Recent articles from various sources have leveled assorted attacks against the standard Combat Results Table (CRT) system. I. as an old-time, hard-core, playability type, wish to present a defense of it.

Most of the oppostion to standardized, unit-elimination-type combat results tables such as serve D-DAY, AFRIKA CORPS, etc., comes from those who seem turned off by the simplicity of it. The "mechanic" types prefer a more involved step-reduction system at the very least, where 100 units in combat for 6 turns will, let's say, be at 60% strength in bits and pieces, step-down counters or battlegroups, rather than seeing the original units still out there at full strength, lacking only 40% of their original bretheren. I strongly suspect that much of this opposition is because simple unit elimination reduces the "fun" of withdrawing a 4, poking around for a 2 and 1, and putting batches of remnants out there. Some people way enjoy the puttering more than the playing, but I'm not among them. I prefer to get on with the action, finding more enjoyment in the final victory - or the attempt - than in the mechanics of shuffling counters along the way.

Step reduction is often defeated on realism grounds, the argument being that all units will suffer some loss while few will be totally destroyed. But while such a case does have merit on its face. I believe a large part of it is based on confusing the units' combat factor with a units' simple head count.

True, rare is the case where any unit is wiped out in toto, for even surrounded units generally have escapees, evacuated elements, etc., and almost invariably someone is left. Worn out line units, by division for instance, that are classed as "decimated" will still have more than half of the original "heads" around to be counted.

But the point I wish to make is that the combat factor on a unit doesn't just mean 12,000 heads per division, but rather that the 4 factor (or whatever) represents the unit's relative combat effectiveness. If this sample division loses 3000 men, the 9000 men left do not constitute a 3; those casualties represent the larger part of the fighting elements, and the combat effectiveness of the surviving 9000 engineers, artillerymen, truck drivers, cooks, colonels, and clerks more closly approximates 0 than 3. This is why a unit can realistically be eliminated despite many survivors. While this situation will be altered by army and era, the principle ramains true. If a unit in the hordes of Genghis Khan that began as a 10 sustained 90% casualties, the survivors might well be a 1 afterward, while a 1942-ish Italian or Rumanian unit starting as a 4 and sustaining only light casualties might well be ineffective afterwards, if indeed you could find it at all!

These extremes go to prove the general case: Manpower, or rifle count, or "heads" mean very little. It's the reZative combat effectiveness that counts. This is shown well in Avalon Hill's AFRIKA KORPS, where an Italian infantry division is a 2-4 while a German reconnaisance battalion is a 2-12. Does this mean a recce battalion had 9000 motorcyclists, or an Italian division had 400 men? No, it means that in battle, those 9000 Italians would stand up about as well as 400 German cycle jockeys. If a unit is no longer combat-effective, it is effectively eliminated, whether or not there are still truck drivers, field kitchens, assorted headquarters and the like running around with the divisional ensigna on them. Conversely, a unit in sustained battle that has taken casualties, received a few green replacements and is using worn equipment may not be going into battle cheering anymore as it once may have, but those 20-man platoons may be doing as well as earlier 3-4-ones did. The effect is that those units still out there, even after prolonged combat, are still essentially as combat-effective as ever - and perhaps, with experience, more so. The German, "1944"-type, reorganized, infantry divisions for instance, after being chewed up in the east for years, had lower establishment levels but still wielded firepower at or above the 1941 level. (If they accomplished somewhat less, look at the nature of the opponenet they now faced!) Another factor to consier is that a rational leader will regroup worn units so as to create full-strength, if fewer, units. Thus we have in practice fully effective, but fewer, units. This is what the standard CRT/unit-elimination system does.

Even on realism grounds then, a standardized unit-elimination table can hold its own; its strength, however, lies in playability as will be covered below.

One fact that is overlooked more and more lately is that wargames are games. Some authors would have us believe that there are a bunch of people out there who buy and set up and occasionally even go through the motions of playing wargames just to study history. I find that hard to believe. I'm sure there are lots of people who know the history of a game era, or are motivated by a game to learn more, and likely even learn something of the history from the order of battle and terrain, etc; I'm among them.

But these aspects are sideline issues, something to be used in defense against hostile wives and wary outsiders. The only real reason anyone plays a game is to play, and win.

