Heyhey, I got to play Operation Squad again! One of those rules I last played in 2015, so it was time to dig the rulebook up again. And since my original review from 10 years ago disappeared under unclear circumstances, I thought I’d do another one, because these rules are deserving of our attention.

 

Operation Squad, written by Massimo Torriani and Valentino del Castello, was published in 2011. Originally a squad-level WW2 skirmish game, a supplement book added vehicles and heavier weapons. In 2015, both these books were turned into one, and was published as Operation Squad Evolution.

 

 

The Book

This book also included some small amendments over the prior version, so could be called a second edition of Operation Squad. I played the first edition as well as the second. Differences are miniscule. I don’t have a huge inner urge to add a Sherman to a game which is about 9-13 infantry on each side, but it’s an interesting addition to have vehicles and heavier weapons in there as well.

Operation Squad Evolution has just under 100 pages, is full colour, soft cover, A4 sized. It comes with two pages made of cardboard containing tokens and templates to cut out as well as two cardboard pages in the back to be cut out and used as quick reference sheets. The whole thing is very nicely produced and well laid out. The first 25 pages are the core rules, the next 27 pages cover rules for adding vehicles and ‘sections’ to the game. In game terms, a section is a team of soldiers handling anything heavier than an LMG.

Apart from the game rules, the book contains three scenarios, 12 squad lists (US Infantry, Rangers, US Paras, British infantry, Commandos, British Paras, Soviet infantry, Soviet guard infantry, Soviet SMG squad, German infantry, German Panzergrenadiers, German paratroopers, all with loads of equipment and traits options and points values attached to everything) and a 2-page campaign system.

Last year a German re-designed issue of the rules was released by a German group, along with a set of MDF or acrylic tokens. During our game I used the Evolution version, Moar used the German language 2023 rulebook, we didn’t notice any differences. The rules usually were a word for word translation.

 

The Rules

Operation Squad at its core depicts combat between two squad-sized forces on a 120x120cm board (preferrably with lots of cover). Considering this mission statement the game comes with a degree of granularity. Don’t worry though, you won’t have to track ammunition or the state of individual soldiers’ socks.

At the core of each soldier’s statline is the TV, the Tactical Value. 3 for regular soldiers, 4 for NCOs and ‘elites’. And that’s it, really. Everything else is dictated by the equipment, but most of all the circumstances. Players take turns in activating one figure each.

When a player activates a soldier, they state what they intend the soldier to do. Then the other player may declare a reaction to that (the reacting soldier can be anywhere on the table and their action doesn’t have to do anything with what the active player declared to be their soldier’s first action at all), carried out by a soldier of theirs who hasn’t been activated this turn. To which again the ‘active’ player may declare a reaction, etc. until each side has three figures declared to carry out certain actions, or until one player just says that they don’t want anybody to react to that. Then they proceed to work out in which sequence the soldiers carry out their actions/reactions by rolling bascially an initiative order in which the soldiers get to act.

Here’s a little example from a game: It’s Red Army player’s turn, he declares he wants to have his soldier (R#1) behind the hedge reload his rifle (which is empty/jammed at the moment, as indicared by the little ammo token next to him). The German player immediadely declares that as a rection she wants her soldier (G#1) to run further down the road and take cover behind the wall by the flowers. He’s out in the open right now, so German player wants her soldier off the road asap. As a reaction to that reaction, Red Army player declares that he wants R#2 to take a shot at G#1 before he can dive for cover. German player wants to make sure that G#1 makes it across the road, so she declares her second reaction to be for G#2 on the hill in the right to fire at R#2, basically as covering fire for G#1.

This is my lovingly crafted diagram of the stiuation:

So far, so good. Now each of the figures involved gets to check for when in the sequence they get to act. Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the order in which the actions have been declared. After those rolls, the sequence unfolds as such:

1.) R#2 gets to go first (much to the dismay of German player). He takes a shot at G#1, …

… who takes a wound.

2.) G#1 gets to go second, manages to crawl over to the little wall. R#2 gets a little ‘turn over’ token (green X) to indicate that he acted this turn. This is important, because it means he can not be activated or react any more during this turn. Likewise, G#1 gets a ‘turn over’ token as well as a ‘wounded’ token.

3.) Next in the initiative order we have R#1, who carries out his reload action.

4.) Then G#2 fires at R#2, taking him out with a lucky shot.

5.) All four figures involved in the sequence have carried out their actions, get ‘turn over’ tokens and German player may proceed to activate one of her soldiers who haven’t done anything this turn (to which again Soviet player may react with an activation of his soldiers).

 

Of course this sequence could have played out differently if G#2 had gone first and taken out R#2 before he could act. Or if G#1 would have gotten behind that wall before R#2 could have acted he either would get a nice cover bonus or – if the wall was tall enough and R#2 would have lost sight at G#1- R#2’s activation would have been lost, because the target of his declared ‘fire’ action wasn’t visible any more.

I hope that this little example helps illustrate the way the OS reaction system works. It really is quite ingenious, because it allows for players to make plans and for the dice to mess them up, if they don’t fall as you want them to. Either way, it can lead to some nail-biting scenes.

 

The Game

For this game I played with Moar the past week we played scenario #1 from the rulebook – Recon. According to the rulebook the table size should be 120x120cm; we went with 80x140cm instead and reduced the usually very deep deployment zones to 10cm, so the distance between the two sides would be roughly the same as usual.

 

The primary objective for each side is to take out the enemy leader, the secondary objective is to control the central building at the end of turn#8. We both picked a squad of 700 points each and off we went.

