Prompted by the rather interesting piece submitted by Ok'med Divad last year, here is this year's spate of April Fools letters ... Oh, no! we've done it twice-that means it qualifies as a tradition in the West Point sense...

I just bought my first wargame (Ardennes) and have a few questions about the rules.

(1) The game pieces are too fragile! They were easy to separate from the frame, but when I peeled them from their cardboard backing, they curled up and were hard to handle.

(2) Two regiments of the 101st Airborne (both 4-6-10's) are missing their unit ID numbers. A friend of mine who also bought the game said they should be the 501st and 502nd regiments. Which one is which?

(3) When stacking counters, do you use the edge or the flat side?

(4) A unit projects a ZOC into 6 adjacent hexes. Can a player elect to project them all in the same direction?

(5) Does a unit have to use the road bonus if you don't want it to?

(6) Does the first unit into a hex cover up the terrain for the next unit through?

(7) Which player advances the turn record marker?

(8) Per the series rules, I have destroyed several units which were forced off the map. How much are additional countersheets?

(9) Rule 8.0b says "remaining step losses can come from any of a side's involved units". Weren't all the units in the game involved?

(10) When tracing a supply line, is it best to use a pen or a pencil?

I think Ardennes is a pretty good game. In fact, some of my fellow workers at the nuclear power plant where I work want to start up a gaming club. Are you the guys who publish Advanced Squad Leader, I want to try that one next.

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The scary part of "Al's" letter is how close it is to some oj the questions we do get for real-especially from gamers who insist on putting themselves in the shoes of the beginners they must feel are the stupidest people on earth. Odd advice, especially coming to a company which doesn't produce games specifically designed for beginners.

I have a great idea for a new series from The Gamers. HERE IT IS:

The Spanish Succession Series (SSS)

My idea is to do an adaptation of the NBS, removing most of the fire combat rules and putting a far greater emphasis on entrenchments.

Look, everybody already has enough (too many?) Civil War and Napoleonic games. But the War of Spanish Succession, wow! You could corner the market on this war. If the recent popularity of the Seven Years and Franco-Prussian Wars is any indication, people will love it!!!

The nice thing about doing this war is that you won't have to lose any sleep about people second-guessing the game's historical accuracy. Heck, most people don't even know who was involved in the War of Spanish Succession or who was on which side, or even when it was.

For the first title in this great new series, I suggest an alternativehistory premise that has the Das Reich Motorized Division time warp back to the War of Spanish Succession (whenever that was) to fight on the Spanish side (except I don't think the Spanish were actually a side in that war, but who really knows?). Anyway, this idea would help suck in the panzer-heads and XTR unreal-history fans as well as appeal to the untapped market of hard-core War of Spanish Succession fans.

I'm calling the game SS: War of Spanish Succession for the Spanish Succession Series. Abbreviated, that's SS:WSS for the SSS. Cool, huh? Knew you'd like it.

OK, how about Waffen SS: War of Spanish Succession or WSS:WSS. It's even better.

OK, enough tongue- in-cheek-let's go on to the real letters we got since last time.

RE: Ken Jacobsen's "Seizing the Initiative"

How wonderful to read this one page article in Operations, Spring 1994! It gets to the nub in a few words why Lee and Grant were two of the best generals in American History (or anyone's history for that matter).

While Hooker fumbled, Lee marched. While Bedford Forrest fled to avoid surrender at Donelson, Grant penned the words, "No terms, but immediate, and unconditional surrender." How alike Grant and Lee were in that they didn't count soldiers who weren't there or complain about what they didn't have (like McClellan): they simply got the job done with the tools they had. Jackson was the anvil upon which Lee hammered the Army of the Potomac. While Grant held Lee against the anvil of Richmond, Sherman hammered the innards of the Confederacy.

No greater metaphor about the meaning of the Civil War can be found than the contrast of the two at Appamatox in the house of Wilmer McLean (who sold his house at Bull Run to escape the war). Lee arrived in a splendid uniform, tall, noble, patrician, and riding on his war-horse (Traveler), to surrender not only the Army of Northern Virginia, but to signal the end of the Old South. Grant's muddy boots and Lieutenant General's straps pressed on to a private's uniform marked very much the America to come, one in which great people would come from strange and plain by merit.

ACW Casualty Rates

I've been doing more work on my examination of casualty rates in Civil War battles. Specifically, I've been closely examining the fighting on the second day at Gettysburg. This new research has made me reconsider the last half of the article I submitted a few weeks ago, the part where I suggested that the Fire Combat Table be revised because it was too bloody. Reading about regiment after regiment losing hundreds of men in the first few minutes of contact has really cooled my jets. If anything, the combat on Gettysburg's second day was bloodier than the table predictssometimes bloodier than when they are modeled as close combat. I will continue my research along these lines, but as of this moment, I have revised my opinion of the casualty rate in the CWB's Fire Table. I think its pretty sturdy and I have a new respect for it.

I have a house rule which simulates attacks which are either feints or probes, situations which occur in refereed games, neither of which are fought with the kind of desperation of the stand-up fights modeled by the Fire Combat Table. The players let me know before they move which brigades are feinting/probing, and I halve the casualties I generate for both sides. The non-phasing player is not told that the phasing player is feinting/probing. This is something I would suggest in a future column.

Sorry, Larry. I checked and I can't find the article you are talking about anywhere-can you send an updated version?