Game End and Scoring
How an Ambush! mission ends and is scored with Victory Points, and how a campaign carries the squad on with Combat Points and replacements.
You play against the game system: the mission ends the way its briefing says, and the Victory Points you hold then decide whether you won (rulebook p. 27).
Victory points
Keep VP gains and VP losses in the two separate boxes of the Squad Record (p. 27).
- Gains: the tasks listed in the Mission Briefing and anything the paragraphs reveal, typically the appearance of Germans (the first value on their cards) and their capture or destruction (the bracketed value).
- Losses: 2 VP for each US soldier killed or incapacitated. Most briefings let you avoid the loss for an incapacitated man by carrying him off the map through the listed hexes.
- VPs gained or lost by additional forces on your side count towards your total unless told otherwise.
At the end, subtract losses from gains and compare with the briefing’s requirement: equal or more is a win (p. 27).
Mission end
Each briefing lists its own endings (see The Eight Missions): usually all active soldiers exiting through the entry hexes, or an objective held with no active German on the map. Some missions end only when the paragraphs say so, or the instant no active US soldier remains (pp. 28, 34–39).
Campaign play
Playing the eight missions with one squad is how the designers suggest the game is most fun (p. 28). Between missions (p. 28–29):
- Award Combat Points: survivors × 4 after a win, × 2 after a loss. An incapacitated man counts as a survivor only if you avoided his VP loss; otherwise he is treated as killed. Survivors start the next mission unwounded. Each survivor gets 1 CP automatically; split the rest as you judge, at most 6 per soldier per mission, using the award guidelines (kill by fire 2, by assault 3, capture 3, knock out a tank 4, and so on, p. 29).
- Spend Combat Points: 6 CPs raise or by 1, by 2, or roll on the Initiative Increase Table, which may raise or PC instead depending on the current IN. Maxima: IN 5, PC 9, WS +2, DS 8. Unspent CPs carry over (p. 29).
- Replace the dead: reuse the Squad Points of every lost soldier, pooled, to buy replacements and generate their ratings. Re-arm the whole squad with your Weapon Points each mission, either fixed or re-rolled every time but never a mixture (p. 29).