The Twin Peaks mentioned in the title were some 4 feet apart, one on the east side of the field, one on the west. They were occupied by a British force of 3 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry divisions, run by Tony Figlia. My French forces were slightly larger than those of the British… the total count of the French included 12 brigades in all, broken down into 3 divisions. A brigade was composed of anywhere from 2 to 5 stands, and these brigades were grouped into the divisions, from 2 to 4 brigades per division. In all the Napoleonic games I’ve ever put on, whether they are 15mm or 25mm or 30mm, rarely do I group the stands into neat, fixed, sets, i.e., every brigade consists of exactly 4-stands and every 3 sets of 4-stands is defined to be a division. I like the randomness of having different size units on the field…something for the commander to think about. Tony’s British troops were somewhat spread out, and I thought that, first, I’d run straight up the middle of the field with my 3rd Division (4 brigades), smash his small reserve division (only 2 brigades), and then turn either left or right, depending upon the flow of the battle. To reinforce this effort, I sent out a cavalry division in an all-out charge up the middle to sweep away his guns. The half-bound sequence of 8 phases gave each side plenty of opportunities to fire away and bash the opposition. These 8 phases were: (1) The Active Side (AS) moves or fires. He’s given a certain number of ‘actions’ (from 2 to 4) and can devote any of them to movement or firing. In this description, assume that my French troops were active, and they moved up for 3 actions (each action permitted a 5-inch move). On the first phase of the game, therefore, my cavalry, the dreaded Red Lancers, took off. (2) The second phase permitted the Non-Active Side (NAS) to fire with all his units. Each unit was given 2 volleys. Needless to say, there were a lot of musket and cannon balls directed at the Red Lancers. a. The firing procedure consisted of multiplying 3 factors together… the number of men (N) firing, the number of volleys (V), and a third factor which varied with the type of target… x2 if the target was in the open, and x1 if the target was in cover. b. Thus, if a brigade of 12 men fired for 2 volleys at the Red Lancers, the Lancers would note down on their data sheet… 12 men x 2 volleys x 2 for target in the open, a total of 48 points. c. As other units opened up on the Lancers, they began to take lots of casualty points. When the fire phase ended, all units that had recorded 60 or more loss points on their sheets took a morale test. The Lancers passed, with an 80 percent morale level. (3) The third phase of the sequence permitted the NAS to pound away even more… this time, he used his Reaction Points (RP). He had around 20 RP, and he could give an order to a specific brigade by first, allocating some of his RP to the unit, and second, tossing dice to see if the order arrived (80% chance of success). Tony took full advantage of his RP allotment, and blazed away. After the NAS uses his RP, the AS gets to react accordingly, and so both sides try to react to each other’s actions. (4) This was a melee phase for units in contact. (5) On this phase, the NAS cavalry received a bonus ride forward of 2 actions. (6) Once again, we have a reaction phase, in which both sides use their RP. Once again, both sides get to use their RP, and they smash away at one another. (7) Resolve melee (8) Administration. In this last phase, all losses would be recorded, and the sides would receive new RP If you examine the sequence, you’ll see that Phases (1), (2) and (3) form a subset of the sequence, in which, after the AS moves on Phase (1), the sides respond, trying to weaken each other in the coming melee phase (4). Next, Phases (5) and (6) form another pre-melee subset which is activated by the NAS cavalry moving. For example, one of Tony’s British cavalry units charged one of my brigades on Phase (5). The infantry brigade was caught in column of march… bad vibes for the infantry. But on Phase (6), I devoted a couple of RP to the unfortunate unit, and sent it an order and saw it successfully form square. Note that the order didn’t arrive automatically… there was an 80 percent chance of success. And now, since Tony saw the infantry respond to his cavalry charge by forming square, he, too, devoted a couple of RP toward sending the cavalry an order to pull back. And so the melee never took place. What completely spoiled my superior war plan of going straight up the middle was that my units in the center of the field never got started. When it came time to issue them orders via my RP allocations, they failed the 80 percent test, and the orders never arrived, or they decided not to enter a woods in mid-field (70 percent chance to pass through the briars and brambles), or, when fired upon, they failed their morale tests and fell back. I had depended upon RP usage to have these brigades plow through, thinking that with a mere 20 percent chance of failure, most of my RP orders would be followed out. But no, there seemed to be a general reluctance on the part of all troops to carry out my orders. I’ve never failed so many 80 percent tosses. And since my troops were hung up in mid-field, they became targets of opportunity for Tony’s British, and kept on accumulating loss points. Note that on Phase (8) of the sequence is an administration phase, and it’s during this phase, each half-bound, that all the temporary loss points that the units have accumulated translate into true casualties. Each brigade refers to the following table: 01 to 33 Each accumulation of 100 points loses 1 Efficiency Level 34 to 66 Each accumulation of 70 points loses 2 Efficiency Levels 67 to 100 Each accumulation of 50 points loses 3 Efficiency Levels Efficiency Levels are accordingly crossed out, and the unit carries the remainder until the next loss points check on the next half-bound. As an example, the dreaded Red Lancers, when they checked on the above table, had a total of around 230 points… they tossed very high, and so they lost an Efficiency Level for each 50 points. They immediately crossed out 4 Efficiency Levels, and carried a remainder of 30 points. But the Lancers had another problem, for a loss of 4 Efficiency Levels triggers a ‘death and destruction’ test. When a unit loses its 4th Level, there’s a 25 percent chance it flees the field. At a loss of 5 Levels, there’s a 50 percent chance the unit is destroyed… and so on. Which means you never know quite when your unit is going to go. Having lost 4 Levels, the dreaded Red Lancers tested… they had a 25 percent chance of being totally destroyed… and Alas!… they were dreaded no more. Off they ran, back to Paris, telling of their wondrous feats on the field of battle. Note that with a very favorable toss on the conversion table on the preceding page, they’d have only lost 2 Efficiency Levels and never have even needed to take the ‘death and destruction’ test. There were two key towns on the field, and my troops failed several times to successfully charge in (70 percent chance). Each failure meant that the unit was stuck in the open, and resulted in an additional accumulation of loss points, as the British defense poured it on. To me, the heart of the game centered in the two reaction phases, Phases (3) and (6). The RP produced a type of ‘local initiative’, permitting a unit to respond to present danger. Perhaps I should have said ‘permitting a unit to attempt to respond to danger’, since nothing was automatic… there was always the chance that an order would not arrive. I think I won only a single melee out of 5 during the battle. By the time I got my troops going, they had accumulated lots of Efficiency Level losses, and each Level lost counted against them in combat. As an example, one of not-so-efficient units, the 15th Brigade, charged into a town, held by 2 small British brigades, one of 12 men, the other of 6 men. My unit, the 15th was fairly large, consisting of 24 men, outnumbering both British defending units. But the 15th had accumulated a loss of 3 Efficiency Levels, and when the British added their combat point totals, they received 18 combat points contributed be the men in the units 60 combat points 20 for each Level lost by the 15th 20 combat points for defending a town My own unit had a rotten total of 24 points, one point for every man in the unit. The British outnumbered my total by 98-24, or 64 points. We each added a percentage dice throw, and the high total won. With a 64 point bias, the British force easily won, and back went the 15th . Unfortunately, when they lost, they also recorded another 90 loss point accumulation on their data sheet, and this showed up on the next damage assessment phase, when they tossed on the conversion chart. And so the battle went on Twin Peaks. Nothing for which I could approach Napoleon and claim my Marshal’s Baton. Back to PW Review July 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