There's a fella named Guy Halsall who's been filling the pages of WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED (WI) with absolutely useless information about the Arthurian era of warfare. In the WI February 2000 issue (No 149), Halsall had his eighth article published (and he promises there's more to come), and he finally gave a page to the current sets of rules for the era. Halsall states that "… 'millenium' rules-sets do not work well for this period." By 'millenium', I assume he refers to the period around 1000 AD. His list is fairly restrictive… he mentions only four sets… DBA, DBM, GLUTTER OF RAVENS, and COMITATUS. Someday, when I find out what a 'glutter' is, I might try that set, but I did have handy the COMITATUS book, and Jeff Wiltrout and I set up a small battle to see what it was all about. Simon MacDowall wrote ROMANS, GOTHS AND HUNS, published in soft cover in 1990. At the back of the book is his rules set, COMITATUS for miniatures. Halsall's comments are: "… perhaps the best wargames book on this period… if you see a copy, I'd very strongly advise you to snap it up". COMITATUS lists 9 types of cavalry… 7 of them have an inherent short range missile capability. There are 6 types of foot… 7, if you include archers. Of the 7, 5 have an inherent missile capability. A unit is composed of from 1 to 6 stands, and each type of troop is given 4 parameters: Attack (A) Heavy, heavy cavalry have an A of 5. Archers have an A of zero, Romans an A of 2. Each stand tosses a 6-sided die, and a number equal to or less than the A scores a hit. Defense (D) When attacked, a unit uses this parameter to score. Here, Roman infantry have a D of 3, but heavy cavalry don't fight back too well… their D is, at most, 2. Short range missiles (S). This ranges from 1 to 3. Long range missiles (L) Only possessed by archers, whose L is 3. MacDowall describes what he wants to do in the sequence: The sequence of play is derived from Ammianus Marcellinus' description of battle. After deployment into battle formation, troops move to within bow range of each other. They must then halt and exchange missiles at long range. Troops then close to javelin range (… short range…), again exchange missiles, then close to combat. COMITATUS opens with a 'command phase'… each leader has a 'command range'… he gets his units going with 'command points'. If your units are in a long battle line, it takes only 1 point to control the entire line, no matter how long it is. Similar to DAY OF BATTLE, by Chris Parker. In our scenario, our leaders each had 3 command points. As the game progressed, and the line of battle broke up during the combat phases, it became more difficult to control our units. Jeff and I sought to find out what a 'hit' meant in the sequence… there was lots of dice tossing (2 firing phases and 1 combat phase) and lots of hits. COMITATUS says the number of figures on a stand is unimportant… so a hit couldn't 'kill' a figure. But did it 'kill' a stand? We never found out. There's a 'morale phase' in the sequence during which all hits registered on a unit reduce its Unit Efficiency Rating (UER). This immediately calls into play data sheets, unless you want the entire playing field so cluttered with markers that you won't even be able to see the troops. My one heavy cavalry unit, Zeno's Heavies, had an initial UER of 8… and I thought this was pretty good until Jeff announced his own heavies had a UER of 11. By the time the battle was over, Zeno's Heavies was battered down to a UER of –6! The current UER is used to determine if a unit will close to the attack. Add together the unit's UER, its attack factor, plus the number of stands in the unit, and if you can total 9 or more, in you go! Similarly, to see if your unit holds to accept the charge, add your UER to your number of stands, toss in a die roll, and if the sum is less than 6… you break! But now we looked to see how many UER losses a unit can take. The rules don't define a maximum… hence, presumably, you can keep taking losses forever. the unit won't do much, but it's still on the field. Somehow, Jeff's heavy cavalry, the Arnauts, managed to sweep behind my lines with a judicious use of control points. They were about to attack the rear of one of my heavy infantry units, Ptolemy's Own. And so I used a control point to have the Ptolemys reverse their facing to face the cavalry. This was a 2-stand-on-2-stand combat. The Arnauts had an Attack A of 3, but the Ptolemys had a Defense D of 3… hence, in essence, it was even up…both units tossed a die per stand, looking for 3's. Somehow the Ptolemys recoiled an inch or so, and the Arnauts followed up. But racing up behind the Arnauts to rescue the Ptolemys was a light cavalry unit of mine, Joab's Lights. The Arnauts were thus struck simultaneously, both in the rear and front, but managed to have Ptolemy's boys withdraw, and just before Joab and his men could strike again, Jeff used a control point to have the Arnauts turn to face Joab. Now I was in trouble, for Joab's men were now facing heavy cavalry… a mismatch. Off went Joab. Neither Jeff nor I were impressed by COMITATUS. Halsall's article pounded away at: … the blunt, horrific simplicity of dismounted combat… Dismounted units in this period (and throughout the early medieval period) would not really be capable of battlefield maneuver… (…Rules…) allow too much 'wheeling and dealing'. Halsall seemed to think that COMITATUS filled the bill. But I thought that COMITATUS itself has a wee bit of wheeling and dealing. And also, a few holes, a few items left unexplained. In short, COMITATUS is not a complete set of rules. Perhaps, someday, we'll try COMITATUS again… but not soon. Back to PW Review April 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon 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