The British held the Fortress of Puy with a brigade of 3 infantry regiments plus support, all led by General Ortho.
French General Knarp advanced his own brigade… 5 infantry regiments, one battery and one cavalry regiment… against Puy. To Knarp’s right was another French brigade of similar size, and while Knarp attacked Puy, the other French force engaged a British brigade sent to help Ortho’s besieged units.
This was a solo game, set up on half the ping pong table, using my 15mm troops. It was the first test battle for a campaign system I was drumming up, in which I wanted to devise a method of setting out not-too-many-troops per battle. At Puy, an infantry regiment was defined to be a 2-stand unit of 15mm Napoleonic figures, hence the 3 regiments occupying Puy under General Ortho totaled 6 infantry stands. Ortho’s supporting units were artillery, plus a cavalry regiment, so that the total number of British stands within Puy came out to be 10. A good size for a solo effort.
Defining 2 tokens, 2 stands, as an entire regiment immediately indicates that a wee bit of paper work is necessary for bookkeeping purposes. You can’t permanently remove a stand each time a unit takes casualties, for that would lead to too short an encounter when the total number of units per force is around ten.
Digression
I must admit that I’ve never really attempted, with these small unit sizes, to simply remove a complete stand when a unit is hit. One of these days, I’ll try it… it may work, for all I know. With 2 stands defined to be a unit, you can have a one-step reduction before a unit is completely eliminated.
Many board games employ the one-step reduction technique, but I note that most of the board games that do use this system load up the hex map with a huge number of units, so that a loss of a single unit is not that catastrophic in terms of its effect on the battle outcome.
And so, for now, I’ll stick to my bookkeeping chores. End of digression.
Battle
Prior to the battle, I diced for each regiment on both sides, giving them one of four grades. At the top were the aggressive units, adding lots of points to their morale and combat dice tosses. Below them were the gung-ho units, then the regular units, and finally, the doo-doo units, which actually subtracted from their capabilities.
Some rules authors would shy away from describing these low ranking units as ‘doo-doo’, using such terms as ‘levies’ or ‘militia’… but I say, let’s not mince words… Let’s call a spade a spade.
At Puy, the French overran the defending British forces in rapid fashion, and for this, I have to give thanks to my dicing efforts. The two British brigades on the field had a total of 12 units, and of these, 6 of them, half the total, turned out to be doo-doos. Truly the dregs of society.
On my unit status table, there was a 25 percent chance that a regiment would turn out to be aggressive in nature, and only a 10 percent chance that a doo-doo unit would pop up… which makes the dicing results that much more surprising. Only 2 of 13 French regiments were of the doo-doo persuasion.
As in most of my solo presentations, when I want to be restricted in my choice of moving and firing units, I used a card-governed sequence. The sides switched initiatives each card draw… first the British force was the Active Side (AS), with the French the Non-Active Side (NAS), and then, for the next card draw, the French were the AS. There were 6 cards in all.
Each card listed several functions for both AS and NAS. For example, two of the cards stated:
| Card #1 | Card #2 |
|---|---|
| 1. AS moves all but 2 units | 1. AS moves all units |
| 2. NAS fires all units but 1 | 2. NAS fires all units |
| 3. NAS cavalry will move | 3. NAS cavalry will not move |
| 4. AS will fire 3 units | 4. AS will fire 1 unit |
| 5. AS will rally its troops | 5. AS will not rally its troops |
The card, therefore, listed 5 functions to be carried out. If contact between opposing stands occurred on Phases #1 or #3, resolution of close combat was determined after all 5 functions had been completed.
When I first outlined the rules, I had thought that the only distance weapons would be the artillery, and that I didn’t need a musket fire capability… the effect of musket fire, with 2 stands representing an entire regiment, would be subsumed in the combat procedures. But after going through a couple of sequence cards to look at how the system played, I decided that, without musket fire, the procedures weren’t that exciting in that there weren’t that many interactions between the units… in typical board game fashion, you had to wait until one regiment charged another and the two came into contact. And so I tossed in a small arms fire capability for the regiments.
