Before the battle area (land, sea or air) is created, the Umpire should determine the Critical Distance in each of these elements. The Critical Distance is that distance from which Units might make or receive an attack that has the potential to inflict serious damage without further extensive repositioning of Units. For our purposes, this is somewhat arbitrarily defined as set out below: The greater of: The longest effective range of a projectile weapon available to any on-table Unit and fired under favourable battle conditions; or One tenth of the sum of the width plus length of the playing area. Clearly, “effective range” is a matter of judgement and historical opinion. It is the Umpire’s decision. The arbitrary division of areas for larger scale games is designed to create a division of territory into convenient arenas of activity. The effective range decided for these purposes, while it may have a bearing on combat Arguments, does not permanently affect the capability of weapons in the game. Examples: In a small-scale game from the Hundred Years War c. 1400, we might have evidence that the longbow has an extreme range of 400 yards and an effective range of, say 250 yards. There may be bombards with extreme ranges up to 500 yards, but only effective up to a maximum range of 100 yards and that probably a mostly moral rather than physical effect. Therefore, we choose 250 yards bow-range as our Critical Distance. In the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, we might decide that a big 12” gun on a battleship had an effective range of about 8000 yards given the standards of gunnery and battle conditions of the time. This could be the Critical Distance. However, guns of this size could probably be fired much greater distances and may be assumed to do so during actual play. A table is 48” by 72”. The game to be played is a re-fight of the initial invasion of France by the Prussians in 1870. The table will represent an area 12 miles by 8 miles. The effective, (as opposed to the maximum) range of the Prussian artillery is assumed to be 1.5 miles (2,640 yards scaled down to 9”) which is less than the arbitrary maximum of 0.1x(12+8) = 2 miles or 12”. More Table Top Matrix Games: Historical Miniatures Introduction Preparation: The Battle Arena and Critical Distance Scales Ground Formations and Units Players The Battle Rules Arguments and Results Players and Umpires Notes Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #30 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Chris Engle. 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