Before I dive into some serious cardboard bloodletting, I thought I’d have some fun (geek fun, but still fun) and dig a little bit deeper into something that’s caught my attention in ATS White Beach One.
ATS portrays US Marines as some pretty tough hombres. Since I’ve played a couple of other ATS titles featuring the Marines (Semper Fi! and Toktong Pass), it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. But, finally, something this time pushed my curiosity button.
So I decided to take a look around some of my other ATS titles to see if the Marines were, indeed, the nastiest of the nasty that this game system has to offer.
Send in the Marines. Oh yeah.
I’ll confess that the first thing I discovered was that I have an embarassing amount of ATS stuff. I’m not a completist by any means, but my ATS collection consumes a fairly large shelf of the cabinet in my game closet. In case you’re not familiar with the ATS approach, many of the games are “complete,” meaning that each contains all of the counters needed to play. No single game is the only source for the core OOB for any particular nationality.
For example, White Beach One, Semper Fi! and Toktong Pass all contain several sheets of US Marine personnel counters. The upshot of this approach is that I’ve got a lot of unpunched counters — even though I’ve played at least a scenario or two from every game or module I’ve bought.
As it turns out, US Marines are indeed the baddest of the bad.
The counter format in ATS displays a personnel unit’s factors across the bottom as Firepower-Range-Morale. An infantry squad typically has four steps. when it takes its first casualty, you place a casualty marker on the unit and reduce the firepower and morale by one point each. The second casualty removes the marker and flips the counter to its reduced side. A third casualty result again places a casualty marker and a fourth casualty result eliminates the unit.
Finnish ski squads? Really?
Marine squads, as you can see, are rated 9-6-9 — which is the most potent combination of any squad in ATS. In all of the games of the ATS system, only Finnish ski squads (at 10-3-9) have higher firepower — although they’re somewhat limited by their shorter range.
My great-uncle was a BAR gunner.
In the OOB of a typical scenario, Marine firepower is usually augumented by at least one “independent” BAR gunner (which is treated as a leader for casualty results) and one M1919 light machinegun (a 5-8 light weapon) in each platoon.
Nazis. I hate these guys.
The “black” Nazi SS squads that appear in the Bunker expansion to ATS Berlin come close at 8-5-9, but they’re not very common.
Bunch of no-stat pansies.
Additionally, they suffer from the general uselessness of their higher-level backups. Old Adolph and Eva weren’t exactly well-known for their “follow me!” leadership.
The Marines at Peleliu, on the other hand, get Chesty Puller. The dude is so hard-core he gets an asterisk for his morale. ‘Nuff said.
Japanese squads are hard to dig out.
The Japanese squads that are the usual foe of Marines in ATS have their own very stony morale, but they don’t pack nearly as much firepower. Their stat line of 5-5-9 is frequently augmented with support weapons, however, and they benefit from a maddening array of fortified positions all too often. They make for some very tough opponents indeed.
Crazy enough to jump out of airplanes.
Giving credit where it is due, US paratrooper squads are also rated 8-5-9. They’re typically lighter on support weapons than the average batch of Marines, but their OOBs are liberally stiffened with good leadership.
More automatic weapons than Beau Geste.
The French Foreign Legion paratroopers that appear in ATS Dien Bien Phu are also fairly heavy hitters at 9-4-9. Their shorter range can be something of a disadvantage, but they frequently fight from entrenchments in the DBP scenarios and are very difficult to dislodge.
Ugly. And lots of them, too.
Finally, another common Marine foe appears in Toktong Pass– the large mobs of grunts from the Peoples’ Republic of Korea. At 6-3-6, they aren’t exactly born-again hard — but there are always a LOT of them in any scenario. I include them in this short survey primarily to illustrate why their lovely color scheme always gives me headaches.
