You cannot have a wargame without some sort of combat game mechanism and Bruce Maxwell’s Air & Armor: Wurzburg – Designer’s Signature Edition from Compass Games (2024) is absolutely no exception. Befittingly, at 15 pages case [18.0] FIRE COMBAT is the lion’s share—almost 20%—of the initial rules needed to learn the basics of Air & Armor. Unlike my other Wargame of the Week postings for Air & Armor thus far, for this post I want to explore the concepts Maxwell uses in this section for fire combat.
Principles and exceptions
The core game design principles used by Maxwell in Air & Armor are laid out in the Design Note that starts case 18.0:
Design Note: Fire combat in this game is governed by three simple principles. The first principle is that any time an enemy ground force moves adjacent to a friendly unit, that friendly unit will get one chance to fire at it. Depending on the circumstances, that fire can be Defensive Fire, it can be Infiltration Fire, or it can be Retreat Fire, but a fire combat will occur. There are four exceptions to this principle. No adjacent friendly unit will get a chance to fire when an enemy unit:
- enters a protected hex (see 16.3) and is not conducting an offensive operation against an adjacent Objective hex.
- advances into an Objective hex it has just cleared by Offensive Fire (see Advance, 18.5).
- retreats into a hex that is not in an EZOC.
- enters or exits an Objective hex during an Overrun (see 42.0) or Close Attack (see 43.0).
On the other hand, a second principle is that an enemy unit can remain adjacent to a friendly unit indefinitely without triggering further fire (it has taken cover in its new position). For a player to fire at that enemy unit again, he will have to conduct either an offensive operation or a strike (see 23.0). The third principle is that an enemy unit can always exit a hex adjacent to a friendly unit without taking fire unless it is moving directly from one friendly ZOC to another.
[18.0] FIRE COMBAT
Three principles with four exceptions. Sounds like an average set of wargaming rules to me…
Math on fire
Air & Armor does not use a traditional odds-based Combat Results Table. Instead, units take their Basic Fire Strength (Attack Strength on unit counter) and multiply it by the step strength. The Basic Fire Strength is modified by addition / subtraction / multiplication / division based on Additional Fire Strength Modifiers to arrive at a total that is unsurprisingly named Total Fire Strength. The Total Fire Strength is then divided by two to determine the Effective Fire Strength. A roll is made against the Combat Results Table which delivers a value between -3 to +3 which is added to the Effective Fire Strength to determine the number of hits.
All that mathing for a single fire combat event in Air & Armor makes this Design Note in case [18.2.3] Effective Fire Strength seem, frankly, a bit awkward:
Design Note: Players may wonder why I didn’t simply halve each unit’s printed Attack Strength rather than make them divide the Total Fire Strength by two each time to reach the Effective Fire Strength. The reason is that this approach allowed me to make finer and more realistic gradations in the Attack Strength for each type of unit. Infantry units in this game have an Attack Strength between “1” and “5”, meaning there are five gradations. Had I halved the Attack Strengths up front, I would have had at most three gradations between infantry units. Alternatively, I could have doubled both Attack and Defense Strengths to get more gradations, but then players would have been running lots of double-digit math in their heads, which would give anyone a headache. Dividing by two at the end was the best trade-off between realism and simplicity.
[18.2.3] Effective Fire Strength
When it comes to case [18.3] ABSORBING HITS the math involved is very simple; take the printed unit Defense Strength and modifier it using plain integers (+1, +2, etc.) to determine the Adjusted Defense Strength. The complexity of the absorbing hits case is not the math, but the change in the base calculation. While fire combat takes unit attack strength times steps, when absorbing hits one simply subtracts the number of hits from the Adjusted Defense Strength. For every multiple of hits taken equal to the Adjusted Defense Strength, the step marker is reduced by one. The reduction continues until either all the hits have been absorbed or the number of hits remaining are less than the Adjusted Defense Strength.
While I appreciate Maxwell’s candor in showing us players some of the thought process behind the math of game design decisions, I question if this explanation, like so many others, is necessary in the text of the main rule book. The choice Maxwell made is to liberally include their Design Notes throughout the text of the rules. While this approach keeps the design comments near the related rule, it also breaks up the delivery of the rules and lengthens what are already lengthy rules. Perhaps these design comments belong in a separate section of booklet. I am of a mixed opinion on the wisdom of Maxwell’s approach; on one hand I like having the explanation nearby the relevant rule but at the same my learning is disrupted by the constant “side comments” that occasionally offer insight into the reasoning behind the rule but just as often (more so?) are linkages between theme and game mechanisms that sometimes don’t need to be explained.
Strong retreat
For the most part, where Maxwell offers design comments in Air & Armor I generally accept their design intent. The Design Note for case [18.4] RETREAT, however, gives me pause:
Design Note: A force under attack can usually fall back to lessen casualties. However, this is a tricky operation, since a fast retreat can become a rout, and a slow retreat can become an overrun. Retreat under fire is generally conducted by leaving a delaying force to cover the main body as it falls back. Hence the retreat rules stress the value of retreat in terms of the strongest unit in the retreating force: this is the unit covering the retreat.
[18.4] RETREAT
How many times in history has a small, understrength, nee “disposable” unit been sacrificed to cover the retreat of a main body force? As a player in Air & Armor you will never have to face this decision because there is no choice; the strongest unit will cover the retreat.
Busy cross fire
While fire combat in Air & Armor is relatively simple in concept, the process is nonetheless made procedurally complex not only from the mathing involved but also the need to cross-reference more than a few tables and charts. Those references are helpfully included in a separate booklet called Charts & Tables. While the booklet is a helpful assembly of the various references, it is not helpfully laid out. Starting with the Table of Contents (ToC), the items are presented as laid out in the booklet which is not related to the order or arrangement of the rule book. Equally unhelpful, the charts and tables are listed by name without any case references in the ToC. This forces players to constantly page the booklet. For example, the “simple” fire combat procedure theoretically calls on referencing:
- How to Read Unit Counters (p. 1)
- Combat Results Table (p. 7) for the Fire Combat Procedure
- Fire Effects Chart (p. 17)
- Terrain Effects Chart (p. 16)
- Marker Effects Chart (p. 11)
- Combat Results Table (p. 7) for the Hit Modifier roll
- Retreat Priorities Chart (p.12)
Looking for the king
The recommended learning process for Air & Armor is nearing a close. The last sections will cover Reaction [19.0], Reconnaissance [20.0], Fire Support [21.0], Artillery [22.0], Strikes [23.0], and Shatter [31.0].
Feature image by RMN
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