It’s been a while since I wrote an article so I figured it’s about time. At Adepticon 2024 I had the pleasure of taking part in a big multi-player 02 Hundred Hours scenario run by the Historical Miniature Gaming Society Great Lakes (HMGS Great Lakes). It was a super fun scenario and convinced me to buy into 02 Hundred Hours.

For those that don’t know, 02 Hundred Hours is a miniatures skirmish game set in WW2 simulating commando raids at night. However, it has the ability to cover more than just British Commandos vs. German sentries. It can honestly be reskinned to cover just about any commando style mission of WW2 or other time periods in my opinion.

The mechanics are all based on the rolls of special dice with symbols that dictate successes based on the fighters ability. In addition, they contain symbols that cause your fighter to be more stealthy, fail and be detected or unlock special abilities. The mechanics press heavily into creating a feeling of stealth vs. detection, important in any commando mission. Some of the mechanics are set up to prevent the use of meta knowledge to work against the attackers by randomizing movement. More on this later.

Turns are determined by a chip draw from a bag or bowl for each fighter. This system instills randomness and there is a chance you may not get to activate all your fighters every turn as there are three time tokens in each bag and when the third is drawn the turn ends. So tactical decisions are built into the turn mechanic. If you lose fighters there is a greater chance your opponent will get to go.

The game uses event and order cards which create some battlefield randomness or create a tactical advantage. There are also requisition cards that allow you to carry special weapons or equipment as well as field fighters with special abilities.

Weapon ranges are quite short as the game is based around night missions and movement is a little random, which typically I don’t like, but given that your fighters are sneaking around at night it makes sense.

Each of the fighters, which are divided into Characters and Troopers, have abilities on a stat card. These abilites relate to completing the various tasks such as shooting, brawling, reacting etc…

So the scenario we decided to play was #1 “The Hunted”. In this scenario the commandos have been seen parachuting into enemy territory and the sentries are actively searching for them. The commando goal is to get 3 men off the German side of the table. The Germans are looking to take out 3 commandos. The scenario is very stripped down from using many of the special rules, but a good scenario to get a hang of the flow of the game.

In our scenario the British had 6 commandos outfitted with pretty basic gear as we weren’t using requisition cards. The Germans had a basic force as well with 7 sentries, 2 NCOs and an officer. I didn’t have any of the guard dogs built yet so we I went with more sentries.

I decided I would referee the game with my friend Doak playing the commandos and my son playing the Germans. The scenario I played at Adepticon had each player controlling one or two commandos and a referee controlling the Germans. That seemed to work pretty well for narrative style play.

The commandos moved up cautiously at first while the Germans seemed to meander fairly aimlessly due to the built in “anti-meta” mechanics. It didn’t take long until there was contact and the commandos popped off some rounds. This created a ton of issues for them as they became bogged down in firefights and failed to move up the board. As this is a stealth game it seemed reasonable that this was a sure way to fail to reach the objective. I’m not sure if it was designed that way or just played out that way randomly, but it severely hampered the British player.

The German’s agency was severely hampered by the movement rules I felt, but I get why they are in place. One rule I am still confused about is the German player only having limited actions has to basically move toward the enemy once spotted. It severely hampers any tactical flexibility on the sentries part. Maybe I read that all wrong and we didn’t play it right, but it seemed a little frustrating at the time causing the German player to simply move from cover and charge the commandos.

The game ended with 3 of the commandos killed and none escaping the German net. My players’ assessment was the the specialized dice were a little confusing and the scenario was a extremely hard for the commandos to pull off. My counter, in the game’s defense, was that the dice would take some getting used to and the commandos should have used more stealth and put more forces on one side.

There was some legitimacy to some of the confusion over the rules however as some aren’t the easiest to understand in my opinion. I do love the premise of the game and narrative elements. The mechanics for sneaking make it very unique and I don’t mind the AI built in to combat meta knowledge, I just wish it was a little more flexible once the commandos are spotted.

I will definitely play again as the narrative elements are so compelling and I think once I get the rules down a little better it will go much smoother. Plus I’m looking forward to painting up those sweet German sentry models. I also think once I get the rules down it will be easy enough to reskin things and do different theatres and even eras.

– Drew