Today, Phil was doing something other than playing in our game, and he has kindly done a report of his game! - so, over to Phil!...
In a departure from the norm, Roderick and I indulged in a session of "Combat! starring Vic Morrow": a skirmish game about a 1960's TV show about WWII.
In C!sVM, players purchase their force from a production budget, the battles are tv episodes, a character's actions are determined by their star status, and success depends on the audience ratings.
Here we put our cast through the 'boot camp' beloved of macho directors, storming a hilltop ruin defended by red army 'extras'. We quickly find that named cast, co-stars and stars go through nameless extras like prunes through a goose!.
The props department finds non-functional vehicles a low-budget way to give a big-budget look.
And so to our story...
The Eastern front, 1945: a beleaguered kampfgruppe attempts to extricate itself from the closing pincers of Russian encirclement. But the planned withdrawal has been disrupted by a ferocious night attack (consisting of stock footage). Dawn finds the intrepid officer in charge of the German recon platoon MIA.
With suspicious readiness, a leathery fallschirmjager feldwebel volunteers to find the missing officer and assembles an ad-hoc squad of veterans to accompany him.
A combination of poor spotting rolls on the German side and equally feeble activation rolls from the Ivans makes the first encounter a short range affair. The enemy force generation table furnishes two riflemen, who go down in a hail of Schmeisser fire.
On the eastern ridge, the squad's rifle grenadier surprises a lone Russkie - this is his chance to shine!
But he fumbles the shot and is forced to hit the deck as his grenade goes astray.
Fortunately our trusty Feldwebel is there to pick up the slack.
On the opposite bank of the ravine, two paras make hard work of spotting their marker... but whatever it may be, it seems equally reluctant to activate and another close-range encounter seems imminent.
Too close for comfort, in fact: a named cast member with rifle and combat knife - somewhat more formidable than the puny extras encountered so far.
Fritz tastes cold steel - but his oppo is there to take care of business. A quick edit while we substitute a stuntman, who tumbles dramatically down the slope.
The squad's medic dashes heroically across the defile to his stricken comrades aid. As he does so, he activates a Soviet rifleman who takes cover by the wrecked PAK and takes a snapshot.
Ivan's bullet flies wide and he's immediately cut down by return fire. The corpsman's efforts are in vain, however. With a failed action roll, the casualty expires in his arms.
The penultimate encounter marker turns out to be a bust. The enemy generator table has gone very easy on the Fallies. (We'll put in a cheap jump scare for the audience as some crows are startled off their grisly feast.)
Which only leaves the climactic scene - the recon Leutnant, his driver and signaller are found safe and well.
The camera closes in on the wily para feldwebel as he reports that the Russian night attack overran the kampfgruppe and a general retreat is underway. The audience, of course, knows this is untrue. Here then, is the reason the wily veterans were so keen to seek out the scout officer - he knows the Russian positions and can get them out of the pocket! They want nothing more than to head west and surrender to the Amis, and they're counting on the Leutnant to get them there. Their journey, pursued by fanatical feldpolizei, will form the narrative of the series.
With pilot in the bag and being touted round the distributors, we played out a scene in which our protagonists tried to steal a vehicle from the tank park. Their feldpolizei pursuers, defining their intent, attempted an ambush. While furnishing much tension, the scene fizzled out when the surviving feldpolizei escaped on the one functional tank! What were the scriptwriters thinking?
Message Ends!
My thanks to Phil for this report!