Take That Hill

You command an infantry platoon of three sections and a Pl HQ. Your mission is to destroy an enemy section hastily dug in on the hill 500 metres away, as quickly as possible. The ground in front of your position is open and offers no cover from view or fire. To do this you must fire and manoeuvre your platoon into an assault position adjacent to the hill while keeping the enemy suppressed.

A WARGAME PRIMER

Take That Hill is a hex-and-counter wargame primer: a short, focused introduction to the genre. It features a simple IGO-UGO turn structure that introduces the core mechanics used across the majority of commercial wargames: alternating sides, action economy, dice-driven fire, line of fire, suppression, morale and rally.

LOW COMPLEXITY

The base game strips wargaming down to its essentials. Four sections, one enemy, one hill. Sixteen turns to take it. Combined turns plus hits reach 16 and the attack collapses. Reach the hill inside the first ten turns and it's a clean victory; from turn eleven the best you can hope for is a draw.

ADVANCED RULES

• Fire support: Rifle Platoon, GPMG section, 81mm High Explosive, 81mm Smoke. Each is a one-shot asset; spent at the right moment or wasted.

• Red defences: Hidden minefields, barbed wire, depth positions that may or may not be real, and 120mm mortars with a beaten zone that chains hex to hex.

• Hit markers and morale: Direct and indirect hits stack penalties on rally rolls. Take both and the penalties double.

• Low light: Pre-dawn attacks penalise fire and rally by -2 until illumination arrives. Blue pre-arranges a flare; Red can call their own.