Moar played the Germans and brought a pretty regular squad of riflemen with an MG42, along with  a sniper and a light mortar team.

I played a Soviet rifle squad who had the great fortune to have a political commissar and a Maxim MMG team to back them up.

I split the squad into three teams: The Sergeant, the DP LMG team and another rifleman would take the weaker German left flank, whilst the Maxim team, Commissar and two more riflemen hold the right, which would most probably see the brunt of the German attack.

In the centre I deployed three riflemen behind a hay cart right along the way to the building.

 

Moar deployed his Germans mostly to my right (rifleman, corporal, mortar team, sergeant). Meanwhile the MG42 team, a rifleman were deployed at the centre as a fire base. The left (from my point of view) was to be held by two riflemen.

The game starts with a bang as the crafty German sergeant uses his binoculars to spot my bunched up soldiers behind the hay cart and has his mortar team lob a grenade right on top of them!

Luckily nobody gets hurt, and the men run towards the building to take shelter. Just one of the three is thrown to the ground by the explosion and spends the next turns hastily crawling away and towards the building.

In the following turns the mortar crew kept firing two more rounds behind that cart for good measure and from then on the mortar kept quiet for the rest of the game. Somehow there seems to be a horrendous case of miscommunication between the Sergeant and the mortar crew or the ammunition is all bad.

For the light mortar to fire, the Sergeant has to declare a target and pass a communications roll. Throughout the game the Sergeant either didn’t manage to spot any new targets or – if they presented themselves – he didn’t pass his communications roll.

Meanwhile the commissar orders the MMG crew and the two riflemen to advance towards the enemy, so they can open up at and German attempts of crossing the road.

As soon as they make themselves vsisible the Germans from across the road open fire. A rifleman and the commissar(!) are wounded in quick succession as they try to spot the enemy sniper. The Maxim MG does a lot of shooting, takes out the enemy LMG at one point, the MG loader takes over, but is also quickly wounded by the medium machine gun.

Meanwhile my soldiers in the centre take position in the building and at my left flank the sergeant, LMG and rifleman advance through the thick forest, take position and take out one of the two German flank guards. Except for the commissar being wounded and the sniper being impossible to take out it’s not looking too bad.

Then the German corporal somehow gets the idea to earn himself an iron cross. He sends his comrade to give him covering fire while he races across the road.

On the way he takes out one of the Soviet rifleman. Standing right outside the forest now, he faces off with the wounded commissar. He pulls up his PPSh sub-machine gun, …

…but the German NCO is faster and kills the commissar.

The Maxim crew is too busy shooting across the road to notice the sudden attack and is mowed down as well.

My squad leader is taken out, and my squad reach their break-point, each of my remaining soldiers has to test for morale, a few run away, a few stick around, but it’s not even enough to achieve the secondary mission objective (hold the building).

It’s a major German victory.

 

Verdict

10+ years on, Operation Squad is great fun. The action-reaction system is as intuitive as can be. It gives a very good feel of a LOT of hectic action all across the table simulatneously and a very interesting dramatic build to each game. Usually the first two turns or so are characterized by sneaking around, players trying to get their men into advantageous firing positions before the firefight commences. Then frantic action takes over as both sides try to gain the upper hand in opportunity fire and counter-fire.

Being caught out in the open is very deadly. In that regard, the German NCO’s flank attack was a very bold move (hinging on me not winning priority rolls twice), but worked out in the end. Up to then it didn’t look bad for my guys; a prolonged firefight would have favoured me (I had the Germans close to their break-point already). But I understimated the danger of the MP40 at close range. Funnily enough, I tried the very same trick shortly thereafter with my own NCO, but the one remaining German rifle man caught him and shot him down.

The dice system is based on usually two or three six-sided dice with some modifiers/re-rolls. This means that the system can be a bit ‘swingy’ at times, but not in a way that disrupts the enjoyment of the game, I think. Judging from stuff like the points lists, the upgrade system and so on, it might not strike as the most realistic rules set at first, but once it’s all on the table I have yet to see a set of rules depicting this granular kind of squad-level combat as well as Operation Squad does.

There is one thing I can imagine some people not liking – this game uses tokens a lot. Usually there’ll always be one or two tokens next to each figure, simply to keep track of who moved already, who has been running fast (and thus is harder to hit until they activate again), whose weapon jammed, etc. but these infos are important given the fact that each activation may lead to a whole number of reactions happening and once all of that it worked out it’s wholly possibly that the players forgot wether or not a guy at the other end of the table has activated yet or not.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with that, but I know that some people can’t stand tokens on their tables, so it’s something to be pointed out.

That aside, I think that Operation Squad is excellent at what it tries to achieve. It’s as easy to get into an play as a topic as granular as this allows for. The reaction system – given its depth – is very intuitive and leads to several moments per game in which crazy action unfolds. On top of all of that it’s fun too!

 

Operation Squad Evolution is available as PDF from Ganesha Games or Wargames Vault for the very competitive price of USD 13.00. Additional squad lists, vehicle profiles and the game token sheet can be downloaded from the Massimo Torriani Games website for free. These will add a ton more German, US, British, Soviet lists as well as Finns, Hungarians, Japanese, Partisans, Poles and so on. All good stuff. You should be able to find the printed version of the rules as well; they were pretty widely distributed, by Warlord Games among others.

 

I hope that you enjoyed this review of Operation squad,  found it interesting, enjoyed the pictures and so on. If you have any questions, comments or indeed painting/modelling commission inquiries, feel free to let me know via the comments section, the Battle Brush Studios Facebook page, instagram  , Bluesky ( @battlebrushstudios.bsky.social ) or via e-mail.