So with the 2nd edition rules released, I am going to talk a little bit about No End in Sight, particularly some of the parts that maybe set it apart from other post-ww2 skirmish games.
I am a big fan of campaign games and in particular, character-driven ones.
We're going to use the Platoon Checklist to set things up:
First and foremost, we need to decide who and where we are.
We'll take the side of law and order, being a platoon of troops loyal to El Presidente, fighting a rebellion.
We could use most any miniatures for this, but I do happen to have unpainted west germans lying about and G3's seem fine for this sort of activity.
Okay, so the platoon structure will be 3 squads of 6 men each, each squad having an MG42/MG3.
Individual platoon leader and a senior sergeant leading them.
The platoon has a single anti-tank weapon available, but with no crew provided, it has to be manned by one of the squads.
This gives us 20 figures, which won't be a huge expense to set up.
For troop type, we decide our grunts are Trained.
Regular soldiers with decent training but not good enough to be considered Professionals by any stretch.
Battle experience
To determine their battle experience, we review the 10 possible factors that can influence that.
From what list, we determine that we are subject to:
Institutional experience (from western advisors)
Military prestige (those fancy berets)
Long war (the insurgency has been going on for some time)
But we're also subject to "quantity over quality" as the brass wants to look good by having big parades.
The result is a +2.
We roll a D6 for each squad, with each 1-2 giving us a veteran squad. Luckily, we get two squads of veterans.
Motivation
There's 8 possible factors here.
We decide we qualify for Political Unrest, Poor Leadership and Reluctant/War Weary, but we do get the Defensive War bonus.
That's a total of -3, so we'll roll for each squad, with a 1-3 giving them Low motivation.
The dice are not kind and that's the entire platoon.
As a result, while our men know their craft and are well trained, they don't really see much reason dying for some loud-mouthed fool with too many medals.
Charismatic leaders
We check the factors that we feel might apply and get Basic Military training, Institutional experience and Battle experience, but also Corrupt military culture and Harsh discipline.
As a result, we can roll a single D6, with a 6 giving us a charismatic leader.
We're lucky and get one, assigning it to one of the veteran squad leaders.
Personalities
A campaign is no good without a player avatar, so our platoon leader will be it.
Tasked with leading this bunch of ill-motivated grunts to victory, we'll generate him as a fully fledged character.
By using the random tables, we determine he is a Long Term soldier motivated by Revenge.
His leadership style is Domineering and he has the character traits of being Punctual but also Dishonest.
Ouch.
We'll take this to mean that the rebels killed someone near and dear to him and as a result, he's taken a pragmatic approach, being willing to do whatever it takes to get even.
This probably doesn't endear him much to the men, but hopefully it won't mean we'll get fragged.
We'll set up the second in command as well, our senior sergeant.
He's an upper class kid, with an ideological motivation who leads by the book.
Likely came out of a military school and believes in doing things the right way to defend his country.
His traits are Quarrelsome and Fearless.
Easy to see that the men would probably like him better but I get a feeling that we're NOT going to get along well off the battle-field.
* * * * *
WIth just 5 minutes work (if even that), we've gone from "generic men with green face paint" to a platoon we can recognise and understand on the gaming table.
Good gaming is about the stories that happen (I believe) and I hope this helps illustrate how that can be done very painfree.
We'll roll up a scenario for them tomorrow.
paints up some Israeli mortar vehicles.