On reading Military History or Ordinance books, all ranges are given in meters or yards. Yet, we who fight at night still refer to distance in inches and feet. To my way of thinking this is still the most unrealistic part of our war battles. Surely Napoleon and Wellington did not order their troops about by saying "March 9 inches" or "Fire Number 2 gun at the town 2 feet in front." But here on a Saturday night we see Poor Tom's troops being blasted by Foxy Billy's force at a range of 6 inches. This idea of inches and feet goes back to H.G. Wells' "Little Wars" and has been imbeded into all of us by rulebooks written in the 1950's and 1960's (such as Scruby's Fire and Charge). Now for the 1970's we should follow the lead of rule writers such as John Tunstill, Lou Zocchi and the War Games Research Group and start thinking in terms of yards or meters when referring to distances in our battles. I would like to make the suggestion that being that our rules state that 1 inch=10 yards why not from now on refer to all our measurements in new rules as yards and by just adding a zero after all current rule measurements they can quickly be transposed into yards. (Example- 3 inches will now be 30 yards). Thus we now have Poor Tom's troops being blasted at a more realistic distance of 60 yards by Foxy Billy. I would like to add my thoughts to that of Mike Gilbert's in Issue #5 concerning flanking movements. As you may recall, Mike's flanking force is penalized 2 to 3 times its normal movement rate. To this I would like to suggest the following: When the referee is informed of the removal of each flanking force, he must also be told when said force will return to the table and in what area. He then decides how much information and at what time this information is give to the opposition. A dice roll (in secret) of six could mean complete surprise, while a one could mean total information on the next move. Also, the referee, in secret, would roll another dice to see if the flanking force can reach its re-entry point on time- 4,5,6 Yes; a 1-one move late; 2- two moves late; and 3- three moves late. Another option may be that the opposing commander, upon being informed of the enemy's move, may send a force to intercept; stating to the referee how long it will search and when it will return. Again, dice can be used to determine if interception was made (opening up a possible second table and battle) plus again the possibility that this force may return late to the main field. Other articles on this subject can be found in the Courier VII-1 and VII-3. I would particularly like to see a system similar to the last mentioned article put into our game. Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 1 No. 7 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Jean Lochet 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