For years, I wanted to game Moro Actions in the Philippines in the early 1900’s. 25mm figures were available but I was put off by the price and the size. This all changed when I bought the Moro Boxed set in 15mm from Richard Houston at the 1998 Historicon. This set has everything you need. Most of you probably know that the set is out of production.

I finally got around to painting the figures in the set and finished them last March. We then tried a game with the rules that came with the set. Due to the heavy U.S. fire, the Moros were never able to close. The U.S. never suffered a casualty and the Moros fled the table. Nothing wrong with the rules but they aren’t for my taste.

My friend and I had been fighting War of 1812 skirmishes using Brother Against Brother rules. I like the rules but don’t care for the cards. I decided to use Brother Against Brother rules, take out the cards and modify them for Moro actions.

I never liked using playing cards to sequence unit movement because it limited flexibility during the game. What I tried is have each side toss a die. Whoever rolls the highest gets to activate one unit. Each side tosses the die again to try to activate the next unit. If you lose the die toss, you keep adding one to your die roll per turn that you’ve lost it. This works quite well in practice. You can still using playing cards if you prefer that method.

Jungle fights have always been hard to do due to line of sight problems. I assume that the whole table is jungle using pieces of felt for clear areas. I scatter trees and lichen around and let the players move it when it gets in the way. A unit can fire through two feet of jungle. This eliminates line of sight problems.

I kept the ranges simple for fire combat. The rifle/spear hit rolls assumes that the target is in jungle and that the firer is moving. This minimizes the modifiers and is the reason for the +1 modifier if the target is in clear terrain. Melee combat uses the common die roll per man with high die roll killing the other figure.

Other Major Change

The other major change from Brother Against Brother are morale checks. I have never cared for the morale cards and find several two and three man squads running around the table unrealistic. I went to a percentage based morale system from Rocket’s Red Glare War of 1812 rules.

Moro units are 20 figures and U.S. units are 10 figures. Each time a unit suffers a casualty, it has to roll percentage dice equal to or under morale. There is a deduction per figure loss. If a unit fails morale at 50% or less, it’s removed. Rallying is automatic and a unit is free to activate the following turn after they’ve routed. I usually make the morale of each unit 80% but you can vary it. You can use a different system if you wish.

For scenarios, I’ve been making up my own from the Charles Grant Wargame Scenario book. It’s the one Charles wrote with Stuart Asquith. I tried a book search on the internet for Moro books. I found two: Myself and a few Moros and Swish of the Kris: The Story of the Moros. Swish of the Kris is supposedly a rare book and sells for $200! Has anyone read it? I would be curious if it had wargamer type information in it. I would appreciate a letter to this journal if anyone has seen it.

I plan on writing a few generic Moro Scenarios for The Heliograph. We’ve had a lot of fun gaming Moro actions. Feel free to change the rules or use them as a basis.