Snakes and EDNA's
Part I
Mr H. ensures that your morale will never be the same again
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You`ll probably remember that last year I was working on an ambush system for use with my Dark Age troops. I came up with a pretty good scouting system which developed further into a stand alone game in itself (being saved for a later issue). The ambush mechanics, worked fine BUT . . . I had a big problem with Morale. You see I wanted to represent a column moving through countryside from which angry enemies could spring at any moment. Neither the standard A/B or C- "must try harder" Class, nor Veteran/Average/Green morale grades seemed to work with this. In my minds eye I wanted to show the troops in a continually shifting, no, swinging psychological state - depending upon events occuring on the route of march they would swing through a pendulum of relaxed, alert & nervous states, perhaps modified by the degree of readiness they were held in. My first idea was a track system with a marker moving backwards and forwards. I then realised this should be more of a pendulum and finally came to using a full circle which allowed troops even the best of troops whose nerves had been stretched thin by being on alert for too long, to break and run. I soon came to the conclusion that I was onto something here which could more accurately represent the morale and / or fighting ability of troops within a standard wargame and it was perhaps even for campaigns. As I was playing around with these ideas one Sunday afternoon, Heather was watching that daft Ken Russell film The Lair of the White Worm. It was inspirational ! No seriously. There`s a scene where Amanda Donohue is playing snakes and ladders and that as they say was that! 'Snakes & EDNA`S' was born. Using the central row of spaces as the median, the Snakes & Ladders board represents a moving track of combat performance. Each success allows the figure / unit marker to go forward and hence up where each row gives a significantly better chance of success, even if this is represented by a simple +1, +2 etc to die rolls, with the reverse true for failure, each row dropped bringing minus die modifiers. And where do the snakes and ladders come in ? Well, they represent those sudden bursts of enthusiam or sudden collapses we often read about in the history texts but rarely see on the tabletop. With this system even Veteran or A Class units can have a sudden crisis of morale - "La garde recule !" , or that peasant militia might be bouyed up by an equally sudden success. You can use a standard Snakes & Ladders game board or simply create your own grid. If you prefer to create your own grid, then you might not like the idea of filling it with 'unmilitary' snakes & ladders. As the title of this piece suggests I use the EDNA system with this idea, which in it`s basic form attempts to combine several influences upon men in combat - morale (discipline & confidence), training, leadership, ground, resistance etc. into a single numerical value, creating what S.L.A. Marshall termed as the "reservoir of combat energy". A high EDNA value indicates a confident, experienced or aggressive unit, a low score a poorly motivated, inexperienced or exhausted one. How does EDNA work ? A tabletop unit attempts to carry out an action in the game, be it fire, move, maneouvre or recover from pinned status. It must therefore make a dice roll against it`s current EDNA rating. A successful result allows the unit to go ahead, whilst failure prevents the action from taking place. Failure might be due to such circumstances as a lack of confidence, poor leadership or the result of effective enemy fire ; this in turn might lead to a further drain on 'combat energy', being pinned down and perhaps casualties. Eventually, EDNA will fail once too often as men are pushed beyond their physical and psychological endurance. All die rolls are made with 2d6 against EDNA ratings which cannot be geater than 11. Any odds score which is equal to or less than EDNA is a Success, whilst evens represent a Critical Success. The reverse is true with Failure and Critical Failure. Using Snakes & EDNA`s, the unit marker is placed at the appropriate spot on the board / grid. The marker will 'advance' with each Success, similarily 'retreat' with each Failure, moving one space for each point below or above the current EDNA rating (i.e. EDNA 7, score 9; 2 above EDNA, therefore Failure and 'retreat' 2 spaces). A Critical Success allows the marker to automatically climb to the next row and continue it`s move from that point. A Critical Failure sees the marker (unit) drop one row or if you have a spectacularly nasty turn of mind, rabble / militia units drop a number of rows = to the degree of failure - OUCH ! Perhaps even all units should suffer this result if it`s their first time being brought under fire. Unfortunately lack of space in this issue precludes me from taking these ideas further. I hope this has