Tony Figlia placed his 15mm English Civil War (ECW) figures on the table in a battle pitting Prince Rupert (me and Fred Haub) versus the King's forces (Tony). Some time ago, we had set up an encounter using the Canadian Wargamers Group ECW publication of FOR GOD, KING AND COUNTRY (FG), authored by Bruce McFarlane, and published in 1998. Although the rules booklet has over 60 pages in it, only 6 are devoted to the rules themselves… the rest of the booklet contains historical data and battle scenarios. We found that 6 pages were not enough to really explain the nitty-gritty of what was going on. Disappointed, we dropped FG. Tony took it upon himself to re-read and try to understand the procedures, enough to present a second game. Here are some highlights of the rules system, interpreted by Tony. (a) Movement and firing is performed via a deck of action cards. Our Parliamentary deck had 10 cards in it, an assortment of 1 action, 2 action, and 3 action cards. If your forces move, then each action permits you to advance a certain distance… foot advance 4 inches per action, medium cavalry move 7 inches per action, and so on. Each action also permits you to fire a volley. Muskets have a range of 6 inches, and each stand that fires contributes 10 fire points per volley. With a 3-stand musket unit, firing 2 volleys, the probability of hit (POH) becomes… 3-stands x 10 points per base x 2 volleys… or a total POH of 60 percent. There are several types of cannon… gallopers and sakers and culverins, etc., and each has its own firing parameters. (b) In melee, a unit must have enough movement actions after it moves to actually commence the melee. For example, a heavy cavalry unit moves at a rate of 5 inches per action. If it had 2 actions and was 10 inches away from its target, it would move up into apparent contact, but the melee would not commence, since the cavalry had used all its actions solely to move, and had none left over to begin the combat. If the heavy cavalry was only 3 inches from its targeted unit, it would use the first action to move into contact, and the second one to start the combat. (c) In combat, each stand has a value (pike have 4 points per base, Cuirassiers have 6 per base, medium cavalry have 4 per base). If the cavalry plow into the pikes, 2 points are taken off the cavalry's points. Get the total number of unit combat points, multiply by a 10-sided die, and the higher product is the winner. As an example, 3 medium cavalry stands, starting at 4 points each, charge 3 stands of pike. The cavalry are reduced to 2 points per base, a total of 6 points for the 3 bases. The pike's total is 4 x 3, or 12 points. Each unit tosses its die, the cavalry multiplying by 6, the pike by 12. With odds of 2-to-1 here, the pike should win. Then you look at the difference in the products of both sides. If the pike win by less than 33 points, the cavlry loses one stand. If they win by over 34 points, the cavalry loses 2 stands… and so on. The winner always loses one stand in the combat, thus preventing the winning unit from going on and on and on. d. There didn't seem to be any provision for defensive fire prior to melee. If the attacking unit had sufficient actions to both contact and commence the combat, that was it. In all, FG proved a fairly simple and enjoyable game. Our unit strengths were purposely made small to speed up play. Most units had 3 stands, while the largest unit on the field was a 6 stand pike-an-musket regiment. After about an hour of play, both forces were pretty much decimated. This second outing proved much more pleasureable than the first. After the FG game, we set up an area game of the American Revolutionary War. I had discovered a box of Scruby 30mm ARW figures in the back of a closet and all painted and ready to go They had been hiding there for at least 10 years. "OK, guys, it's time to earn your keep!" I drew a ping-pong table-size map of the east coast, showing the colonies stretching from Georgia in the south to Canada in the north. I drew in areas measuring about 3-inches by 3-inches, sufficient to hold a single stand of troops. The troop stand size was 2-by-2, and there were 2 men on each stand. The pose of each man denoted the strength of the stand (let's call a stand a 'regiment'): a. A man with a musket on his shoulder worth 5 combat points b. A man with musket carried at the port worth 4 combat points c. A man with his musket stock grtounded worth 3 combat points This way, simply by looking at the men on a stand, you could immediately assess their combat value. There's another article in this issue which describes the combat procedures. In essence, each combat point produces a combat stand of troops (I used 15mm stands) and therefore you can get up to 10 stands if there are two men, each with his musket on his shoulder. If you're defending a city, we'll add 3 stands to your group. Take your allotment of stands, and divided them into two groups and one in the front rank, the remainder in reserve. Each side simultaneously strikes at the other in two consecutive combat rounds. a. In the first round, reserves don't strike and the front line troops each contribute 30 strike points. They strike in