Operation Mercury Attack Wizard
The Operation Mercury module has an integrated combat resolution system to assist players in accounting for all possible attack and defence modifiers
that might apply in an individual combat including terrain, combat status, weather, time and unit statuses.
Use the Combat -> nfo command to display a popup listing the current stats for this counter based on current game conditions
Use the Combat -> Attack command to initiate the Attack Wizard. The first stage of the Wizard is to display a Line of Sight (LOS)
thread that reports the range of the attack and highlights any blocking terrain crossed by the LOS. In this case, the LOS is crossing a total of 4 Crest
hexsides (highlighted in yellow) and two Orchard hexes (highlighted in Pink) before entering the final Town hex where the target is located.
- Hexes with Blocking Terrain are highlighted in Red (e.g. Town, City).
- Hexes with potentially Blocking terrain are highlighted in Pink (e.g. Orchard, Scrub).
- Crest lines that are crossed by the LOS are highlighted in Yellow.
The LOS tool only highlights the terrain features that may block LOS. It is up to players to apply the rules to determine of LOS is actually blocked or not.
In this case, the attack cannot take place because the LOS is not clear becuase it passed through two Orchard hexes and non-adjacent Crest/Slop hex sides.
Click on a target hex containing at least one enemy unit to invoke the Attack Wizard Combat Resolution dialog. Click on any empty hex to
dismiss the Attack Wizard without initiating the attack.
The Attack Resolution dialog displays the attacking unit and the target unit, and any known modifiers. Checkboxes are available to select other
options that may apply to this combat. In this case, 'Target Moving FZ to FZ' and 'LOS crossed non-adj Ridge' have been clicked and the
appropriate modifiers have been included.
If there is more than one enemy unit in the target hex, use the < and > buttons below the target unit display to select the
unit you wish to attack.
Only modifiers appropriate to the mode of attack (Direct, Indirect or Opportunity) are displayed. Here is the same attack as a Direct Attack:
Company Bonus can either be selected manually after an external roll (check the checkbox), or you can click on the small die button to have
Vassal roll the bonus for you and select the checkbox automatically if the unit passes.
Use the Other modifier to add or subtract an arbitrary number from the role. Use this if you need to over-ride an auto-generated modifiers.
Finally, click on the Roll button to roll the die and report the results of the combat. Combat results are not automatically applied to units, they
must be done manually by the players.
Artillery units in an Artillery park are located offmap on the Divisional Scenario card, so it is not possible to draw an Attack Wizard LOS from
them to the main map. Instead, right-click on the Artillery Park counter, select Attack With, then select an Artillery unit from the submenu
that appears showing all Artillery Units currently within that Artillery Park. This will initiate a LOS from the Artillery Park counter. Click on the
target counter and proceed with the attack as normal.
Counter-battery fire is initiated by attacking from an Artillery unit in one Artillery Park directly against another Artillery Park counter. Choose the unit with the highest base defence value.
Any combat result affects all units in the target Artillery Park
Ships in an Assault Force are similar to Artillery Units, except they do reside on the main map, just a long way from the action in one of the Allied Naval Support boxes.
You can attack with Ships in two ways.
The first way is to right-click on the Ship counter and select the Attack command and draw a LOS all the way from
the Assault Force box to the hex you wish to attack.
The second way is to use the same method as for Artillery units in an Artillery park,
except to use the Naval Target Zone marker. Right-click on the Naval Target Zone marker, select Attack With, select a range, then select one
of the available ships. In Operation Mercury, all ships are at a medium range of +20 hexes. A LOS will appear starting at theNaval Target Zone marker.
In both cases, the range is correctly calculated based on the distance from the Naval Target Zone marker plus 20 hexes.
To attack a ship with a Coastal Battery, just select the Attack command on the Battery unit and drag the LOS all the way up to the
ship counter. No short cut! The range will be calculated correctly.
Air Strikes and Partisan attacks can be initiated from German Air Power marker, the Allied Air Strike Random Event marker and the German Partisan Random Event marker.
Simply place the marker on an appriate stack, right click and select the Attack command.
By default, the Attack Wizard operates in Roll mode where Vassal makes the roll and reports the results. Click on the small cog
below the Roll button to change modes.
In Use mode, instead of Vassal rolling the die, you can enter the value of a die roll sourced from an external die roller. Select the die
roll from the drop-down menu and click Use to resolve the combat using that roll.
In Report mode, no die roll is used and the combat is not resolved. Instead, all of the details including terrain, fire type and modifiers are
reported in the Chat Window for manual resolution.