Muskets fired with a range of distance of 5 inches, artillery fired for 10 inches. The Probability of Hit (POH) for the muskets was 25 percent per stand firing… the 2-stand regiment thus had a POH of 50 percent. The artillery POH was 40 percent.
A target that was hit did not take a morale test… instead, it took a reaction test, one which had 5 possible outcomes:
- DICE THROW REACTION
01 to 10 Fall back 10 inches
11 to 25 Hold position
26 to 50 Hold and fire
51 to 75 Move 5 inches & fire
76 to 100 Advance 10 inches, without firing
Note that high tosses produce the more aggressive responses. And so, to the percentage dice toss, you’d add a factor relating to the unit status. An aggressive unit would add +15 to the dice throw, while, at the other end of the scale, a doo-doo unit would subtract 5 from the throw.
French General Knarp immediately, when he was the active side, had his units attempt to enter the fortress grounds. Infantry moved 10 inches when active, cavalry moved 15. It took only the draw of 2 French sequence cards to get Knarp’s units to the base of the fortress walls.
Then It was Put-Up-a-Ladder Time
At first, Knarp’s regiments balked at scaling the walls… it took a dice throw of 70 percent or less to place a ladder, and once placed, another 70 percent toss permitted a unit to climb up and engage the defenders.
Around the fifth French sequence card, however, 3 of Knarp’s 5 French regiments successfully scaled the walls of Puy, successfully traded fire with the defenders, successfully passed their reaction tests, and successfully threw back the defending British regiments.
As noted on the reaction chart given above, low numbers on the reaction test chart require that a unit fall back. And it was the British regiments that flubbed their tests and fell back… in particular, the doo-doo units, since their dice throw modifier subtracted from the reaction dice throw, bringing the total into the fall-back zone.
Outside the fortress, the British brigade moving up to help out the fortress’ defenders was also given short shrift by the French. Many melees, all of which the French won. A result of losing a melee was that one of the two regimental stands was immediately placed in the off-board rally zone. Note on the examples of sequence cards that I gave, the last phase listed may be a rally phase for the Active Side. If a rally phase is indicated on the card, then every stand in the rally zone has a 60 percent chance of rejoining its unit. If it fails the test, it’s destroyed.
Digression
Recently, I discussed the rally zone concept with Bob Wiltrout. From our conversation, it appeared that Bob was of the persuasion that if a unit routed or fell back, you should leave it on the table… move the unit back, tip the stands over on their sides to show they were temporarily out of the fight, and when they recovered, stand them up again.
Bob wanted to know what it was that I was representing by whisking a unit, or part of a unit, off-board when it failed a morale test. I explained that the unit, or part of it, was temporarily demoralized, incapable of fighting, and instead of cluttering up the table with useless troops, I simply wanted to get them out of the way by placing them in the off-table rally zone.
And then Bob came up with the "stopper:" Your rallied stands immediately rejoin their parent unit. Have you done any research, or do you have any statistics, showing how frequent it was that a rallied group of men would quickly rejoin their parent unit? Perhaps when they eventually showed up, the rallied portion would be way back in the field, far behind the parent unit.
As I said, this was a "stopper." No, I answered (to my utter embarrassment, tears streaming from my eyes), I had never researched the distance on the battle field between a recovering group of men and their parent unit. No, I had no idea of how soon a recovered group would come back into line. How could I have forgotten to do so elementary a bit of research?
In our wargame discussions, Bob always comes up with an unanswerable "stopper." Most of the time, I ignore them… after all, he loves PIQUET, and if you truly want to find unanswerable, inexplicable questions concerning a set of rules, look no further than PIQUET. End of digression.
Back now to the French attack on Puy. General Knarp’s people were firmly in command of the fortress grounds when I stopped the slaughter.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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