I played a game of Squad Hammer, using the Space Marine and Ork unit profiles available from Wargames Vault. I halved distances, used a 16" square board and used my Epic 40K bases. The Marines ran three basic combat squads supported by Dreadnoughts, whilst the Orks had three shooter mobs, a brawler mob and a tank.
I used Trench Hammer to provide the basic rules framework, and the unit profiles adapted to it pretty well. The game was fast though, owing to some amazing damage rolls by both sides. Units were shot down very quickly, whether in cover or not, and with all the objectives clumped in the middle of the board fighting was fast and furious. The Dreadnoughts made a rapid attack on the Ork tank, since at close range they can ignore the tank's armour, but came off worse in the exchange. Falling back the tank shot them down. However moving to flank the Marine's position in the central pagoda the tank got taken out by some accurate Marine gunfire. The Marines moved quickly to secure objectives, but the Ork's response was brutal, and by the end of the third turn the Marines had one squad left, holding out in the pagoda and being assaulted by three Ork mobs. Sensibly after the first attack on them they fell back and I assumed that the Marines would retreat to fight another day.
It was a useful exercise though. Trench Hammer is a good, tight version of the Squad Hammer mechanisms, so acted as a useful foundation for the game. I can now look at how I might want to tweak it to give me a game closer to how I want it to work. I'll probably tweak some of the To Hit factors to both simplify things but also to make hits slightly harder to achieve, in order to encourage less skulking in heavy cover (an essential of the WW1 battlefield).
A good start to the year, though, even if the bolognese wasn't all I'd hoped it would be.
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