"5 Men in Normandy question..." Topic

ok so we tried this game last night and we were having a little bit of an issue with cover and concealment. I hadn't really read the rules before we started, but this issue came up. the rules say that if you are "firing across an obstacle" you only roll shock dice, but the description kinda seems like neither shooter is in cover, but there is just something in between them. the rules also say that units in cover can duck back behind this if they survive. what we did in our test game was that figures in cover only get shot at with shock dice, but there is no differentiation between cover and concealment. it appears to me that we did this wrong. can anyone give me some insight on this?

also, if there is no differentiation between cover and concealment, any ideas on how to represent this? my preliminary thought was:
concealment: roll shock and kill dice, shock are as normal, kill both 1 and 6 count as 1.
cover, roll only shock dice
ideas?

thanks in advance guys

Cheers and thanks for buying!

So you can be in three situations when shooting and obstacles are involved.
Lets say there's a low wall and our GI is shooting at a Kraut on the other side:

1: The Kraut is right behind the obstacle and not hiding.

This is a normal shot (his head and arms is about as easy a target as if he was lying prone in the open).

If we shoot and miss, he can opt to hide (hit the dirt behind the wall) and won't be subject to anymore shots.

2: The Kraut is hiding behind the wall.

He's out of sight and we can't shoot at him at all, though he also can't guard fire at us.

3: The Kraut is not right behind the wall, he's some distance away with the wall between us.

In this case, we're shooting at vague shapes in the distance and we'd roll only Shock dice when firing at him.

Make more sense?

ok, so i guess thats what i got when i read it after the game. basically, if a figure is in cover it has no effect on shooting at him?

thanks for the reply

Right. (it affects 1's on the Shock dice a bit)

That part gets people riled up but basically it goes like this:

If the German is "in the open" he'd be prone on the ground so about the same size of target.
Being in cover lets you hide and thus avoid fire but if you pop up to shoot, you're exposed to getting nailed too.

Basically, we assume that our little soldiers are never just "standing up in the open".

So i have a figure behind a brick wall and he can hide behind so it canīt be fired (because he canīt be seen and the cover is substantial enough to deflect incoming bullets).

But…what happens if the figure is behind a hedgerow? Basically itīs a "wall" made of vegetation. You can certainly hide behind and not be seen too. If fired that wonīt stop bullets but the enemy canīt be sure of where you are.

This causes me some trouble because itīs the same if both figures and in the open with a hedgerow between them and if one of them tries to seek "cover" behind it.

I could state that a hedgerow is the same as a wall but that makes things worse as there is no difference between hard and solid cover.

If iīm in the open and being fired on, even if prone or kneeling i would instinctively try to position myself behind some kind of cover, no matter how flimsy it is.

By the rules, it makes no difference to stand in the open with some light cover at certain distance or directly behind it. And i think it should be some kind of distinction.

Thatīreally the only issue i have with the rules.

Cheers.

I might be misunderstanding your query but I think there's two different bits here:

1: Hard versus soft cover.
I don't make a distinction because at the scale we're playing it, I don't feel it's likely to.
Yes, if I am hiding behind a hedgerow, I could be hit by stray fire but the odds would be quite small and my opposition is armed with bolt action rifles (mostly likely), meaning they aren't putting out a high rate of fire.

If I am looking at a hedgerow and I know there's a German somewhere behind that 10 yards worth of hedge, firing indiscriminately in there is not likely to do much good if I am on my own.
That's more of a squad level tactic in my opinion.

Now, you could easily change that, if you feel otherwise.

"Figures hiding behind soft cover, and known to the firer may be fired upon, Shock dice only"

This would cover that if I see you across the hedge and you pop down, I can still bother you by firing near your position.
If the guy moves behind the hedge, he's no longer known to the shooter so he can't target him.

For the second question:
"By the rules, it makes no difference to stand in the open with some light cover at certain distance or directly behind it. And i think it should be some kind of distinction."

If the cover is in the distance and the figure isn't in contact they cannot hide, hence they will always be a target, but any fire they take is Shock only.

If they are right behind the cover, they can hide and be out of fire completely.

This is probably easiest explained by setting it up on the table and doing the "models eye view" thing. Anything more than an inch or so behind a typical model wall is just going to indistinct little blobs.
The shooter is going to register movement and can take it under fire, but their chance of causing hits on a few crouched figures on the far side of the obstacle is small enough that we disallow it in the rules.

Now, if the guy is right by that wall and sticks his head up to fire, he's silhouetted pretty well and I have a decent chance of popping him.

Make sense?
I am not sure if we're talking past each other a bit :-)

thanks for clearing that up for me weasel. I was in the same boat as ruben there, our figures were in pretty thick vegetation, and we were trying to figure that out. Honestly, I'm a big terrain guy. I understand the sentiment that you have there, but i like terrain effects in my games. besides this i quite liked the game. do you have any suggestions for incorporating the difference between being concealed and having bulletproof cover in your game?
thanks.