Last month, two events got me thinking about the CWB's fire combat system. The first was Brandon Einhorn's article "Effective Use of Fire Power in the CWB" in Operations 10. For anyone who has not read Brandon's excellent work, I will summarize it by saying that it explains how you can maximize the hurt you put on your opponent by taking advantage of the fire point column breaks. [Ed. Note: Not for long...]

The second event was our weekly gaming session at Metro Seattle Gamers. As luck would have it, we were doing a Bloody Roads South campaign game. A number of us had read Brandon's article-with predictable results. Players started splitting their fire to take advantage of the column breaks. Fire combat phases started to dr-a-g as players counted.factors. It can get pretty hot in the MSG building with closed windows. The mugginess contributed to the growing sense of irritation I suddenly developed with my favorite game system. Still, I felt something was wrong.

Bullets for Bennies

The way CWB stands, there is a trade-off for splitting fire to take advantage of column breaks. Say you have two A Fire Level units. You can make two attacks of four fire points or you can make an attack of three fire points and five fire points by splitting a C from one to another. As the columns break down at 3-4 and 5-6, the combination of a 3 and a 5 strength (3/5) attack will inflict more damage-about 0.32 extra casualties according to Brandon's table. Over the long run of a game, that difference is considerable. The trade off is that one brigade will be more susceptible to a Low Ammo result because it is making two attacks.

At first, the bullets vs. benefits trade-off seemed valid to me. However, the more I thought about it, the less I thought so. Any smart player would trade a 1-in- 12 chance of low ammo (an 8.3% chance) for the opportunity to do 19% more damage (the difference between the 3/5 attack and the 4/4 attack). Besides, the increased low ammo risk and column-break hunting smacked of certain gamey techniques. We all know how much The Gamers hates gamey techniques. [ed. Note: Sure do. After all, ACW commanders had about zero fire control of the sort game players seem to be asking of them. Completely inappropriate, I say] After all, it does not seem that a brigade should use more ammunition by 700 men fire in two directions as opposed to one. The same number of men is firing in both cases, right?

It needed an alternative. Banning split fires was one idea. However, I felt the proper solution was an Incremental Fire Combat Table that eliminates gamey column breaks. An attack of 3 fire points would no longer do as much damage as one of 4. Fans of Advanced Squad Leader may know how a proposed incremental fire combat table has improved that game. Something similar could occur in CWB.

After spending time mulling over the original fire combat table, analyzing Brandon's figures and crunching numbers on the calculator, I came up with the table on the next page.

Here are several notes about its use. The table is obviously based on an 11-66 dice system. If you are using the Miller Dice System, use large red and white dice instead of two large red dice. Column shift modifiers from the original table are present, but they have been doubled. Breastworks now grant a one-column shift rather than a DRM. I added a "1 1/2" fire point column to keep the column shifts consistent with the original at the lower end of the fire point scale. Unlike the original table, morale results are "M+2" and "M+ I". It is my belief that they were misnamed in the original. (I have this pet peeve about when my opponent calls out a "Morale Check minus two" as a combat result.)

As you can see, Low Ammo results occur now on dice rolls of 56, 65, and 66. 1 chose these numbers (instead of 64-66) because the digits add up to 11 and 12. Similarly, when judging for accidental flank fire in Bloody Roads South (which occur on dice rolls of 2 and 10 under the original system), it occurs on rolls of 11, 46, 55 and 64. This produces the same probability of occurrence with a wider variety of results.

The incremental table follows the principle of diminishing returns as in the original combat table. You get less damage per fire point at the right end of the table. However, the results at the low end are smoother so the 3/5 attack will no longer cause more damage than the 4/4 attack. One attack of 4 fire points also does about as much damage as a 2/2 does.

On the whole, the incremental fire combat table will make play slightly less bloody than the original. I do not know how this will sit with some players. Dean Essig's comments aside, I do feel that the original CWB Fire CombatTable was a little too sanguinary (far more so when the benefits of split fire are discovered). The proposed Incremental Fire Combat Table undoubtedly reflects that bias.

The Inevitable Chrome

The proposed Incremental Fire Combat Table seemed a fairly straightforward way to improve the CWB combat system. However, once I got my imagination going, I dreamed up some other ideas. Here are more optional rules for your consideration.

