Were it not for the appearance of an Osprey on Yarmuk, my entire knowledge of the topic would have come from Glubb Pasha's histories of the Arabs. Even with David Nicolle's meandering book I am still not much the wiser. For six days the armies of Byzantium and Islam met on the high ground near the Golan Heights. After the usual stuff of legends (old lady saves camp, sandstorms, duelling champions, treason, star-crossed lovers etc. etc.) the Byzantines broke disastrously as they were to do at Manzikert. The ensuing slaughter left the Muslims able to go on to take the Holy Land a rule they were to maintain, the efforts of the Franks aside, until Bull Allenby ejected them in 1917-18. For those of you raised on Phil Barker "neat and tidy" army lists this is a distressing battle. Firstly, there are enough external factors to please even Joe Miranda. Secondly the Byzantines are not little legionaries but what looks increasingly like a medieval army, certainly bands of men serving a leader who in turn serves the Empire. The battle was a hard fought series of engagements reminding me of the multi-day battles fought over the war linden between the Saxons and the Great Army of the West. Yarmuk is a game about fighting, and how forces in close contact can decay in action until one side develops the momentum to win. Five pages of rules should convince you that this game is going to be the same simple structure frequently repeated. The map shows the plateau betwixt the River Yarmuk and a major wadi. There are a few wadis, towns, hills and camps on the map but it is basically a fairly open killing ground. The two armies use the new XTR picture icon used in Buena Vista. The Byzantines are mostly spearmen with a number of cataphracts and Christian Arab camel-men. The Muslims are spearmen with horse, and an entirely cavalry reserve under Khalid. The counters have each a combat value of one, and the combat table is a differential one. Although units can stack only the top one fights, so getting local dice advantage depends on getting a flanking position, or "shifting" your combats to concentrate on one area and the cost to another. Combat results are retreats, and retreat/disruption. If any of these occur in ZOCs morale tests are required (and here the counters are differentiated) and a routing unit is withdrawn dans le style Perello to await off-map end-of-day rallying. Activation is by division alternating between the two sides. ZOCs are quite strict and once your men are engaged they can only withdraw with a morale-test. There are at least four turns, but can be more and on turns over four the Byzantines may well become fatigued. The zen of the thing is that both sides bash away and as the turns develop in parts of the field both sides will begin to gain local superiority. If they can use this to push into the gap they can do two things, get superiority and attack disrupted units. Once your front begins to crumble you need uncommitted reserves to build it up, and you need them in the same "division" to permit command to be projected along the line of counters. Once a turn ends you can reform your army, but during each turn both sides will get more and more susceptible to collapse. Since numbers are about equal and continuous lines reduce the opportunity to flank the game comes down to a dice-fight. The dice-fight is modified by morale (both in routing and recovering from rout) and by a number of special rules. Both sides can make Special Efforts (which tip the odds the right way) BUT carry a risk of a negative backlash. The Muslims have more of these (in that they can play them once a day) than the Byzantines who have the counters as a once only use (the Gregory counter is, I think, on the back of one of his units). Some Byzantine divisions have additional Supreme Effort chits. To add to the fun Khalid can commit his cavalry reserve under the Sword of Allah Rule. Stir in Sandstorms, battles between champions and Byzantine Demoralisation and you have a battle as battles were, long, hard and uncertain. Both sides get the feeling of men who have a tiger by the tail and would really rather let go! And really there is no more to say than that. You fight, you take advantage of any specials and you try to pull your opponent off balance, once you do this you try to kill his demoralised units and eat away his flanks. Once through camps and baggage-trains can be captured and routs ensue. This was ever the way of real battles (although games likes GBoH do try to put a fluffy-mechanism in there to give it some form of intellectual credibility) and you have two choices, you do it quickly with less die-rolls (see my Flowers of the Forest) or you do it the long way like Yarmuk. Yarmuk is however, a very long game and will leave you pretty drained by its repetitive nature. Just as the real thing involved days of fencing and carefully attempting to get the upper hand so with the game. In terms of "Decisions per Minute" it comes out pretty poorly, instead of just making the command decisions you get down to the lowest level, effectively not much higher than drill-sergeant. I believe it could have been significantly improved in this areas without reducing its simulation value or its play value. Whichever way you choose the mixture is one of blood and sweat, and there is little of a cerebral nature. Such is as it should be in the world of tactical gaming. Back to Perfidious Albion #96 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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