Napoleon stood surveying the battlefield. One hand was tucked inside his blouse in his characteristic fashion. In the other hand was his Combat Results Table which he consulted frequently during the battle as he pondered which elements of his forces to commit. "I'll soak off that regiment of Parisian loafers at 1:6, "he thought," and that will enable me to get a 2:1 against those Highlanders on the knoll over there."

Certainly a real military commander must quantify in his mind some kind of probabilities for success or failure in order to make command decisions. However, (at least in the days before operations research and high speed computers), he had neither the detailed quantification of military strengths nor the combat intelligence evaluations summarized by the Combat Results Table. I offer some suggestions for rules or procedures which will put the capabilities and resources of the game player somewhat more in line with those of a real commander without unduly affecting playability.

The first suggestion relates to a new game in which neither player has used the particular CRT before. Opponents would have an initial chance to view the CRT briefly to mentally adjust to the kind of "fortunes of war" appropriate to a particular game. For the remainder of the game the CRT is covered with a cardboard mask with a horizontal slot in it which will permit examining only the line for a particular die roll. Alternatively, each line of the CRT could be placed on a card, each card representing a particular die roll. The die could be used or the players could simply draw one of the cards, shuffling after each "roll".

S&T's CENTURION proposed a deck of CRT cards as a variant, although not for the limited intelligence rationale cited above. In games where die roll modifications are used, an odds column shift up or down will usually provide an equivalent modification in results. With only one line of the CRT available at one time a certain amount of "learning" will take place during the course of a game or over a period of several games, but at least the players are effectively inhibited from making tedious numerical calculations in detail of the consequences of all of the permutations and combinations of moving and fighting each unit.

My second suggestion for inhibiting or handicapping the player tactics in a somewhat realistic manner is for use in games where soak-offs are encouraged by the nature of the rules. Delaying actions, banzai charges, etc., certainly have historically legitimate precedents. However, I doubt that a real commander would employ such tactics to the extent that some game players use soak-offs in order to optimize the numerical chances for victory. Suicide tactics can have at least three possible consequences on other friendly troops:

I. No effect- the other friendly troops are uninformed of the sacrifice, or are so busy trying to survive themselves, that they don't have time to care.

II. Adverse effect, depression - friendly troop's morale will suffer, develop an attitude of "who gets it next?"

III. Buoyant effect - the bravery of the few would produce an aggressive, "gung ho" type morale on the remaining friendly units ("Remember the Alamo.").

I would propose that the rules for combat - require that a soak-off be rolled each time before the main or companion attack(s). On each of the CRT cards mentioned in the previous suggestion would appear an odds modification to be incorporated in the subsequent companion or main attack(s).

The modifications are left to the designer of a particular game; but a suggested mix might be: one +1 odds shift, two -1 odds shifts one -2 odds shift, and two no effects, to be applied to the main attack(s) against the same stack or hexes.

For rule purposes: soak-off - a situation where one or two units from stack or set of adjacent units attacks enemy units in a stack or adjacent hexes at odds 1:3 or worse so that the remaining friendly units may attack the remaining enemy units at odds 1:1 or better.

My third suggestion is to inhibit the tendency to play "musical chairs" with units in order to numerically optimize odds for all attacks by employing a Unit Integrity Rule such as is used in CENTURION (S&T) or SHILOH (3rd Millenia). Such rules impose a penalty when an attack or stack contains elements from different commands. The combat factors or attack odds of the mixed units are reduced when attacking the same enemy units together This type of rule does reduce playabiliiy as implementation of the rule requires some handy way to identify units from various commands. Identifications can be added to units by adding stripes across the corners and/or along the edges of the counters as illustrated in the sketch.

It is difficult to fit these identity stripes on standard 1/2 inch counters, but the use of a 5/8 inch counter makes the process more practicable. There are four corners and four edges. The use of a single stripe would thus give eight combinations. By using different colors the possible number would be increased by eight for each additional color. With a steady hand, two or three stripes might be added, increasing the number of combinations. Adding the identification before breaking the counters apart makes the marking process much easier. The level at which one would require integrity would vary depending on the scale of the game and period of history. Probably the most common version would be to require divisional identification. I would also liberalize the rule to permit mixed stacks or mixed attacks, provided adjacent hexes contained unmixed elements of the same division.