Detachments and Close Assault

> An esteemed lister wrote:

Close Assault

After playtesting at the club today we decided that the Attacker should get
advantages for his initiative but that the defender should get advantages for
use of cover, occupying prepared defensive positions and making best use of
cover ie In Position. The Defensive Fire option we decided on is very similar
in effect to the Snap Fire that Tom referred to from Jon T.

** I had some rules on benefits of cover in close assault too as I found it
interesting there seemed to be no penalty for attacking a trench line or
morale benefit for occupying one.

We decided and then playtested further and came up with this Second
Draft.......

After the Attacker/Defender CL checks, assume both pass. The Attacker
does his Combat Roll, the Defender gets his Defensive Fire with Range mods for
Suppressions.

** Is this the only place in the game one can fire while suppressed?

If there are any casualties and the Attacker still presses his assault he does
so but without the benefit of the Die Shift up.

** Does he have to morale test if he hits a test breakpoint before pressing
the attack?

 The Defender
has no negative die shift in the open but does get negative die shifts for
each suppression.

** Good.

The Defender gets positive die shifts each for In Cover (building tree line
etc), In Prepared Defensive Position (eg trench, fighting bay etc) and In
Position (ie making best use of any available
cover/protection). These shifts are Open Die shifts, so Yes to the
question about Elites with advantages.

Detachments

The playing of the Detachments was VERY well received. We did decide that any
detachments from the one squad engaging the same target had to resolve fire as
a single fire ie add up all weapons firepower and qual dice and resolve in one
die roll.

** Assumption: Both dets are in same Range Band?

Quality and Leaderships we left as the current
rules ie the Det is assumed to have same Q/L as parent.

As a result we saw the players using detachments in almost every squad. The
particular game saw 2 Indonesian Commonwealth short Companys (18 squads all
up) conducting a fight through in an Oceanic Union held piece of Urban terrain
(OU had 2 Platoons, Company HQ and Heavy Weapons Support). 5 players
on a 8'x6' playing area and took about 3 1/2 hours for the 9 turns!?

** That's not bad, IMHO.

 The
attacker used detachments very well as he pushed his fire teams across open
space hitting the defenders with small amounts of suppressive fire or putting
down smoke. The morale tests taken by all the remainder of the squad if dets
took hits in LOS played well too.

** Did you answer my question about what happened to a det hit out of LoS?
Does it test as a separate entity of smaller size?

** I'll probably use something similar to your rules for both of the above.
Good thoughts!

Now I probably won't get many responses to my reply as, like me, you're all
probably reading Jon's FMA skirmish use.

** First playtest in our group might happen this week, though I am
disappointed he didn't have time to put the more advanced Close
Assault/Unarmed Cbt rules in (that are alluded to in the costings) or
the rules (unless I missed them) for spread effects (specifically for
shotguns!). Still, it looks good from first glance.