0200 Inventory

While this blog has been mostly focussed on 1860s, and to a lesser extent feudal Japan, a couple of recent life changes have meant that I've been pulled into a decidedly WW2 orbit in the last year to match the gaming preferences of my new neighbours. To dip my toes in, I decided to start with 02 Hundred Hours by Grey for Now Games, having had a good time with Test of Honour. And then I thought, 'let's get some of those expansions', and the rest of the story should be fairly obvious. Here we are, not only 9 months on from when I started, but also 107 men (and six dogs):

A temporary storage solution

In the blue corner we have the Allies. The starter box is focussed on the SAS, of whom I ended up doing 7 with definitively identifiable headgear. I later grabbed the Operation Torchlight box which adds five character figures and two extra sprues, plus four heads specifically for the Royal Marines. In all, that's 24 customisable plastic figures and five metal character pieces. Of those plastics, I did up seven as SAS (airborne helmets or red berets), ten as Royal Marines (battle bowlers or green berets), and seven 'generic' figures (bare heads or woolen caps). The general advice is to have a roughly even mix of rifles and SMGs, but the rules also let you bring a limited number of troops with either silenced weapons or 'long-range' weapons (sniper rifles and LMGs), which is represented here.

Seven SAS. I think that's the title of the film anyway.

Bit more of the same with the Royal Marines.

This lot I did up mainly as specialists, hence the radio operator, the Welrod-armed fellow, and the demolitions men. The demo man on the left has some bonuses relating to setting time fuses.

The Operation Torchlight box also comes with these rather snazzy specialist figures. I'm not sure if the 'SOE Agent' (right) and 'SOE Assassin' (left) have real-world inspirations, but the 'Highland Major' (centre) looks to be based on Tommy MacPherson of No. 11 Commando.

This downed pilot is mainly there to be an objective marker for the Escape scenario, but he still deserves a good paintjob.

The French Resistance also get some love here, with lower troop quality but access to a range of 'Plan' cards that can be used to trip up the Germans. Apart from a few metal pieces for characters including a Jedburgh team, the partisans are again mostly by Wargames Atlantic, and I grabbed an extra box on top of the sprues that came with the expansion, though I didn't end up painting them all. 

A nice mix of figures to serve as specialists – note the stick of dynamite in the basket!

A motley crew of patriots, just about enough for a standard-sized game.

A trio of 'Jeds', which improve the partisans' Plan cards mechanic on top of being slightly better fighters.

One of the more interesting sets (which I've already featured) is the Escape from Stalag Luft III, which as the name suggests is based on a mix of the historical and filmed 'Great Escape' in March 1944. On the Allied side, you get six men in uniform and four in disguise:

Over on the German side, things are a bit simpler. If you combine the starter box and expansions, you get five sprues, each with six men and two dogs, and six metal character figures (including a motorcycle rider!) Broadly speaking, troops are either ordinary infantry, Feldgendarmes, or (with the Facility 9 set) gas-masked men; these all have some small stat differences but essentially fill same mould as each other. The unique ones are the dog handlers, which cost more, but have much better detection and somewhat better melée than ordinary sentries.

Who let the dogs out?

The Wehrmacht's grunts

'Are you meine Mummy?'

'For you, Tommy, ze war is over!'

'The odious apparatus of Nar-zee rule...'

Objective and casualty markers

Everything is in the process of being packed and moved for the summer, but these may well see action again soon!

Escaping from Stalag Luft III, Part 2

I've left this one in my back pocket for something like two months now, but it warranted posting eventually, so here we are. For the conclusion of the Great Escape campaign, PH and I did what we did for the first three games and swapped sides in between. This meant I took the Germans in Game 4, and then the Allies in Game 5.

In Game 4, the escapees have to try and make contact with members of the local Resistance who can help them to safety. Five of the terrain features on the table contain an objective marker placed face-down, two of which indicate Resistance members, two of which are civilians, and one of which is a dastardly collaborator. To win, the escapees need to contact both Resistance members, and at least one of the figures who did so must get away.

PH brought a fairly large force, given the limited budget available, with the aim of spreading out quickly. My patrols were set up to try to cover as many of the objectives as I could.

