The following short article contains a suggestion for handling non-melee morale checks for games in which there are very large armies, units of a set number of stands (i.e. ACW in which each unit has five stands although the number of figures per stand may vary), and a high proportion of mustached troops. Utilizing this concept would, in my mind, handle morale instances where a unit takes effective fire, or artillery fire, or has to check because of another unit routing within sight distance. I did not include morale for melee because there may be a lot of other variables involved, i.e., supporting units, whether attack was on flank, rear, front, etc., and I did not wish to clutter up the system with those variables although with a little time spent on thinking about it, I would assume it could easily be done. The system is as such; it considers three categories of morale, namely, Veteran (+1), Average (no change), and Green (-1). Suppose that each regiment has five stands in it. When the unit is required to take a non-melee morale check, count the number of stands (suppose there are four), make the appropriate addition (+1 if vet) or subtraction (-1 for Green) to the number of stands remaining; roll one die and if the die roll exceeds the morale amber, then the unit has failed morale and must roll two dice and consult a chart, somewhat like the one below: Roll Result 2-4 Rout 5-6 Fall back, backs to enemy 7-8 Fall back facing enemy 9-10 Hold and do nothing 11-12 Continue as normal Of course the above chart numbers could be changed in any manner, for instance, the "hold and do nothing" category could be expanded to 8-10 or 7 to 10 or decreased dependent upon the individual gamer's likes and dislikes based en what he wishes to represent on the tabletop. The system takes into account the number of stands the unit started with (original strength), losses (in number of stands), and morale status (Veteran, Average, or Green), and most importantly, does se with a minimum of figuring and dice rolling, and no record keeping in a very short time. Back to MWAN # 20 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1986 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com