1. Sad news. The REVIEW received a mere pittance from the MAGWEB, 48 dollars, for the first quarter of the year. The REVIEW was 23rd on the 'popularity' list, out of the total of 76 magazines listed on-site by MAGWEB.
The big winners were, again, COURIER, LONE WARRIOR, and Hal Thinglum's MWAN. The REVIEW site was referenced (hit) some 2500 times, in contrast to the COURIER's 21,000 hits and the MWAN 15,000 hits.
My only consolation is that we're still ahead of the last guy on the list, a role-playing site which was referenced only 48 times during the quarter... but, let me tell you, we're getting close.
2. Somewhere in this issue is an article on NAPOLEON'S BATTLES (NB), a rules set which I love to hate. As I was writing the article, in my mind I tried to go over those points in the rules with which I found fault, i.e., just what was it in the gaming system that so displeases me?
One of the things that I don't like about NB is that all battles are always scrunched up... within a single square foot on the field, there are a dozen units bonking heads, and firing, and cavalry charging, and so on.
The result is that, because of the lack of maneuver space, units are micro-inched around the table. My preference would be to open up the field, and give units a little more leeway in their movement.
The reason for all the scrunching in NB is the command system. For example, in my battle, one of my French Generals had a division of five units... three 6-stand brigades of infantry, one stand for an artillery battery, and one 4-stand brigade of cavalry... 23 stands in all.
And, unfortunately for the General, he had a 'command radius' of only 3 inches... units outside his command radius were out of luck, and not permitted to move. The battlefield scale of NB is 100 yards to the inch, and the General's 3-inch radius (300 yards) said that the guy was a military cripple (in the current lingo, he was militarily disadvantaged)... he had to keep his entire division within his area of command, essentially keeping his division clustered within three football fields.
And so, when I moved the General's troops, I made sure that they clustered correctly... all of his 23 stands were carefully grouped and placed within his 3-inch aura in one big blob.
The General was not permitted to tell one of his infantry brigade commanders "Take your brigade to the town over there, some 1200 yards away, and hold it until relieved." If the infantry column move was 12 inches, the brigade would march out, reach the town, and... what?
Now that they were beyond the General's 3-inch aura, the brigade couldn't move or maneuver or adjust itself at all... they couldn't even deploy and enter the town.
And so NB mandates that units be clustered and blobbed together. As I've said in the past (a) I'm not sure that's the way it really was way back then, and (b) I am sure that this leads to an awkward gaming style.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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