Unfortunately for me, PH got lucky with his choice of deployment and made his Resistance contacts basically immediately, and was able to start withdrawing fairly quickly. While we did get a lot of amusement from his repeated failures to get one man moving without getting himself spotted, he had plenty of spare troops ready to get things done.

Lt. Travis in the lower left corner spent most of the game having to use the Freeze! ability, which cancels out an Alert result on your movement dice in exchange for having to stand still instead.

Meanwhile, my sentries made so much noise that they were all vulnerable to attack if any escapees got into melée range. PH had basically won even before the alarm was raised, but just to add insult to injury, some dastardly POW with a kitchen knife took out one of my thus-detected dog handlers on the way out...

With Game 4 over in fairly short order, we moved to Game 5, where things went similarly pear-shaped. In this scenario, the escapees need to try and get off the opposite end of a table split down the middle by barbed wire. The Germans can choose to patrol either side, and can deploy reserves on both sides of the wire once the alarm has been raised. Up to 50% of the Allied force (by points) can be partisans, but fewer escapees means fewer chances for failure. I imagine that a pure escapee force would be trying to make a mad dash across the table, whereas for my part I brought in some bigger guns and aimed to try and clear away some sentries in order to get past the checkpoint.

PH pointing out the orientation of his dog handler during the setup phase.

Of course, the best-laid plans never survive contact with the enemy, and some unexpected early Alert results led to me relying much more on my silenced pistol-armed partisan agent than I had originally planned.

With stealth seemingly out the window, it now became a matter of trying to get my various unarmed escapees kitted out with captured weapons in an attempt to fight off a growing horde of German sentries, augmented by this rather intimidating chap on a motorcycle:

He didn't last long. With Germans only trickling in gradually, the Allies had a critical mass of firepower and picked them off one by one.

The end result probably couldn't be called particularly narratively satisfying, but in general terms I think we had a good time of it. In the end, each of us had achieved two major victories, plus a minor victory for me back in Game 1; we also felt it was morally correct for the Allies to have won all five games. And indeed, my original plan was based on the route of one of the three Great Escapees to have actually made it out, trekking across the Pyrenees into Spain.

Still, we came out of it a little concerned at how well the Allies had done every time. A couple of games had some close calls, but it seemed that Germans really had a rough time trying to make things happen, which is a bit of a known issue with the rules that many players tend to highlight. We'll probably revisit 0200 at some stage and see how we handle it in future.

Escaping from Stalag Luft, Part 1

Phew, it's been a while since I wrote anything here, isn't it?

So, for reasons of life circumstances (i.e. graduate school) I've temporarily relocated, and my time will be split across there and home for the next few years. The combination of time commitments and complex logistics are necessarily making it a little harder to do big, ambitious projects like the Boshin War, but I've not been idle! I have some friends over here who have mostly done 28mm WW2, and so that is the direction I too am (temporarily) heading in until I have a decent pool of forces for that, and can then turn my attentions back to other periods.

02 Hundred Hours, which I first encountered at the club near my old university back in the early summer of 2022, seemed like a good way to ease into the period and get some games going. After a quick intro game earlier on, we agreed to have a go at the Escape from Stalag Luft scenarios when an opportunity became available. Said opportunities are a little constrained by our host, P.H., who has all the terrain and table space, and unfortunately nobody else was available the same day he was. Still, this would be the only chance before heading home for Christmas, so on a blustery Saturday morning we set ourselves up in his thankfully well-heated basement.

For the uninitiated, 02 Hundred Hours (henceforth 0200 for short) is a game for roughly squad-sized night actions with asymmetric forces and objectives: a smaller but qualitatively superior force of attackers with greater freedom of action is pitted against a larger but qualitatively inferior force of defenders that starts out with relatively constrained rules of engagement. The defender starts out with only a portion of their troops deployed along a designated patrol route, which the attacker gets to approach from a direction of their own choosing with their entire force. However, the defenders' suspicion slowly ticks up, and only gets stronger as attacking troops get noticed, until the alarm is raised, letting the defender counter-attack with their reserves. The attacker accumulates Order cards that allow for free actions, while the defender draws Event cards that frustrate the attacker's plans.