Reduced Low Ammo Risk: If the benefits of split fire are gone, so should the risks be also. When using the Incremental Fire Combat Table, a given unit is only susceptible to Low Ammo results for the first attack it makes in a Fire Combat phase. If the unit is splitting fire, it is not subject to Low Ammo results for its second or third attacks. Note that this reduced risk applies only to an individual unit. If an extended line is firing separately from its parent unit, each unit would be susceptible to Low Ammo, putting that brigade at risk twice in the same phase. (In this instance, the brigade does have twice as many men firing as does the brigade occupying one hex.)

Bring Up the Guns: Brandon also mentioned the optional use of fractional artillery points in the CWB. I am not quite sure what he meant, but I took this suggestion to mean that each gun point in a battery that fires uses one-fifth of an artillery ammo point. I had three immediate reactions to this suggestion. First, why should a battery of one gun use as much ammo as a battery of five? Second, I hate fractions. It would be easier for the players to multiply the starting ammo supply by five. (Create "Ammo Supply x 1000" markers as necessary for the bigger games.) Then, expend one point for each gun point that fires. Third, multiplying the ammo supply by five was way too much.

There are column breaks on the Artillery Fire Point Determination Chart as well. Thus, a player would generally only have to use a fraction of the gun points in a battery to achieve a certain column on the Fire Combat Table. Also, as gun losses mount in a unit, the average cost to fire all the guns in a hex would decrease. The player would end up with more artillery supply than he would have under the old system.

In experimenting with the idea of individual gun point ammo expenditure, multiplying the ammo supply by 3 seems to give the best results. This is particularly true when used with the Incremental Fire Combat Table (where there is some advantage to piling on an extra gun point to get from 3 fire points to 4). Even then, the supply still may be too much, so I have borrowed a favorite old rule from Berg's GBACW---exploding caissons.

Exploding Caissons: This is a fun rule for those who like to make explosion noises while playing ("BOOM!"). Whenever artillery fires on artillery, there is a chance that some ammo caissons will be hit. If a player rolls doubles while firing on an enemy artillery unit, has at least one gun point involved in the attack, and achieves an "M+2" result or better, the defender must immediately remove one Artillery Ammo Point. There is no penalty if the defender has no Ammo Points available.

I will admit that the idea of ammo expenditure by individual gun point still needs some testing. I may yet drop the ammo multiplier down to 2, or re-figure the Artillery Fire Point Determination Chart so that attacks of I gun point at a range of 4-6 hexes, and 2 gun points at 7-8 hexes, generate zero fire points. There is also the issue of players who will break all their artillery into detached batteries of I gun point per hex to get the favorable morale modifiers and "ignore retreat" results. In the present game, the ammo supply and "one point per shot" rule discourages players from doing this-a further example of bullets for bennies. (Although, notice that once the ammo supply is gone there is no reason to avoid this. The same applies if the morale benefits are of more advantage to you than any concentrated firepower your artillery would offer. You do not need to fire those guns in order for the troops to be heartened by their presence.) When using ammo expenditure by gun point as proposed here, it might make sense to eliminate the morale modifier for stacking with artillery and keep the "no retreat" results. This is an issue where the readers can help by testing.

What This All Leads To

I want to hear your reactions to these proposals. The NBS gave us an Incremental Command Table; can an Incremental Fire Combat Table be so far behind? Some may feel that there is no reason for an Incremental Fire Combat Table. After all, if you remove the benefits of split fire, why is it necessary to create a fire combat table that lets you do it? Indeed, Dean did mention in Brandon's article that future editions of the CWB rules may [Ed. Note: Read: will preclude split firing entirely. However, before we get that official word, I encourage the readers to sample this alternative and report back to this journal with their results. Happy gaming!

Incremental Fire Combat Table

Combat Table Modifiers:
Column Shifts
Use each line only once, even it' multiple conditions on the line are true.
-1 Target is in Breastworks
-2 Up Slope or Extreme Slope, Firer at lower elevation
-2 Target in Sunken Road or Trench
-2 One or more Firsts is Low Ammo
-4 Night
-6 Defender's fire in Close Combat if attacked from a Flank
+4 Target is Column, Limbered, Flank, Disorganized or Routed
+6 Target is Mounted