pairs, hence the pair gets a 60 percent chance to cause a casualty. Front line casualties are immediately removed and won't get to participate in the second round. b. (1) In the second round, the surviving front line troops (somewhat exhausted) each strike, at 20 percent per stand. Thus a pair has a 40 percent chance to hit. (2) Now the reserve stands strike, each with 40 points. The pairs each give a whopping 80 percent chance to hit. c. Victory is assessed by the number of casualties. If you wipe everyone out, this was defined as a 'major victory' and you get a chance to raise a militia (American) or Tory (British) unit. In our game, the Brtish forces came down from Canada and quickly captured Fort Ticonderoga. Then they struck from Boston, capturing Massachusetts. Next it was New York. Then it was Trenton. Then Tarleton attacked and won in North Carolina. BANG! POW! BOOM! There were some 7 or 8 'major British victories' in a row, each one producing a Tory stand of troops. The field was quickly filling with Loyalist Tory units. The crowning blow to the American cause was when George Washington himself (worth 10 combat points), attacked General Howe in Philadelphia. Alas! for Unca George and he was driven back. There was lots of discussion about the sequence and how many turns comprised a 'season'? and when could troops be raised? and could the British bring reinforcement in by sea? and when did the French arrive? An interesting game which kept us busy for some 2 hours, what with continual changes, up-dates and revisions. I like this type of game. There are few stands on the field (about 15 to 20 per side) and the only time you get to see a lot of stands is when an encounter occurs and we set up the 15mm combat stands on a separate 'battle board'. Don Bailey's STURM was next. A WW II effort in which, when certain events happen (unit is fired upon, or unit sees enemy move within 15 inches, etc.) the unit gets to respond by drawing a card from the Reaction Deck which specifies a particular reaction. The reacting unit may fire back, it may withdraw, or it may do nothing. There are 20 cards in the Reaction Deck which provides a wide variety of response. I defended a couple of farm house with about 9 units. Coming to take my farm houses from me were some 15 stands (units) of enemy troops. A single stand represents a 'unit', and STURM is careful not to define the unit size and it could be a squad, a company, a battalion and whatever scale game you wish to play. All troops are graded in three classes. Green A total of 2 hits destroys this unit Veteran A total of 3 hits destroys this Crack A total of 4 hits destroys this It would appear that the units were qute 'brittle', requiring a maximum of 4 hits to wipe them out. It would appear that the units were qute 'brittle', requiring a maximum of 4 hits to wipe them out. But somewhere in the sequence was a phase which would permit you to restore a point or two to your units, in effect, bringing up reinforcements. Each weapon was given a 'Standard Range' (SR). For example, the SR for a rifle unit was 10 inches. What is nice about this is that the SR figure completely defines the firing weapon's capability. A weapon's total range had 3 sectors in it, as diagrammed below: Firing Unit: ...90%...(1/2 SR)....70%....(SR)....30%....(2SR) Looking at the above chart for a rifle unit, you'll see that up close (closer than half the SR, or 5 inches), the unit has a 90 percent chance to hit. From half the SR (5 inches) to the SR (10 inches), the probability of hit is now 70 percent. Over the SR (beyond 10 inches and up to 20), the probability of hit drops to 30 percent. And so, whether the wepon had an SR of 15 inches or of 40 inches, reference to the above chart immedately produces its effectiveness. When units were firing at each other, the reaction sequence sometimes produced an interesting fire-fight. For example, if infantry unit X fired on Y, then, whether or not Y was hit, it had to react. Draw a card for Y and it might fire back. But now, since X being fired upon, it, too, drew a card. And it might fire again. This interchange could keep on until one of the opposing units had reacted 3 times. With 3 consecutive reactions under its belt, the unit was termed 'exhausted', and if hit again, would, instead of drawing a fourth card, immediately fall back. There was a limit, therefore, to the number of reactions that could take place. Most of the time, due to the statistics of the Reaction Deck, units, after trading a shot or two, would simply fall back out of range. Reactions are mandatory and even if the reaction card states that the unit is to do a "dumb thing", it's still has to perform as required. For example, when a tank fired upon an infantry unit, and the infantry's card stated that the infantry's reaction was to advance 5 inches forward and although, admittedly, this is truly a "dumb thing" and off went the infantry unit on its mission of glory. I e-mailed Don about this "dumb thing" business and he's looking into it. STURM is now centered on single-stand units., but it could easily upgraded to multi-stand play. Back to PW Review January 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