Five Men In Normandy

I bought and downloaded a bundle of Nordic Weasel stuff a couple of years ago - the original 5 Core game 'Five Men In Normandy', plus a load of supporting material - but hadn't got around to playing it. However I've just finished rereading Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' so felt in the mood for some gritty WWII action. 

I haven't got any suitable WWII figures (not without disassembling a couple of HOTT armies), so resorted to Junior General instead. You only need a handful of figures, so it was a pretty simple task to assemble a few troops with rifles, SMGs and an LMG for each force.

The rules have a wealth of campaign and scenario generation material. I set up a terrain with plenty of cover, randomly generated a Soviet and German force and gave each of them a mission.

And here they are. 

On the left are the Germans. They are on a simple encounter mission; they've just bumped into the enemy and will withdraw once they have inflicted more casualties than they took. There are only four of them - one with an MG34, a rifleman (who acts as his loader), and two men with SMGs.

On the right are the Soviets. They rolled well and got six soldiers, three with rifles and three with SMGs. Their mission was harder though. On the board were five markers in terrain pieces. They had to be searched, with a one in three chance that the one being looked at would contain the thing the troops were looking for. At that point the squad could withdraw.

The hills blocked line of sight completely if it passed through two contours. One contour counted as cover.The two areas of vegetation blocked it as well. Everything else was cover. 

Everyone started hunkered down behind terrain and out of sight of the enemy.

To some extent the small German force could afford to sit tight. Their MG34 was in a good position to cover a lot of the Soviet objectives, and they could quickly move up the other two soldiers to cover the ones that weren't.

The Soviets had a harder job; they would have to brave the German MG fire to get near most of their targets, so needed to adopt a fairly cautious approach. One of their men moved into a small area of vegetation and searched it, but the target wasn't there. A shame, as if they'd found it they could have withdrawn fairly easily (and I would have set up another game).

The Germans moved up their SMG men unseen by the Russians. When the lead Soviet soldier emerged from the vegetation, he bumped into one. He also triggered one of the game's more interesting rules. If you are moving and come into a position where you can see an enemy figure that no-one on your side has seen before, that enemy figure is displaced by a few inches in a random direction. In other words your knowledge of the enemy's troops is not as perfect as you'd like, and even your own side's figures may not quite be where you'd hoped. It adds a nice level of unpredictability to the early stages of the game. In this case the German had taken cover behind the rocks (or so the Germans thought), but displacement saw him of the wrong side of the cover. More importantly, the Soviet had a line of sight to the MG34 position. It turned out the gun wasn't quite in position yet, and he escaped the guard fire he was expecting.

Anyway, the surprise encounter saw both sides spray some bullets at each other and duck back into their respective covers. But the Soviets now knew where the Germans were.

The other German soldier run to the cover of a boulder, but was hit by a long-range rifle shot from across the board. Most weapons have infinite range. Pistols can only fire to 12" and SMGs are limited beyond 12", but generally if you can see something then you can shoot it.

On the other side of the board the Soviets advanced a couple of riflemen to try and pin down the MG34. They got in a couple of shots, before a burst of suppressive fire saw them run for safety.

Firing in 'Five Men In Normandy' involves rolling Shock Dice and Kill Dice. The former are more numerous, and can cause figures to duck into cover or run away. The latter can knock down a figure (which subsequently gets a chance to recover) or take them out of the fight - dead or seriously wounded. Some weapons can choose to trade Kill Dice for extra Shock Dice; the MG34 is one, so can lay down a ton of suppressive fire.

Troops have grenades too. The surprised German in the centre lobbed one towards the vegetation in which his Soviet counterpart was lurking, and took him out of the fight.

Emboldened he advanced toward the other part of the board where the Russian riflemen were trying to set up a suppressive fire position on the MG34. Once again the displacement rule threw up a surprise; a previously unseen rifleman turned out to be advancing across the same piece of ground, and the two soldiers literally ran into each other (the Soviet was displaced right into a brawl with the German!). There was a brief struggle that ended with the German being killed.

The Germans had lost one man killed and one man wounded, whilst the Soviets were only one man down. A few of their troops were still hiding from the MG34, waiting to be rallied, though.

When a side activates you roll a D6. On a 2-5 they can activate two figures. On a 1 or a 6 it's a special turn. A 6 means that nothing can move, but everything can fire. And a 1 means that everything can move and doesn't trigger guard or snap-fire from the enemy. The Soviets got two of these scurry turns in a row, so as the MG34 crew watched helplessly (maybe they were reloading or something), the Russians swiftly moved into better positions.

One of their soldiers searched the other area of vegetation ...

... and found what they were looking for. The Soviets could now withdraw.

The wounded German recovered, only to be knocked back down again by a rifle-shot.

The Soviets withdrew, but the hero who'd found the target was hit and knocked down by the MG34. He staggered to his feet, but a second burst put him down for good.

The four surviving Soviets withdrew.

The Soviets had completed their objective, but the Germans had inflicted more casualties than they had taken, so the encounter was a draw.

Even having to look stuff up and check rules the action took no more than an hour to play (I rolled the forces and did the setup the day before). It was pretty fun, although there were a few things I wasn't clear about in the rules and about which I will seek clarification. 

The mechanisms are fun, and the campaign system is interesting too; maybe something I'll try at some stage, running a player squad against a non-player enemy.

52 Games - Game 28