Operation Squad: Brief AAR and Review

Quick post tonight to note a great first game of Operation Squad with Samulus. We took reduced squads, me with 8 (freshly painted!) German infantry and Samulus with 8 British commandos.

It was a game of two halves, the right half of the table ending up a troops hunkered down in cover sniping at each other. Perhaps my fault for not putting more blocking terrain down. The centre was dominated by two buildings and I managed to get a well-positioned MG34 to keep a large building full of Brits suppressed. Well, cowering at the number of shots I could throw out, at least!

MG34 team heads for the rooftop

Surprise! Sarge guns down a rampant German

The game ebbed and flowed well and before we realised it was late enough and our forces were dwindling and routing, so agreed it was a draw.

Disaster! MG gunner fails his break test and leaves the field. It was a still a draw despite this setback, honest! 

I really enjoyed Operation Squad. The action/reaction mechanics initially needed the application of braincells, but flowed better after a turn or two. The game encourages you to use squad tactics and have your troops work together.

Pros
-designed to encourage squad tactics, captures the feel very, very well.
-elegant mechanics, the way MGs worked we thought was quite excellent.
-makes for a tense game, some dice rolls really matter, which is fun!
-I think the core mechanics would work well for Weird WWII, with tinkering and adding some different flavours of troops, without breaking the core mechanics.

Cons
-requires both players to pay attention or it can go quite slowly
-some scenarios not explicitly covered by the rules
-restricted squad lists (easily solved by the application of imagination and scenario design!)
-long ranges require a lot of terrain, echoes of my Infinity days here
-uses quite a few counters, unless you've got a good memory!

So after one game, my feeling is definitely very positive and I look forward to trying new things out like mortars and Panzerfausts. If you're aftet a pick up and play, small scale squad action game, I'd recommend it!

Now, can I justify some more suitable 4Ground buildings?