It had not been intended to issue any further ammendments to the 5th edition rules, since 6th edition should be ready in approximately a year's time. The 6th edition is now in something approaching a final state and is now entering its final intensive testing with three different groups of players in various parts of England. Phil Barker (L) looks fairly pleased with himself after rendering a decision at the Ancient Tourney. Dick Bryant does not look so sure. That is intended to expose the new set to as many combinations of armies and types of player personality as possible in the hope of eliminating as many loopholes as possible before the cash customers start searching for them. I don't expect we shall catch them all, but at least we will have tried. Some of the testing has in fact been done in the U.S.A., and our Kindly Editor has the enviable distinction of being the first American to win a Society of Ancients championship game fought with them. I, on the other hand, have the distinction of losing the first Society of Ancient's championship game fought with them in the Americas, thus joining Steve Badsey who has that distinction in Europe! How then did the Origins amendments come about? Well, it all started when I was invited to come over as guest umpire. Having rashly agreed, I received a letter containing a player's standing orders, with a request from the ancient competition organiser (yes, the KE again) to go through them with a fine tooth comb and compile notes for the table umpire on any illegalities or exploitable inconsistencies it might contain, purely on a voluntary basis of course. Note his fiendish cunning. One set of standing orders. The other 50 odd then started arriving in a series of weighty packets. By the time I had gone through standing order set No. 36, I was approaching panic. I had found three sets that were marginally legal if looked at with a kindly eye. No less than twenty-three of the others were not only illegal but downright suicidal. Orders Prdeal For example, there was the Macedonian army whose standing orders operated in such a way that its phalanx could never charge any opponent, and a Byzantine army which had to conform exactly to its general's movements, so that if he recoiled, routed, pursued, charged or moved to take orders, the whole army went with him. Now it is well known in England that all Americans go round with pistols to defend their cattle from rustlers and themselves from New York subway muggers. I could not help worrying about the impact such murder of an inoffensive set of orders might have on their owners. I might yet find myself leaving Philadelphia on a rail instead of a Greyhound, and wearing a tasteful! coat of tar and feathers. I was saved in the nick of time by a most unlikely set of allies, the IRA. Some of these worthies were trying a new technique. They had brought a number of letter bombs over from Ireland, addressed them to people selected apparently at random from "Whos Who", and posted them in my home town of Birmingham. However, instead of the more usual detonation on opening, these were time fused. The optimistic Irish not appreciating the normal delays of the British post office, one of these got far enough to blow up a postman's tricycle on a local delivery. Three other went off in the postal sorting office where two packets of standing orders were on their way back, and a third batch on their way to me. The rest failed to explode, and as it happened were relatively easily found because although posted in England, they had Irish stamps! However, the security people never take IRA inefficiency for granted, so every mail item had to be meticulously examined before the office was reopened. By the time it became apparant that there was a good chance that none of the standing orders would get to Origins in time, there were only three days before my flight. The only possible fair solution was not to use standing orders at all. Now, there are no standing orders in 6th edition, where we instead lay down the permissable range of actions for each troop type in the main rules. I quickly turned to the appropriate page and typed up a version of the new system that I hoped would be compatible with 5th edition. This flew with me to Philadelphia, was copied off on a Xerox on the morning of the competition, and distributed to those contestants that came to my talk two hours before the start time. A few contestants who did not come to the talk actually got theirs less than 10 minutes before the start, which must have come as something of a shock! This sounds pretty much like a recipe for disaster, yet in the result, the ammendments were to prove universally popular. The odd copies not issued were snatched up, hurriedly re-Xeroxed, and taken back by players to their home districts. By now, many if not most of the ancient players reading this will have seen them. For those who have'nt, here they are now. I hope you enjoy using them. 1. No standing orders to be used. Signals and target priorities, if any, to be defined in battlefield orders. 2. Movement instruction part of battlefield orders is as before. 3. The only action instructions forming part of battlefield orders or signals to be Attack, Hold or Skirmish. Words such as charge, countercharge, stand or evade must not be used. Orders to Support other units are not recognised, and troops cannot charge or countercharge in support. same action instruction applies against all types of enemy. 4. The meaning of the three permitted action instructions are redefined as follows: ATTACK: Mounted and light troops have the option of evading charging elephants. Foot have the option of halting to receive any mounted charge. Otherwise, must countercharge if charged. Always have option to declare charge or not, according to players wishes. Always follow up or pursue. HOLD: Mounted and light troops have the option of evading charging elephants. Foot have the option of countercharging foot, and mounted that of countercharging mounted. Otherwise, must receive charges at the halt. All have option to declare charge against troops blocking their route to a place they are ordered to go. Following up optional. Can test reaction not to pursue and need not do so unless result makes pursuit compulsory. SKIRMISH: Mounted troops have option of countercharging mounted of equal or less weight, as HC or HCh against HC, MC, LC, HCh and LCh, or LC or LCh against LC or LCh. Foot have the option of standing to receive a mounted charge if beyond an obstacle or in difficult terrain. Otherwise, must evade all charges. All have option to charge enemy who are disordered, are light troops, or who are presenting an exposed flank or rear within half charge move. Following up compulsory for mounted, optional for foot. Pursuit compulsory. 5. Reaction test results may extend the range of options or reduce them. For example, "C" class skirmishing LC with a score of 14 can countercharge any troops not just mounted of equivalent weight, and if they score 5, cannot countercharge any. NOTE: Light troops include LC, LCh, LI, but not LHI or LMI. Mounted includes camels, chariots and elephants as well as cavalry. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 1 #3 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1979 by The Courier Publishing Company. 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