Some time ago, Otto gave me a version of his OH GOD! rules (OG), which, the cover says, are good for battles “… from a few years after creation to February 21, 1916”. And what happened in February of 1916 to cause Otto to cut off his rules at that moment in time? The beginning of the battle of Verdun, that’s what, a battle which lasted until December of that year. With or without Verdun, the time period of OG bites off a fairly large portion on which to chew, and OG’s fire tables contain factors stretching from ‘ancient missile troops’ to ‘longbows’ to ‘medium artillery after 1870’ to ‘minefields’. According to the OG guidelines, Fred Haub and I each set out 24 units, or regiments. The group of regiments was defined as an ‘army’ and consisted of 5 general officers 6 foot regiments 2 shot regiments 3 heavy cavalry regiments 3 light cavalry regiments 1 regiment of dragoons (horse archers) 2 heavy guns 2 light guns 5 wagons This totaled 24 stands (plus the officers), since each unit consisted of a single stand. There’s no need to have multiple stand units, since a unit, when it fires, or engages in melee, or tests morale, does so as a single entity, i.e., one die roll tells all for the unit as a whole. And, as you can tell by the title, a 6-sided die is always used. Fred and I chose a renaissance atmosphere for this first test, and so our armies were composed of 25mm pikemen and arquebusiers and armored gendarmes and a couple of bombards, etc. I had on hand two versions of OG. The first version, V1, predated the second, V2, by, perhaps, 5 years. In the first, V1, Otto described movement and firing in terms of ‘hexes’… whenever he presents a game at a convention, he always sets out a colorful field of 12-inch hexes, and units move and fire according to the restrictions the hexes put on them. Infantry could move a basic distance of one hex, cavalry could move two, and the stacking limit was a maximum of 3 units per hex. And then, in V2, Otto ‘dehexed’ the game… the hexes were gone and units moved and fired in increments of 8 inches. It seemed to me that Otto was getting ready to go public with OG, and so he made the game more acceptable to the wargaming world by reverting to a standard measurement system. Fred and I stuck to V1’s area movement system. We used, not hexes, but a field of randomly drawn contiguous areas, wherein a maximum of 3 units (3 stands of 25mm troops) could be placed in a single area. To me, half of OG’s entertainment value involved its use of the hex system, and to use the ordinary, everyday, namby-pamby movement system employed by every run-of-the-mill rules writer, eliminated a lot of the novelty of the gaming system. Note in the above army listing, that each side has 5 generals. The generals are pretty important guys… for example, in order to move, a unit must ‘pass’ its Move Number (MN) test. The MN is usually 3, and so the unit must toss a 1, 2 or 3 on a 6-sided die to get going. This happens, statistically speaking, only 50 percent of the time. And so to ‘prompt’ the unit, a general can add his own points to increase the MN, making it easier to get the unit underway. The points of a general can range from 1 to 5… note that a ‘5’ general is a person to cherish. But here’s the big “however”… when a general prompts a unit, there’s a chance he falls down, and is permanently out of the game. A roll of 6 takes him out of action. Fred and I played some 7 full bounds, and by that time, my overworked general staff was down to 2 officer figures. OG’s sequence for the full bound runs like this: 1. The player with initiative selects a card from a huge deck (over 100 cards) of ‘events’, containing items such as “2 generals may return to the field”, or “all the abilities of all units on a side will increase by 1 for the turn”, or “side with initiative may move one opposing unit”, and so on. In thumbing through the event deck, I noted 2 ‘silver bullet’ cards… these, in effect, stated “the side with initiative has won, and the battle is over”. I thought this rather much… obviously a card to be ignored. 2. The player then moves and fires all his units, prompting them as necessary. Combat is then resolved. The player can make ‘long moves’… a carryover from the good old Scruby days, permitting a unit to zip anywhere on the field (subject to certain restrictions such as enemy fire) and contact an enemy unit. During our game, Fred’s heavy cavalry tried a long move, attempting to zero in on one of my lighter units. When the cavalry was 4 areas away from my gun, within range… BOOM!