I set out just about all my 25mm Renaissance figures on the table, a truly good-looking assemblage of troops. There were three players per side… to the north, Bob and Cleo Liebl's men were perched along the western half of an east-to-west ridge, while Tony Figlia held the eastern half. And facing them at the bottom of the ridge was an attacking force commanded by John Shirey, Stephan Patejek and Jim Butters.
I thought it pretty obvious that the attacking force's goal was to "take the ridge"… after all, they were on the downside of the ridge and the defender's troops held the heights above them, so that there was no way to go but up.
But about three turns into the game came a loud and exasperated moan from Jim Butters… he had never, he said, participated in such a ridiculous scenario wherein there were no goals and objectives laid out for the forces.
Stephan and Jim sat next to each other, and they were both totally unhappy with everything I threw at them. They're both advocates of the basic "toss a 6-sided die and a 6 is a hit" school, and in this game, they were faced with percentage dice and a Fire Deck and probability-of-hit tables and melee determination using first, an additive factor and second, a multiplicative factor. Too much! Too much!
Bob Liebl's basic comment concerning the scenario was that there were too many wooded areas… which was quite true… prior to the game, after I had laid out the ridges and troops on the table, I went back and added a woods here and a woods there, and some more woods here, and a little more woods over there… I guess I over did it, for when I had finished, the terrain resembled that of an American Civil War battle rather than one that took place during the Renaissance.
But the greatest foul-up on the part of Unca Wally concerned the number of hits required to 'kill' a unit.
Each unit had a data sheet on which were recorded two parameters:
- a.First, a number of Efficiency Boxes (EB). The number of EB was equal to one more than the number of stands in the unit... 3 stands came out to be 4 EB, 4 stands equated to 5 EB.
b. Second, the manner by means of which the EB boxes were crossed out concerned "Loss Points" (LP). Each time a unit received an impact (through fire, melee, or failure of a morale test), several LP were recorded. The LP acted as a 'casualty filter', since for every 9 recorded LP, one EB was crossed out.
It turned out that 9 LP were way too many hits for a flowing game. All at table-side agreed that perhaps a total of 5 LP should have been sufficient to cross out one EB box. What was happening on the field, was that too many units were accumulating too many hits, waiting for the magic '9-hit' threshhold to be reached.
When a unit took a hit, it received a marker, and the marker remained with the unit until a certain event occurred.
At the beginning of each half-bound, a 10-sided die was tossed for what I termed the "Elapsed Time" (ET). ET totals accumulated over the half-bounds until they reached 12... this was the event which triggered the evaluation of the markers on each of the units.
At this time, dice were tossed to determine how many actual Loss Points were suffered by the unit:
- 01 to 33 Each marker results in 2 Loss Points
34 to 66 Each marker results in 3 Loss Points
67 to 100 Each marker results in 4 Loss Points
A unit with, say, 5 markers on it, if it was lucky and tossed low on the above chart, could lose only 10 Loss Points... if the toss was high, it could lose 20.
But what happened in the game was that the clock, i.e., the ET, refused to reach the magic number of 12. Each time I tossed the clock die, I recorded either a 1 or a 2 or a 3. And so, half-bound after half-bound, the ET total remained under 12, and the units simply marched around with their casualty markers, never evaluating their actual losses.
I had hoped that when the Big Moment arrived (ET equaling 12), and losses were actually recorded, a couple of units would have accumulated so many Loss Points as to knock off most of their EB boxes. Alas! The Big Moment never seemed to come. Consequently, units just fought on and on and on.
In the resolution of unit-versus-unit melee, each unit in combat added up its combat values... so much per type of unit, so much per stand in the unit, so much for an advantage, etc,. then the 'delta', the difference, was calculated, and the side with the greater number of combat points added the delta to a percentage dice toss, and referred to the following table
| Dice Toss | Result |
|---|---|
| . | Enemy unit receives 4 markers. Own unit receives 1 marker |
| 100 | ----------------------------------- |
| . | Enemy unit receives 3 markers. Own unit receives 2 markers |
| 75 | ----------------------------------- |
| . | Enemy unit receives 2 markers. Own unit receives 3 markers |
| 50 | ----------------------------------- |
| . | Enemy unit receives 1 marker. Own unit receives 4 markers |
Note on the above table, that in an "even-up" melee, where the delta was quite small or zero, the attacking unit was at a slight disadvantage... his dice toss had to reach over 75 for the enemy's losses to exceed his.
This, too, didn't add to the happiness factor around the gaming table.
In all, however, despite the shouts and cries of "Kill him!" and "Lynch him!" tossed in my direction, the battle went fairly smoothly. The guys at my table all know what to expect in terms of Simonese gaming mechanics. and they weren't disappointed. In fact, I think that I'll prepare a special treat for the crowd... I'll present the same game again!
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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