I decide to see if I can scare up an SVT rifle for a bit more firepower. The result on the dice roll is a delay. I get to test again next turn.

Assessing our situation, we have a new man, some more firepower and a much more confident group. No doubt the next encounter will go quite well (and hopefully be more photogenic to boot)

With a bit of delay, I got another game in. I'll just narrate things rather than fudge with the photos again. My gaming table isn't terribly photogenic in any event.
So here goes (in three parts):

We have a wait of 3 days before we get thrown into a new mission.

We get summoned by the company commander, looking oddly sober today. Saluting sharply we crowd around him to hear what our next job is.
We're all in good spirits and eager to stick the boot in Fritz once more.

Pulling out a map, he points to a cross roads near where we are located, on a hill. Battalion is trying to advance but the Germans have quite a few tanks in the area and the Colonel is worried we'll get it in the *DELETED BY CENSORS*

Turns out we'll be lugging a bunch of anti-tank mines, dumping them on the road intersection, then legging it out of there
("Deliver" mission from the main rule book).

The area is patrolled by Nazi's, so we'll need to say hello Red Army style.

It's a built up area with quite a few ruined buildings and individual trees, with two roads intersecting pretty much in the middle of the board.

The approach is pretty simple: Alexei, our new machine gunner and Viktor, our only rifleman right now, will hang back and lay down covering fire down one of the approaching roads.

Boris, Matvei and Pavel (carrying the mines) will try to be as inconspicuous as possible as they make their way to the intersection, drop the mines and then retreat.

Finally, the support team will fall back in good order and everyone will go home for sausage and tea.

To raise the stakes, the captain makes clear this mission is high priority. Those mines need to get there. The workers at Uzhkant Traktor Faktory 17 worked hard to get us these mines, so we'll need to make sure their sacrifices were not in vain.

Part 2: The mission!

The place has seen better days, but it's sort of cozy once you get used to it

The German opposition is 6 sentries. 3 of them goes in the central area, while the other 3 occupy a guard post halfway down the street between the centre and my entry point.
Since they're just guards, I gave them all bolt action rifles.

Initial approach
The assault team scurries forward (first two turns are both Scurry! results, which let everyone move) without taking any fire. However, an overambitious attempt on turn 3 to rush two men closer to put some SMG fire on the guard post results in both Boris and Matvei panicking and running back to the relative cover of a burned out tank wreck.

Pavel huddles behind some rocks, eager for his friends to start the assault when he realizes that he's all alone. By Lenin's Beard, if you want something done, you need to do it yourself!

Braving volleys of Mauser fire, he peeks up, lifts a grenade into the air and straight in the middle of the guard post, flattening it completely (All three Germans out of action. Whoo!).

The heroic assault!
Emboldened, the gun team moves up to take the sentries near the cross roads under fire, leaving the cowards where they are. Unfortunately, they are a bit too eager and the Germans get a Firefight turn, resulting in a hail of accurate nazi bullets coming our way.

Viktor tumbles to the ground bleeding and Alexei is knocked down.

Pavel calls out for the rest of the assault team and eventually shames them into rejoining the attack. (Boris actually would have bailed right off the floor at this point, but I spend a point of morale to pass) and they make their way up to Pavel in a break in the firing.

The time has come for a plan, cunning and devious. Boris will slink around the corner, going through a ruined building, get to the Germans flank and fill them with lead.

It'd be a perfect plan too, if it wasn't for one measly gap in the ruins where a German ended up with a perfect line of fire. The dice clatter and a pair of 6's shine up at me.

Boris keels over in the dust and Matvei freaks out again, heading for the hills.

With 2 casualties, I decide the team has had enough, and they slink away under cover, leaving the Germans holding on to the accursed cross roads.

No doubt, the brass won't be happy with this one.

Part 3: Return to camp.

This didn't go terribly well for us. Boris got off fairly easy, requiring 5 days of rest and Viktor turns out to be okay.
He didn't actually get hit but diving into cover, the genius managed to crack his head on the wall, knocking him senseless.

Consequences
More seriously, we left the mission before we were authorized, which means rolling to see if anyone is accused of cowardice.
Alexei is accused but upon closer investigation is found free of fault. Whev.. didn't want to end up in a Penal unit.

2 men in the infirmary means we only have 4 available for the next mission. Time to make some friends. A roll on the Soviet table gives me two bolt action rifles. Since "rifleman" seems to be a pretty hazardous occupation for the squad, those will be pretty welcome. We'll generate their stats later.

Not too surprisingly, morale drops to +1. The men are a bit shaken up though frankly more disappointed than anything else. This should have been an easy mission and they knocked down a few Nazi's. Maybe they should have stuck it out after all?

The skill roll ends up pretty perfect: "Rallying Cry". This will allow me to shake off Bail results when activating this figure which would have helped straighten up the assault. Stacking skills can be a bit risky but it seems like an obvious for Pavel, so he gets it.

Don't touch that!
While gathering their senses, there's a bit of a scare. Matvei and Boris are messing around while digging trenches and a shovel hits him scare in the noggin', sending him sprawling on the ground.

A rush to the infirmary (and an injury roll) later, it turns out he's quite okay. Didn't need another man down!

We also makes friends with some refugees who've set up a makeshift camp near the outpost. Might be handy for bartering some chickens.

Finally, we manage to get our hands on that SVT, which Matvei lays claim to, until Andrei returns from the sick-bed.
Andrei seems to be doing well too (sick time reduced by 1 measly day) but the doc says he's going to be out for two weeks most likely.

We settle into the routine of the trenches but trouble are afoot and we'll be called into action within a day

(Each turn advances the storyline 1D6 days and I rolled a 1)

Feedback
Is this "story" method working or would you rather have the usual pics of gaming tables?

Are you interested in more details from the games, more rules detail, more "in-character" parts?

I like this story format. This seems like a great way to solo game, I am definitely interested and will look into this more.

Solo gaming was a big component of writing the rules :)