The "learning" is primarily learning how to play better and win more. not how to go about more closely duplicating exactly what did happen. What good does it do to shuffle pieces around a board following the paths laid out by someone else's original play? (Or error? or chance?) Tha appeal of the game is to recreate an instant, the start point of the game, with the forces and potentials then available, and let the player make his own plans, and errors, and chance luck from there. Too many games are such a "simulation" of a campaign that you are forced into the same errors and paths the original commanders chose to go. Supply rules and other controls are added to jerry-rigged combat results tables that leave the player little or no choice but to adopt the same paths and strategies and errors that either were actually followed, or which the designer feels should have been followed.

Often this takes the form of different tables for different armies, so that the kinks in the game are forcibly ironed out on the combat results table. This is an easy out for the rushed or inept game designer, but is a terrible rape of the idea behind having the CRT at all. The CRT must be an objective standard:an equal amount of combat effectiveness vs an equal defensive force must have the same chance of victory or defeat irregardless of who it is.

Changes in odds or tables can be justified by season or condition if applicable to both sides, such as a separate table or rule for winter or isolated units. But to have a deck of CRTs to insure victories and defeats according to the game plan sequence chosen by the designer's whim. to tell how far and how successful one can be before the preselected outcome comes to pass, is an insult to the players intelligence as well as a slur on the designer's ability. One might as well play against an open history book authored by the designer, for the "best" moves in the game are those that the jerry-rigged tables are built to provide.

A standardized CRT, on the other hand, leaves the results up to the player's choice of strategy, whether it be boldness, conservatism, or outright recklessness. Chance will dictate some outcomes, but it will be the player's option to seek out and maximize the "best chance" strategy that brings about the most consistent wins, while room remains for the innovator (or fool!) to do something different, unique, even crazy on its face if he so chooses.

Historically, if a game-army consistently fails to do half what its actual-life counterpart did, or conversely conquers the world in a week, it's the relative combat factors that need adjusting, not the CRT. Separate tables that pave the way for one side while all but forbidding the other side to attack are only admission of the designer's failings.

In AH's AFRIKA KORPS, which employs an objective if imperfect table, two Allied infantry brigades attacking an Italian division (1-1-6 vs 2-2-4) go in at 1/1 in the open, first turn or last. In another North African game, however, the factors are not only first set as in AK to reflect Italian incompetence, but added to that are other rules that make it suicidal to even try attacking Axis units. A German panzer division becomes invincible through gerrymandering, even though the Allies mass equal or even double strength against it.

Now it my be true that, as such designers say, "A German panzer division in full supply was well nigh invincible"; but this should be reflected in its defense factor. Such a division was an imposing force, but if the Allied player chooses to throw 2/3 of his field force at it at low odds, he should be able to sometimes blow it away. It should be his option to risk. If such designers want invincibility always, let them be more honest and put an "infinite" symbol as a defense factor. Or why not put in a rule saying "supplied panzer divisons are immune to attack" or "Turn 4: all German attacks succeed"?

The ultimate in absurdities this author has so far seen was in an Eastern Front game that employed about half a dozen tables for various times. The designers simply decide when its time for one side to win or lose, then change tables at the chosen time to insure it. In an east front variant I play, on the other hand, the AH PBM table is used with 2 dice throughout. (Note: An excellent idea for D-DAY, AK, etc, also). Rifle armies vs panzerkorps aren't too effective, but its because the former are 1-3-6s and the latter 10-10s, not because the rules say "German always wins in mid 1941", or CRT #4 says that Russians always lose. If the Soviet should choose to concentrate 1/3 of the armies he has in all Eurasia into one battle at one point and pit 15 "13-6s" vs 3 "10-10s" of a panzerarmee in a 1/2-surrounded, it's his choice. Usually he won't; it he does, he'll usually lose. But he's got a chance to win, the same chance that any other 1/2 has anytime or anywhere else by anyone. No rule says "this turn you lose", but rather, the choice is yours.

That's what a game is all about: giving you the choices. You pick your star and follow it as you see fit. The game designers and "simulators" exist to recreate only the potentials and let you take it from there. Their job is to give you the tools that existed to use as you see fit, not a script to follow like an actor in a time-worn play. A standard CRT will give you that objective tool. It is simple, effective, and realistic. It should not be a plug to fill the holes in a poor design.