… the gun stopped the cavalry in its tracks. 3. The non-initiative player then moves his troops and combat is resolved. Here, the non-initiative player cannot make any long moves. Note that the above is a typical board-game sequence… first, the active side moves and fires and contacts the opposition and combat is resolved. Then, the other side does the same thing. Note that since the moving side can act with impunity and perform a “gotcha” or two, with no fear of reprisal or response on the part of the opposition, initiative is a good thing to have. And there does exist a ploy whereby the side with initiative can maintain the initiative. Each side has a deck of 6 cards, numbered from 1 to 6. The player draws a card, and if a die roll is equal to or below the number on the card, he maintains the initiative. Initially, I used up all my high numbers in trying to maintain initiative, attempting to continually get the jump on Fred, but eventually, I ran out of cars. Note in the army listing that each side is given 5 wagons. At the beginning of the battle, not knowing what the significance of the wagons were, I placed all 5 of them way over on my left flank, out of harms way. And then I discovered these were ammunition wagons, necessary for resupply. When a cannon fired, if it tossed a 6, it was out of ammo, and needed a wagon close by to bring up more bullets. Fortunately for me, none of my guns ever tossed a 6… while Fred’s cannoneers constantly ran out of supply, and had to look to their wagons. OG’s method of melee resolution was unique. First, the attacking stand had to be prompted to close. Then the defending stand did the same to hold its position. In this manner, there could be 2 outcomes… either the defender held successfully, or it wanted to run. There were a series of charts which compared the dispositions of the 2 contending stands. For example, if my heavy cavalry closed in on Fred’s arquebusiers, and the arquebusiers failed their test and decided to run, we had the following chart: For the attacking cavalry Toss a 1: Exploit, which means get a bonus charge on another unit Toss a 2: Exploit Toss a 3: Exploit Toss a 4: Pursue, which means follow defeated unit Toss a 5: Pursue, but cavalry is disorganized Toss a 6: Cavalry is disorganized, falls back 1 area. For the defending infantry Toss a 1: Unit is disorganized, falls back 1 area Toss a 2: Unit is disorganized, falls back 2 areas Toss a 3: Unit is broken, falls back 2 areas Toss a 4: Unit is broken, falls back 3 areas Toss a 5: Unit is annihilated Toss a 6: Unit is annihilated There were 8 similar charts, stemming from the results of cavalry-versus-cavalry encounters, infantry-versus-infantry, and infantry-versus cavalry. The charts were neat… they told all. I’m not a ‘chart person’, but I’ll make an exception in OG’s case. But here’s what Fred and I didn’t like about the melee resolution procedure. If infantry held against a cavalry charge, i.e., passed its morale test, there was no difference in the outcome whether the infantry unit was one of pikes or regular foot, or rotten arquebusiers. In other words, regardless of the type of infantry, they used the same chart, and behaved the same. Somewhere in the system, there should have been provision for the fact that when pikes held against cavalry, the results should have been different than if arquebusiers held their ground. And the melee procedure gave no modifiers for holding high ground, or defending under cover, or if heavy cavalry zeroed in on lighter cavalry. A melee was a melee was a melee. Fred and I found this puzzling, since our army lists had specifically required light and heavy cavalry, and we found no difference in the behavior of the two. Fred and I spent an entertaining 3 hours on OG. With only 24 stands per side, the action was quick. Units can dash all over the place… the only ‘command and control’ function was to have a general available to prompt a unit. And even this wasn’t a requirement, since by tossing under its MN, a unit could be off and on its own. In effect, OG, with its small number of stands, its lack of specific brigade formations, the absence of the need to maintain group integrity, and its units zipping all over the field, resembled a skirmish game. I’m not sure that’s what Otto wants, but that’s what he’s got. 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