At HISTORICON, I sampled two interesting games. First, was Hasbro’s American Civil War boardgame BATTLE CRY (BC), a successor to Avalon Hill’s game of some 30 years ago. Second, I was introduced to WAR MASTER (WM), GDW’s current fantasy effort to win the 10mm market. I thought I’d attempt to fashion a game using the best of both games (‘best’, of course, is a relative term… in this context, it refers to my idea of the ploys that seemed worthwhile incorporating in a gaming system. And so, up popped MASTER BATTLE WAR CRY (MBWC), my own version of what should take place on the table top. If either Hasbro or GDW want to borrow my stuff… they’re welcome to it… but thus far, the phone hasn’t rung. On the table I placed a full size map composed of areas, each area around 6-inches by 6-inches. Not having an adequate supply of 10mm figures, I used my 15mm collection, defining an infantry brigade as having 5 stands (call each stand a regiment). A cavalry brigade had 3 regiments in it, while artillery was treated a wee bit differently. Each infantry brigade was defined to contain its own artillery batteries, and the question of how many batteries were available was decided by a dice throw: 01 to 33 3 batteries 34 to 66 2 batteries 67 to 10 No batteries A battery was a single 15mm artillery stand, and each time a brigade set up to fire, it diced on the above chart to find out how efficient the gunners were in unlimbering and getting ready to load their weapons. Note that a lousy (high) dice throw indicated that, for that particular firing phase, the crewmen just weren’t up to snuff, and artillery support wasn’t available. The map shows (a) three key locations… Rim Castle, Ritter and Buryville, and (b) the fact that the entire table-top territory is surrounded by water on three sides. I commanded the forces in the towns… in fact, initially, I commanded all the forces on the table. My opponent’s, Tony Figlia’s, objective was to take my towns, and to do this, he was assigned 12 brigades… 10 infantry and 2 cavalry. Seven of his infantry brigades he set ashore along the northern edge of the field, and the remaining 5 brigades, he set out on the eastern edge, directly heading west for Rim Castle. The 8 brigades of defenders didn’t know where the Figlian forces would appear, and so they were initially placed in an east-west arc in mid-field. As soon as the invading units were located, there was a mad rush to move the defending brigades that were located in the western half of the field to the eastern half to counter the Figlian flank attack. All units, on their movement phase, moved 2 areas. Cavalry were given a separate phase of their own, permitting them to advance another 2 areas. Four Figlian brigades approached Buryville, and commenced firing on the defenders. A brigade could fire for a distance of 2 areas… but of the 5 regiments (stands) within the brigade, only 3 were permitted to fire at any one time. Each firing stand was given 2 Hit Dice (HD… 10-sided dice), and a toss of 1 or 2 was a hit. In similar fashion, each artillery battery was given 2 HD, hence if 3 batteries showed up for the fire phase, the brigade would toss 12 dice… 6 for the infantry regiments, and 6 for the batteries. Alas! for the Figlians… for the first couple of firing phases, the Figlian artillery failed to show up at all… none of the brigades firing on the town appeared to have artillery support… Tony kept tossing very high percentage dice throws when it came to determining the number of batteries available. Perhaps there was a strike amongst all the artillery crewmen… they wanted higher wages and lighter cannon balls… in any event, each brigade firing on Buryville without artillery support was relegated to 6 measly dice, looking for 1’s and 2’s. The result was that the defenders of Buryville lasted much longer than they would normally have… and they soaked off a good portion of the attacker’s units. Each time a target was hit, it took a morale test, deducting 5 points for each hit from its basic morale level of 80 percent. When the target brigade accumulated 3 hits in a single fire phase, one regiment (stand) was removed. After the morale test, there was no “residue”… all hits were removed form the target. This was a carryover from WM. In retrospect, there should have been a separate phase to evaluate and assess the total hits taken by a target. Under the WM rules, stands are removed due to the accumulation of hits, but if there aren’t sufficient hits to knock off an entire stand, the target falls back a distance proportional to the total hits it took… and there’s no carryover, the hits simply disappear. This eases the record-keeping, of course, since there isn’t any, but at Buryville, the ability of the defending brigade, being continually blasted by 4 enemy units, each tossing 6 dice, to shrug off excess hits, just didn’t seem right. And so, in the Second Edition, there’ll be a slight change. As in all my current rules sets, the sides are given Reaction Points (RP), enabling them to respond to the opposing side’s maneuvers. The use of RP was limited… each side started with 10 RP, and every response action that was taken ‘cost’ 3 RP. Each half-bound, RP were replenished, but there were never enough RP around to do all the things the commanders wanted. Which is fine… the use of RP is a bonus for a side, and too much of a good thing can turn out to be horrible. The entire sequence for the half-bound consisted of 8 phases: 1. The Active Side (AS) moves all his troops 2 areas, and then has ‘opportunity fire’. He selects a unit and fires. Then a 10-sided die is rolled, and the number recorded. A second unit is selected and fires, then another 10-sided die is rolled… when the accumulated die rolls total more than 10, the ‘opportunity fire’ phase is at an end. 2. The Non-Active Side (NAS) fires all units. No restrictions here. 3. AS tosses percentage dice on the Regional Combat Chart, which lists 20 ‘good things’ for him, ranging from receiving additional reinforcements to advancing and firing. This is a sort of carryover from BC, wherein a deck of cards is used to determine which units may move and where. 4. NAS uses his RP 5. NAS cavalry move 2 areas 6. AS uses his RP 7. All melees are resolved 8. AS and NAS receive new RP allotments. Tony finally recovered from his lousy artillery dice throwing mode, and artillery batteries began showing up all over the place. With 2 batteries (4 HD) supporting an infantry brigade (6 HD), a total of 10 HD are tossed. There are lots of opportunities for getting 1’s and 2’s, and the defenders’ losses mounted. Note that in the sequence, a side may use his RP to fire in its response phase. For example, the Non-Active Side (NAS) gets to fire all of his units in Phase 2 of the sequence, and then, in Phase 4, he can use RP to fire some more. Tony tried to accumulate RP to blast away, but the saving factors for the defenders were (a) a major portion of the time, the supporting artillery didn’t show up, limiting his Hit Dice, (b) a unit can be given only 2 orders during a reaction phase, hence can fire a maximum of two times, and (c) in the reaction phases (Phases 4 and 5), not only must RP (3 of them) must be available to send an order, but there’s an 80 percent chance the order is successfully received. If the 80 percent dice throw is failed, the RP are wasted. Fred Haub arrived to help the defending forces out. During our response phases, we used quite a number of RP to have our units dash across the field from west to east to meet the flanking threat. Using our RP for movement, of course, limited our ability to fire back, but our priorities centered on zipping our troops to the trouble spots. Each brigade was given a special banner, a pennant. If the brigade was destroyed, the enemy collected the flaggies. This was another carryover from BC… whenever a unit was wiped out, the opposing unit would collect the enemy’s flag. And if a brigade was defeated in melee, here, too, there was a chance (50 percent) that the defeated unit lost its pennant. We played some 8 bounds, at the end of which the Figlian forces declared they were too pooped to carry the attack on. Too many stands destroyed, too many banners captured. Back to PW Review June 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