Solo Stargrunt

Here's some ideas I've came up with for solo SGII.  Any comments.

Solo StargruntII.

Having been impressed with GZGs rules Dirtside II and Full Thrust, I
decided to Id buy Stargrunt II and  see if they came up to the same
standard.  Without going into a full review, SGII exceeded the standard
set by the two previous releases, and I would advise anyone who is
interested in SF skirmishing(or even Modern/WWI) to give them a go.  The
following are some ideas I came up with for solo play using SGII, trying
to use as many of the mechanisms in the rules as possible.  Ill also
explain the thought behind some of the ideas I came up with, so that
they may be of use to non SGII players.

The scenario used was one set someplace/sometime in NW Europe in late
1944.  A British infantry platoon, with a Sherman Firefly in support
were to locate and destroy a German Anti-tank gun known to be in the
area.  The Germans had a single 75mm Pak40 AT gun plus crew but no
limber.  To defend this, they also had two infantry squads and a light
machine gun.  Mabey not the most balanced of scenarios, but I was more
interested in developing solo rules and learning the SGII rules
themselves.

Each German unit was given three counters, and these were placed about
the table in places that I thought the units would be likely to hide.
As an extra rule, the AT gun could only be represented by a counter that
had LOS to a road running up the center of the table.  The AT gun would
only become active when spotted or the tank came under fire(explained
below).

The main idea behind these rules was that each unit the player (British)
had, would have to roll a dice each turn at the start of their
activation to see if they came under fire or not.  The chances of coming
under fire increased the closer they moved to the German table edge, and
the units quality(green, regular, veteran etc.) would also have an
effect, to represent better fieldcraft, camouflage etc. of the higher
quality troops.  This test was only taken if at least one enemy counter
had line of sight to the unit.

Once a unit came under fire, an enemy unit was chosen(in this case at
random), ready to be put onto the table.  Next, one of the counters that
had LOS to the unit was chosen to be the position of the enemy.  In
SGII, each unit has a number of range bands represented by a type of
dice(D4, D6, D8 etc. relating to close, medium, long etc.), and the
quality of the unit determines the distance of each band .  For example,
for a green unit, each band is 6 inches, so close would be up to 6
inches, medium up to 12 inches and so on.  A reaction test was taken,
and the unit placed on the table according to the results.  The idea, in
a nutshell, behind this test(for  non SGII players this test determines
a units reaction to an event depending on the units quality and how much
of a threat they are under), was to try and simulate higher quality
units waiting until their target was closer before opening fire on them,
with green units more likely to panic/ misjudge the situation and open
fire earlier than veterans.

These are the two main rules that I came up with, other situations such
as spotting hidden counters are already covered in SGII(or probably in
what ever set you use).  They are very much a first draught and  could
still do with quite a bit of work.  Below is the actual SGII rules I
came up with , plus some ideas for the future.	If anyone has any
comments/improvements I would be more than happy to hear them.

Chances of a unit coming under fire.

Each unit throws 1 quality die at the beginning of its activation.  To
remain unnoticed, exceed the following - 

	Friendly third of table - 0
	Middle third of table	- 2
	Enemy third of table	- 3

Modifiers

	Unit fired last turn	+1
	Unit stationary 	-1
	Unit in cover		-1

If no counters have LOS, do not test.  If a unit comes under fire, throw
a D6, and on a 5 or 6 another enemy unit opens fire.  Repeat this until
no more counters in LOS or no more enemy units.

Calculating range band of unknown enemy firer.

The enemys LV and quality must be known in advance.

Take a reaction test for the firer, but do not apply the threat level
yet.

Threat level		Range band used

3			D4
2			D6
1			D8
0			D10
-1			D12

The fire comes from within the shortest range band which would allow the
firer to pass the test.  For example a firer has an LV of 2 and is a
regular unit.  To fire at D4 band, the dice roll(D8) would have to
exceed 5 (LV of 2 plus the threat level of 3 listed above for that
range), at D6 more than 4 (LV + threat level of 2) and so on. If there
are more than one counter within that range band from the target, select
at random, if there are none, use common sense.

For the future.

Possibly dividing the table up into risk zones for chances of coming
under fire, not necessarily related to enemy and friendly table edges.
Any ideas welcome.

-- 

Thomas Heaney
Thomas@kontos.demon.co.uk