Or at least, that's how the vanilla game goes. Most of the game's expansions simply add more troop types and action cards, but Escape from Stalag Luft III offers a distinctly different game mode, with the attacker now taking charge of an unarmed group of POWs who must rely on their wits rather than their arms to slip past the enemy into the night. The set also comes with a small campaign booklet, with five unlinked but chronologically-sequenced scenarios based mainly (though not wholly) on scenes from The Great Escape. For fun, I decided to do up a little map, roughly following the route of Escapee #18, Bram van der Stok, a Dutch escapee and one of only three of the 76 to make it out of occupied Europe, managing to reach the Netherlands by train and then trudging southwards through Belgium and France to the Spanish border. This particular escapee inspired the Australian "Bluey" Sedgwick, played by James Coburn, in the film. The slight deviation was for Mission 1, in which a group of prisoners attempt to escape while being transported to the camp; this seems to be based on Roger Bushell's successful escape from a train in Hannover in 1942, so I placed that there as well. Not that it all really matters that much, but I thought it added some atmosphere.

Speaking of Mission 1, some good luck made it turn out a bit lopsided. The six escapees leave the barn where they are being held by a randomly-determined corner; this just so happened to be the corner that was not covered by any sentries.

Lt. Travis thanks his good fortune

Unfortunately, that reprieve would not last as a party of German sentries came dangerously close to the exit, forcing the airmen to bunch up right behind the unsuspecting rifleman by the cowpen (pictures unfortunately not forthcoming).

The officers managed to rush towards an exit at the edge of the table, but two escapees found themselves in a sticky situation when P.H. managed to use an Event card to forcibly raise the alarm early. Surrounded by Germans, the last two escapees at the back were not long for this world...

In theory this card also changes the objectives a bit, but not enough to affect things enormously: in the original scenario, the attackers achieve a total victory if everyone gets off, and a minor victory if at least half do; the card specified that the attackers achieve a total victory if two-thirds get off. We decided to have it that the attacker needed two-thirds plus one (not strictly true, but at least it would mean that the scenario wasn't a complete wash for the Germans), and so taking out those two men would mean that this was only a minor success for the escapees.

Now recaptured, the escapees would now have to try and plot a more elaborate scheme to get out of the camp. Mission 2: Under their Noses! is a particularly unusual one, with no outright combat. Instead, the defenders need to try and sneak contraband items past the guards into the huts – or in one instance, sneak some dirt out into the grounds and scatter it surreptitiously.

In the absence of specialised barracks buildings we opted to just use a few ordinary houses of about the right dimensions.

We swapped sides after the first game so that I controlled the Germans, and I decided I would set up my patrol route mainly to encircle the buildings as people went in and out. To win, the Germans have to either catch three prisoners in the act, or raise the alarm. However, unlike a normal game, simply getting close enough to an enemy figure doesn't automatically cause detection; the camp guards would have to either roll to spot the prisoners, or the prisoners would have to accidentally reveal themselves during an action. Unfortunately, neither of these happened that much.

The POWs moved quickly to secure objectives, and with some good rolls were able to simply slip past the guards without arousing any suspicion.

The only objective I managed to actively prevent the prisoners from achieving was scattering the dirt, which I did by planting a pair of sentries on the objective marker and refusing to move them. In the end, the prisoners won a total victory without anyone getting caught.

We both thought the scenario was a fun concept that was also quite playable, but we ended up wondering what exactly went wrong for the Germans. Part of it must have been bad rolls: the guards kept making noise and the prisoners kept getting to do spotting rolls, while the prisoners moved in complete stealth while the guards haplessly walked about without getting to do any spotting of their own. Bad cards may also have played a part: one of the four Event cards that the defenders can pick up allows them to redraw a large segment of their patrol route, and I had hoped to use this to cast a tighter net around the last few objectives. Unfortunately, I drew all the cards except that one, while P.H. was able to make good use of his Order cards for bonus activations. I also wonder if perhaps I ought to have foregone some sentries in favour of an NCO, but I'm not sure what effect that might have had. We both agreed that I should have prioritised locking down objectives rather than trying to control routes of movement, so perhaps an NCO on roaming patrol around a contraband marker might have caused difficulties. We may have a go at this one again as a one-off down the line, and see if the result proves less lopsided with the lessons learned.

