Platoon+ - A WW2 playthrough

So as part of the ongoing development of Platoon+ we have started playtesting the rules and I have to say we are liking what we are seeing and can't wait to begin to share it with you.

As with all rulesets, no rules are born perfect and we are tweaking the variables to maintain accuracy and to obtain maximum playability.

There are still a lot of the mechanics you know and love from Sangin but now players get to play one or two platoons on their own. That's 60+ miniatures so as you can see this is a significant step up.

As always one of the ways we do a test is to play the rules in a different period to see if they still work and as part of this we have recently been playing a series of WW2 games using the rules.

See a typical platoon sheet below:

Here are some images of the game.

Rays beautiful table, I am so lucky he lets me use his boards for play testing

Mike H trying to work out just where his Yanks will come on the board

Mike L moves his German's up to take the building, quickly followed by his second squad

Ray tries to out flank the Germans in the main building

Mike H Yanks take cover in the cornfield

The author trying to hold his gut in and insistent on wearing his skirmish OUTBREAk T shirt

There were Four platoons involved, 2 US and 2 German and the game was a meeting engagement with both sides needing to take the village.

I would like to show you the new turn sequence and how command and control works in the game

The new turn sequence Looks like this:

Turn sequence

The Command Phase
Player rolls command dice and allocates dice to each section in his platoon.

The Morale phase
Any morale tests are resolved.

The Activation Phase
The squad with the highest activation now activates (if there is tie both groups roll 1d6 with the highest going first).

The Combat Phase
The squad can them spend APs to do the following in any order:
Move, Resolve Fire weapons, Resolve Melee combat

In this blog post we are going to introduce you to the new command dice and discuss why we have added this element to the game.

At platoon level the game is no longer about the efforts of an individual man or even an individual squad, it's about how best to field your Platoon elements and to do that we need to show how the command and control elements work.

In most games your Platoon HQ (Command Group) is little more than a collection of miniatures that hang around at the back and have little to no influence on the game.

Platoon+ this is very different. In platoon+ squads only have 1AP to use per combat phase and their additional APs come from the way the Command Group hand out the command dice.

Command Dice

All Command dice are 1d6 and are allocated at the beginning of the combat round. The players roll the 1d6 and the number of points allocated are additional APs that squad can use throughout the combat round. When a squad runs out of command AP they still have 1AP per active combat phase, these cannot be saved and must be spent in their combat phase or be lost.

An average platoon has 3 or 4 command dice and these are rolled and allocated at the start of the combat round. Only one dice can be allocated to one squad and not every unit will get a dice.

EXAMPLE

Joshua has an average US Infantry unit. The unit has 3d6 command dice, Joshua rolls the dice and gets 2,3,4. Each number is the amount of additional AP the unit the points are allocated to now get and add to their single AP.

Joshua allocates the dice as follows:

Squad	Command Dice Roll
Platoon HQ	2
Squad Alpha	4
Squad Bravo	3
Squad Charlie	0 - no dice allocated

Players will have insufficient dice to allocate points to all units. Units without a command dice have a default 1AP to spend during each combat phase.

These extra points that each squad gains from their command dice have to last the full combat Round of 10 combat phases in which any one squads is only active 4 times, but you do burn through the command points pretty quick and to paraphrase the song "knowing when to hold 'em and knowing when play 'em" is a big part of the game.

In the opening move of the game. The first US Squad arriving on the board first (we are still using an initiative system similar to Sangin) spent 3 of their AP and raced across the board towards the village, stopping on the road taking cover from the corn field and a stonewall.

Next to activate were the Germans who burn even more APs (4) to move forward and occupy a building on the edge of the village.

The rest of the US units began an encirclement of the village while the Germans attempted to block the US on the right. The opening moves were mainly movement but when one US squad having failed its spot roll occupied the building across the way from the Germans they were meet with German grenades and many casualties were incurred?

The Germans didn't have it their own way, they were meet with gunfire from the USA in the centre of the village but did manage to move additional squads and their HQ team into the village?.

So more to come soon of this battle and along the way we'll tell you a few more things about Platoon+