Normandy Firefight Game Part 2

This is the second part of the series of posts on my recent game using the Normandy Firefight rules from Artorus Games. Part 1 describing the setup is here

This part covers the two games my brother-in-law and I played.

Clear and Secure

The first mission we chose was Clear and Secure. In this scenario, an allied vehicle has been destroyed by a landmine. The Germans (brother-in-law) are trying to reach it to search it for maps and the British (me) are trying to recover the maps before they fall into German hands.

The table was 4' x 4', and the vehicle was placed pretty much in the middle. The forces started from diagonally opposite ends of the table.

The game itself went fairly quickly. The rules are straightforward and the use of the same dice roll to calculate to-hit, damage location and damage amount speeds things up. We did, however, hit a couple of problems with the rules, which dogged us throughout the game. These are discussed more in the final part of this series.

The rules allow for a character to be standing, kneeling or prone. Both of us promptly forgot the "kneeling" option and spent the entire game with figures standing or prone. Given that there's diddly-squat you can do movement-wise when prone (or kneeling), this caused some problems.

Both sides moved towards the vehicle, exchanging a few shots, but generally missing. A couple of the Germans were pinned, and took several turns to unpin themselves. The British kept going prone, which wasted their next move, as you can only move 1" while prone.

At some point, however, the Germans discovered sprinting, which is one of the big problems with the game. You can sprint between 9" and 15", which on a 48" table is a huge amount. The Germans reached the vehicle first (24" from the table edge), found the maps on the first try and sprinted away.

Given that they only had 24" to cover, they managed it in two moves, which only gave the British a couple of turns to try and shoot the map carrier.

Given the deductions, both for the running enemy figure and their own movement, and bad dice rolling on my part, the German escaped off the table edge and won the game. Granted, he did leave a couple of his comrades to try and fight their way out, but such are the vagaries of war.

Sniper Hunt

The first game hadn't taken too long, so we decided to play another mission, selecting sniper hunt. In this mission the Germans (me this time) have a sniper, spotter and one other figure and the British (brother-in-law) are trying to flush them out and kill them (although, as you will see, the Germans were more of a danger to themselves than the British).

We left the scenery as it was and set the sniper and spotter in the desert building, with the other German lurking near the second building.

This game went much the way of the first, with far too much sprinting going on, meaning that figures crossed roads and obstacles with no possibility of shooting at them. The German who'd worked his way into the forward observation post stood up and was promptly shot by a burst of machine gun fire from a long way away in what was probably one of the luckiest shots of the entire war. I suspect this was us being a little too literal, as we never really accounted for figures crouching behind cover, assuming instead that the entire figure was able to be shot at, even if we could see only 10% or so of it.

Although he survived the shot, he was then attacked in hand-to-hand combat, which plays very strangely - basically, if you're prone, you're screwed. However, if you survive, you can stand up and walk away from the H-to-H combat and fire at the person who just attacked you. I suspect most of that was our newness to the rules, but still...

Look out behind you

An even weirder situation arose with a British figure attacking the sniper, who was still on the roof of the desert outpost. The British figure was wounded at the bottom of the stairs, and dropped prone. Two Germans - the sniper and the spotter, who'd climbed down and worked his way around the back of the building - then spent two turns shooting at him point blank and missing every time.

At this point we ran out of time, so called it a draw.

Next post I'll finish up with my general thoughts on the rules.