Engage and Destroy: Contemporary Armored Warfare for Miniatures in HO, micro and micro-condensed scales, by Chris Kurzadkowski with Lynn Willis; published by Chaosium Inc., P.O. Box 6302, Albany CA 94706; 48 pages, eight pullout pages, charts, tables, and bibliography; $7.95 retail.

Premiered at Origins '80, Engage and Destroy (hereafter E&D) has the potential to be the best set of rules for modern armor on the market. In its present form, only the potential is there, for a variety of reasons.

Implicit in offering a product for sale is the guarantee that it works: that it will accomplish what it promises to do. E&D promises to provide the "reason, instinct, rhythm, and tension of small unit engagements." According to the blurb on the back cover, "the rules are clear enough to understand, comprehensive enough to believe and learn from, and simple enough to enjoy." If only it were so! Unfortunately the rules are interspersed with tables of data which are jostled by explanatory text, resulting in a book which is clear only in spots, randomly comprehensive, and anything but simple.

We say "unfortunately" with good reason. A long talk with the author, a series of careful readings, and several playtests indicate that an accurate editing job and further playtesting of some game mechanics are all that are lacking to make E&D fulfill its promise.

E&D's time scale has one game turn representing fifteen seconds of real time. Given such a short timespan, the emphasis must of necessity be on small unit actions, which belies the assertion that the rules are suitable for campaign play. Firefights lasting three to five minutes game-time require as much as three and a half hours of real time to resolve, and a meeting engagement lasting onehalf hour gametime could require an entire weekend to fight out.

E&D requires written orders for everything on the board and all off-board material which might affect play, and the orders must be written every turn. A check with the author reveals that order writing on this scale is not necessary, so long as general tactical orders exist. for all units.

Unfortunately, this is not what the rules say. E&D offers three playing scales, the use of which depends on whether the gamer possesses HO or micro scale models. In HO scale, one foot equals 25 meters; in micro scale, three inches equal 25 meters; in microcondensed scale, three-fourths of an inch equals 25 meters.

These scales are fine, if you have access to spare football fields, large gymnasia, and large back yards. If, on the other hand, you are limited to a small apartment living room, these scales can get out of hand rather quickly. An improved TOW anti-tank missile, with a range of 3,700 meters, will travel over fifty yards in HO scale and up to nine feet in micro-condensed scale. We recommend that HO scale be reduced so that one centimeter equals 2.5 meters, and micro/micro-condensed scale have one centimeter. equalling 25 meters. In our own play we have also dispensed with the foot and inch measurements. The wide availability of metric measuring devices make a dual system unnecessary. By reducing the scales as indicated, it is possible to play out an action in the micro/micro-condensed scales on a four by eight table and still have the vehicles start out of range of the anti-tank guided missiles.

The sequence of play in each game turn is simple, direct, and comprehenofferings in the field, and after a few minutes of play things move rapidly-if you ignore the order writing. The simultaneity of events is well handled and meticulously described. All the various imponderables (gunner error, target sighting, returning fire after being surprised, etc.) are well handled, using a percentile dice system as opposed to the far less flexible (and often less than adequate) system of standard six-sided dice or averaging dice called for in several rules sets.

All the tables and charts necessary for play are included, but in several cases they suffer from errors of transposition (assigning the APDS penetration value to an HE round, for example) and there are several gaps, brought about, we learned, by the material simply being dropped during typesetting.

E&D presents what is probably the best capsule description of U.S. small unit tactics for modern combat which has appeared anywhere.

Unfortunately, the author did not see fit to include a similar discussion for the Soviet army. Since he cited FM 3040 (Handbook on Soviet Ground Forces, (Department of Defense, 1975), in his bibliography, one might expect something, but it just isn't there. This is extremely bothersome, for U.S. and Soviet doctrine are wildly different, and while there is a close commonality between U.S. and NATO doctrine, they are not identical. Were a scenario to be run using U.S. doctrine for both sides, the Soviet player would have an overwhelming advantage: an advantage the U.S. doctrine is specifically designed to counter.

All figure representations are on a 1: 1 scale. One man or AFV is represented by a single man or AFV figure. All fire resolution is also on a 1:1 scale, so keeping track of things can begin to get rather difficult. It is entirely possible for a four-man fire team to suffer one killed, one wounded, one nicked and one stunned, all in the same turn. Since there is a distinct lack of 5mm casualty caps, the situation is handled by the use of record cards for troops and vehicles. After a little puzzling, the cards make sense, and there are examples in the rules, as well as permission to photocopy the blank cards for use in play.

Rounding out the Basic Rules section are some "sample scenarios and situations." These are totally useless, being poorly written and virtually incomprehensible.

Following the "scenarios" is a 12-page section on the "campaign game." This section does not address the problem of how to develop a campaign, but it does cover (at a gallop) morale, logistics, weather, night and limited visibility operations, amphibious operations, naval gunfire support, ship to ship combat, helicopter and aircraft tactical support operations, tactical nukes, chemical warfare, and the employment of air-cushion vehicles.

Rounding out the book are several pages of appendices, including the only point cost system for a campaign game (permitting different but theoretically balanced forces) to appear in any modern armor rules set.

The general layout of E&D leaves a great deal to be desired. The one overwhelming problem is that the rules do not develop in a manner easy to follow. There is a clearly stated sequence of play, but it is buried amidst a mass of other material which refers to something else, further along. Much of this is the resultof poor typesetting and bad design, but that does not mitigate the negative impression one gets when trying to read the rules.

Another problem (and to us, a serious one) is the author's rigid adherence to official sources for information where he has no first hand experience. He has ignored or discounted the voluminous literature dealing with the various ArabIsraeli Wars, possibly without realizing that the U.S. scrapped much of its tactical doctrine in light of the Yom Kippur War, and the Soviets made wholesale revisions. Again, the listed capabilities of many weapons systems are at odds with theiractual battlefield performance.

On balance, while we have criticized E&D, there is far more that is right with it than is wrong with it. E&D offers a genuinely close look at modern tactical ground combat, and despite errors of omission and commission, it is the best set of modern armor rules around.

Reply by the Designer
by Chris Kurzadkowski

In light of the various points brought out in "The View from Our Bunker," Chaosium (Box 6302, Albany, Calif., 94706) has made available an errata sheet of corrections, additions, and clarifications to Engage & Destroy. New scenarios are now being prepared. I ignored information relating to the Arab-Israeli wars deliberately, because most of this information is extremely inaccurate. If all of it were to be believed, the population of Israel and its Arab neighbors would have been killed off twice over. Best of luck and happy gaming.

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