In a previous issue, I spoke of a ‘modern’ solo campaign I was conducting to keep me busy on rainy days. Ishtar is an island, beset upon by rebels who call themselves the Brotherhood Of Love (BOL). Right there, you can tell these are bad guys. A large map of Ishtar hangs on my wall… the island has 44 regions, or sectors, and each campaign turn, I toss percentage dice which will tell me in which sector the BOL will strike next. Normally, each BOL force has 9 stands in it, but with the 44 sector limitation, if I toss a number above 44, this means that the next BOL force to strike will be reinforced by one additional stand. And another toss above 44 produces a second reinforcement stand, and so on. In effect, by delaying and not striking, the BOL units are building up their strength. Delays cause trouble for the Local Government (LG) units. Each of their forces start out with 10 stands, so that after several delays in a row, they know that the BOL force they will next encounter will outnumber them. But there is a ray of hope for the LG. The BOL only has 10 strike forces (call them ‘brigades’), and I record their losses in each battle. For example, BOL Brigade G first struck in Sector 5, and was defeated. When I diced again to see which BOL force struck next… there was G again, this time in Sector 27! Brigade G was again defeated, and at the end of the second battle, it retired with only about 6 of its original 9 stands left. I assume that the government has enough assets to continually replace its losses, hence LG brigades always enter the field with a full 10 stands. After 3 battles, the score was LG:2, BOL:1 The fourth campaign battle occurred in Sector 40… here, BOL Brigade A took over the sector, freeing the people and spreading the cry of freedom. The map on the next page shows that Sector 40 borders on the ocean, and when I diced to see the distribution of the LG units entering the sector, half of the LG units landed on the beach, and the other half came onto the field via the Simgrad Road, from the western edge. In like fashion, dicing for the placement of the BOL units, I discovered that they were clustered around, and in, the North Woods. The 3 towns were very lightly defended. As I’ve stated before, to me, the campaign is an opportunity to try out various sets of rules. Each of the first 3 battles used different sets, and there was yet another set for this one! The rules I ginned up for this solo effort evolved from reading a review of the boardgame TIGERS IN THE MIST (TITM), a big tank-versus-tank affair. The review was not quite that clear, but TITM apparently used a number of impulses during the turn, and each time a unit was activated during an impulse, it received a fatigue marker. My variation of the TITM sequence used 3 impulses… call them phases… during the bound. On each phase, I did the following: a. I diced to see which was the Active Side, LG or BOL b. The Active Side then moved all its units 10 inches and fired c. The Non-Active Side then moved and fired. d. Close assault was resolved This sequence was repeated 3 times during the bound. Each time a unit participated by moving or fired during any of the actions, I immediately recorded a fatigue marker on its data sheet. When a unit was hit during the combat sequences, it received a casualty figure as a marker, but the effect of the markers was not assessed until the very end of the bound, when all 3 phases were completed. At that time, I referred to the following table: 01 to 33 Each casualty figure produces 4 Loss Points 34 to 66 Each casualty figure produces 5 Loss Points 67 to 100 Each casualty figure produces 6 Loss Points Each loss of 10 Loss Points reduced the unit by one Efficiency Level, and each type of unit had a different number of Efficiency Levels to be crossed out before it was destroyed. Infantry and Anti-tank 4 Efficiency Levels Light tank 4 Medium tank 5 Heavy tank 6 Sector 40 In the battle for Sector 40, neither the Brigade A of the BOL nor the LG brigade had any heavy tanks… the LG possessed 3 medium tanks and the BOL had 2 of them. The three towns on the field were quickly overrun, and the BOL units fell back to the area around the North Woods. Almost. The exception was the 27th Company of the defending BOL brigade. This 1-stand unit hung around in the West Woods taking pot shots at the LG forces. It traded fire with several LG units, and fought off 2 different close assaults… these little guys refused to budge! Each time the 27th moved or fired, I noted a fatigue marker on its data sheet, and these came into play when close assault was resolved. For example, the 27th, when charged by the LG, had the following combat points +10 For being an infantry stand +20 The 27th received +10 for each of the 2 casualty markers on the charging unit. The 27th had fired twice at the unit and been successful. -35 The 27th received -5 points for each of its 7 fatigue markers When summed, this gave the 27th a wonderful total of -5 Combat Points, which were then added to a percentage dice throw. The opposing LG unit had a much larger base number… it received points for 2 stands, for the casualty figures on the 27th, and so on. But the percentage dice throw of the 27th, despite its abysmally low -5 total, was sufficient to throw back the opposition. Energized by the 27th, this success was followed up by the BOL on the rest of the field. By the end of the 4th Bound (12 sets of phases), both sides had lost one medium tank, but the deciding factor (to me) was the fact that of 5 LG infantry companies that had come on the field, 3 of them had been wiped out. The LG commander had 2 tanks left to the BOL’s one, but he was outnumbered in infantry, 6 companies to 2. While 3 of his own infantry units had been destroyed, he had taken out none of the BOL infantry. Time to withdraw. The rules required a bit o’ data keeping: First, the fatigue points… in truth, these were a pain, but they were interesting because of the effect they had on close assault. And there was an end-of-bound phase during which units could remove some of their markers. Second, I instituted a number of Fire Coordination Points (FCP). If an officer was within 5 inches of two of his units, he could, by using an FCP, have them fire at the same target. If both of the firing units were successful, the target received an additional casualty figure. Third, the casualty evaluation phase… not overly burdensome. And this procedure didn’t come too frequently… it came only after three full phases had been gone through, when I transferred casualty figures into the loss of Efficiency Levels. For my purposes, the rules seemed to be fairly logical, and the game went fast. The battle was played on one-half of the ping-pong table with my 25mm collection, and it took about 2 hours total. As far as the campaign goes, at present, the score is LG:2, BOL:2, and there’s more to come. 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