Mission 3 sees the now-escaped prisoners – with partisan aid, if desired – scrounging for supplies in a village (or in our case, a small town) before moving onwards. There are seven numbered objectives, placed face-down in and around the buildings; the attacker must find objectives totalling 6 points and get them off the table to win. We switched sides again, and I decided to assemble a purely escapee force and attempt to win by stealth.

After surveying the table I decided that the best approach was to start from the table edge behind the restaurant and move towards the terraced houses. This would allow me to cover six of the seven objectives with minimal detours.

I got a lucky break early on when my commander was able to sneak up behind P.H.'s NCO, with fatal results:

Disaster nearly struck when some streetlights turned on suddenly, one exposing the dead body and the other illuminating the door to the restaurant, making it risky for any of my men inside the building to leave. Fortunately, the escapee leader was able to toss the NCO's body into the restaurant conservatory, and steal his gun in the process.

I then had a yet another piece of good fortune when I used an order card to take out a pair of sentries that were watching the restaurant door. This left P.H. with just two men on the board, hoping desperately that he might raise the alarm and bring his reserves on.

In a rather astonishing move, I decided to opt for haste over sense and only moved one of the two bodies to begin with, only to realise that one of P.H.'s last sentries was only moments away from getting close enough to bring the other one under close watch and thus getting extremely close to raising the alarm:

While two laggards at the back tried getting the body out of the way, it was too late: the guard had spotted them. An escapee whom I had moved up on the right tried to dash for the edge of the table, but failed to score any successes and wound up right in front of P.H.'s other sentry, coming under Close Watch and triggering the alarm. The race was well and truly on.

Fortunately for me, troops deploying onto the table cannot fire, so although Lt. Cmdr. Fanshawe on the left looked to be in a sticky spot, he wasn't actually in immediate danger. If he could activate first in the next turn, he'd be safe. Lt. Travis to his right was also only one move away from the edge. Could P.H. shoot one or both of them, or otherwise prevent their escape?

Unfortunately (for him), no. While he did get some shots off, he missed, and the two were able to flee the table. However, things now developed in the middle as Major Dodge, carrying a 3-point objective that would be the deciding factor between victory and defeat, needed to make that final dash to the exit. Would he make it? Frustratingly, he failed to break down the door on his first attempt (good grief, what is that Brawn rating of 3 for if you can't do something as simple as that!) and was at risk of being intercepted by troops coming in from the other edge. P.H. was also able to use an Event card to sneakily keep Dodge outside the door for another activation:

P.H. got a pair of sentries into position to fire at the Major on the next turn... Only for my escapee commander, with his looted submachine gun, to make his presence known in lethal fashion.

With another sentry on the table in firing position, time was of the essence. On the left, the last two escapees ended up in a frustratingly inconclusive brawl with the German officer, who kept missing at point blank range with his pistol while the escapees were completely unable to land a hit in close combat. Not that it mattered all that much, as Major Dodge finally broke down the front door and reached the back, one move away from freedom.

And then, something else happened. P.H. once again pulled out this card: 

The card as worded is unfortunately ambiguous, and we agreed a) that the card probably should only be allowed to be played before, not after, the alarm has been raised, and b) that it was designed for the scenarios in the core rulebook, where the attackers always exit the table by the route they came on. We decided that the card didn't count, and so Dodge made it to safety. With four men off the table carrying 6 points between them, that meant another major victory for the Allies.

At this point it was 4:00 and we decided it would be better to suspend things here and play out the last two scenarios at a later date, provisionally in late January since we would both be away for much of the holiday season. With all three games going to the Allies, we took a moment to wonder if it was all just a bit of bad luck. Mission 3 had definitely gone a bit pear-shaped due to the Germans' rapid losses at the start, and were it not for me being hasty and failing to move that last body in time, the alarm would probably never have been tripped and I'd have got away with everything scot-free. We'll see if the Allies have a similarly easy time in the concluding missions, as and when we get to those.