My current favorite set of rules for fighting 19th century European wars are Principles of War (PoW), published in England. I reviewed them for this newsletter in issue one. Like most wargamers, you find some problems in a ruleset that you want to correct to make the game flow better and make more sense. These are the changes I use. Eliminate the odd dice types for command points PoW use three different types of dice that are rolled for command points depending on the quality of an officer: A D4, a D6 and the wierd British average die (A D6 numbered 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5). PoW uses still uses more dice types: A D10 for random unit strength and a D20 for unit morale checks. I personally do not care for all those dice types. I thought it would simplify play to commonize the dice type for officer command points. If you look at it, there is really not that much in the result comparing a D4 to a D6. There is even less difference between a D6 and an average die. To make the officer types more distinct, a poor officer rolls a D6 and halves the result rounding up fractions. Therefore, a poor officer will receive one to three command points. An average officer still continues to roll a D6 as in the rules. To improve the good officer quality, instead of an average die, he will roll a D6 and add two to the result. This makes officer quality more distinct and gets rid of two dice types. Make melee combat more bloody Combat in PoW is resolved by multiplying a unit's strength by the appropriate combat factor, rounding up the result to the nearest multiple of five and rolling on a combat table. There are separate multipliers for melee and fire combat depending on the weapon, unit type, range and situation. By using the normal melee multipliers as stated in the rules, there will be several multi-round melees each game. I do not care for this but some people like it. For fire combat, the fire multiplier of all rifles is a two except for the Prussian needle gun which is a three. The problem is melee combat multipliers are not high enough compared to rifle strength multipliers. All infantry receive a melee multiplier of one with cavalry getting a two or three depending on their type. Higher products of unit strength and the combat multiplier cause more hits on the combat table. I do not know why melees would be less bloody then fire combat. I therefore increased the melee multiplier of infantry to two and increased all the cavalry melee multipliers by one. I kept the artillery and unit being flanked multiplier at one half. Trying this in my last game (a Garibaldi-Neopolitan clash) produced only one multi-round melee. I make the Neopoltian melee multiplier a 1.5 however to reflect their wimpy nature facing the Red Shirts. My friend even suggested rolling on the combat table again if there isn't a desicive result but I haven't tried this yet. Elimination of unit orders Like several other British games, PoW requires players to write attack and defend type orders for each of their brigades. I tried this in my first several games but it didn't make much difference. Most wargame battles unlike real historical battles are encounter battles where two forces enter opposite sides of the table trying to take various objectives. Most brigades will have attack orders anyway for these types of games. However, the rolling of command points simulates command and control adequately. It forces terrible armies to move and fight in mass formations because it takes one command point to move a single unit or a group of units. The bad armies usually have crummy leaders who command more units. In the heat of the battle with several units shaken, there won't be enough command points to both move units and rally shaken units forcing some agonizing decisions. Elimination of hidden units and variable terrain effects Don't get me wrong that both of these rules are fine depending on the situation but for most battles, these aren't worth the trouble. PoW requires that each brigade in the game is represented by a rectangular piece of cardboard. Each army is allowed a certain number of dummy counters, too. The units are revealed when both sides are within encounter range. Some players like pre-maneuvering before battles but I don't. I prefer historical deployments and getting into fighting right away. Variable terrain effects are calculated by rolling on various tables once a unit enters the terain. A plowed field for instance might allow free movement while another field might slow movement by one half. This is OK for most games but when I run a Spanish-American War game, I want to know that jungle cuts unit movement by one half. Variable unit strengths This isn't a rule change but an optional rule I highly recommended using. In the normal game, infantry battalion strength varies from a ten for a militia unit up to an eighteen for a guard unit. I started playing this way but found out if everybody has a unit strength of fourteen, an infantry line can exchange fire with another infantry line for three hours of game time with no effect. This is partly due to fire combat results being a little less bloody than most games. I then tried the variable unit strength rule where a unit starts out with a base strength depending on a quality. A roll of a D10 or two average dice is added to determine unit strength. Now a militia unit strength can vary from a five to a fourteen. I always use this option now. A unit can be so weak dying in single barrage or be so strong holding up to massive attacks throughout the whole game. Some people might disagree with this but most commanders did not really know how their units would perform until the heat of battle. This rule is even more applicable to a countries forces that haven't fought a war in several years. Conclusion I hope those of you who play PoW find these modifications helpful for your games. I know they have really improved my games. If you have your own comments or suggestions, why don't you write about them? -Finis- Back to Clash of Empires No. 3/4 Table of Contents Back to Clash of Empires List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Keith Frye This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com