given you something to think about and I`d like to hear your impressions, suggestions in time for the next Gauntlet, where I`ll look also at using Snakes & EDNA`s for individual combat. Still with me ? Look, let`s start with a simple example of how to use this idea, in this instance to determine the morale / combat aggression of an Allied rifle section in a NW European 1944-45 wargame - but it could just as easily be a rifle company or a Division, doesn`t matter. In standard campaign rules units progress quickly from 'green' through 'experienced' to 'veteran' status. By the dying days of the wargames campaign there are plenty of eager and highly capable veteran units charging around. The reality wasn`t like this at all and we owe a debt to the US combat psychologists such as Stouffer who went into the field to study the behaviour of both individuals and units at close hand. The results I`ve put into a project called IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and here is an extract from the chapter on combat experience to further illustrate the point. . . . Even the best trained unit was essentially green in it`s first few days in the front-line. These first days of exposure to combat were the most nerve-wracking and frightening of all. Units went to ground far too quickly, whilst individuals became scattered and looked only to their own safety. However, by the end of the first week, troops.... "became familiar with the sounds of their own as contrasted to the enemy`s artillery and automatic weapons. From the sound they could determine the calibre of artillery fire...thereby knowing when to 'hit the dirt'. Without being conscious of it, they chose paths of approach which afforded concealment and cover, and they constantly watched for snipers in the trees and hedges.......". (The troops had become bloodied and thus 'experienced' most needless casualties happened in this period). A team spirit emerged, the unit was no longer a collection of individuals ; orders were obeyed with little or no hesitation by the troops. Unit efficiency and overall combat power increased, reaching a peak in the third week, (let`s call this 'seasoned') at which level it remained for a further week before the first symptoms of combat exhaustion made an appearance - self preservation - men becoming over cautious or unwilling to leave cover, even to show themselves in order to fire their weapons ('hardened'). After six weeks the strain upon individuals began to tell as personal reserves of courage and sanity reached their limit. Men became followers, not thinking for themselves - bunching up, it was at this point that an incident such as a supporting tank unit pulling back, a surprise counter-attack or similar might cause whole units to bolt for the rear. Individuals became careless, often unwittingly making themselves better targets for the enemy. It was in this period that a particularly violent bombardment or the sight of a close buddy being killed was enough to tigger off a psychological breakdown. At that moment the soldier was as much a casualty of enemy fire as the wounded and the dead. Two other factors must be considered to battlefield performance in North-West Europe. The first was the 'stickiness' among veteran Allied units in Normandy, such as the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and British 7th Armoured Division. These units and others withdrawn from Italy were suffering from both combat exhaustion in the form of a war weariness and the belief that they had already done their fair 'share' of fighting and it was time for some other 'Joe' to finish the job. By the time the Allies had reached the German border, this attitude was exhibited by most of the veteran units of the North-West European campaign. In the Spring of 1945 'green' and veteran units alike were aware that victory was near and so were unwilling to risk their lives unnecessarily. One observer summed it up...."morale was not in an easy state...Every man knew that if he survived this next battle, he had probably survived the war". Strangely enough it was the high level of casualties, with the subsequent infusion of new 'blood' into a unit that stopped it from cracking up. for single combat, a stand-up fight between two belligerents. a Saxon Huscarl, Edna 10 (full chainmail, helmet, Danish Axe) and a Viking Bondi, Edna 8 (leather jerkin, sword). Now, this could be a Roman Legionnaire vs Celtic Warrior, US Marine and Japanese rifleman etc - choice is yours. We`ll actually use the figures themselves as markers on the Snakes & Ladders board, placing both in the same 'space' in the middle row to begin. In this simple game of man to man fighting let`s say that any Critical Success is a wound which minuses one point from the victim`s EDNA and 'Snakes Eyes', a double 1 is an outright kill. Back to The Gauntlet No. 14 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Craig Martelle Publications 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 |