Interesting Melee Situation which I think is correct

[Jack Ruetty]

Playing Flash Thunder as the Americans. Hero with a n IFP of 1 uses the the cricket which makes him Ops Complete. He has a German unit adjacent to him which than melees him. He attacks and defends with a FP of 0. I assume he is getting the Ops Complete penalty of -1 to the IFP from page 29 of the 5.0 manual which applies to Op Fire but also makes sense here. Not really covered (that I can see) in the rules but it makes sense to apply the -1 modifier. Bug or working as intended?

Jack

 

[Stéphane Tanguay]

That is a good one. The -1 for being marked ops complete is only applied to opp firem because that is the only thing you can do. That beibng said, SMC are not allowed to opp fire when marked with an ops complete marker but that does not means they can't defend in melee. Also, from page 45, unless modified for Ambush (8.4) or Skills (12.0), Melee combatants use their unmodified IFP. But the Deadly skill is only applied to DFT attack, not melee

So, in the end, your hero should attack and defend with his IFP (1)

 

[Jack Ruetty]

This actually happened a couple of times in this scenario because of the use of the cricket. Consistently the hero IFP = 0. I completely missed the OPP Fire penalty only applying to MMC not SMC. I bet people screw that up in the board game!

 

[Stéphane Tanguay]

Indeed. I was the first to argue that SMC should be allowed and one of my PBEM opponent gave me a good reason why not, so it will stay as is