Star-date… 3500, in the year of the Imperium. Ben Pecson’s Imperium forces have landed on the planet Sgorblum, their mission is to destroy the dreaded Sgorblumian neuro-protonic transmission tower and facility. For years, the tower has transmitted a mysterious wave throughout the galaxy which has melted the mercury fillings in the teeth of the Imperium troops, spreading pain and tooth decay in every planet in the Imperium. Health care costs have risen so high that the Imperium High Command has finally decided to act. “General Pecson, destroy the tower!” Pecson’s troops landed on one corner of my ping-pong table, about 5 feet from the tower installation. Out of his ship came the strike force troops, all mounted on 2-inch by 2-inch stands. Each stand was termed a squad, and 3 squads made up an Assault Group. There happened to be 3 figures on each stand, but that was only because I couldn’t squeeze more than 3 of the fairly huge, klunky, sci-fi 25mm figures on a stand. The 3-squad Assault Groups (AG) each had their own data sheet, recording their Temporary Losses (TL) and Efficiency Levels. When an AG took damage from fire or in melee, its immediate TL were recorded. It also received a casualty, or damage, marker. Every time a unit took 30 points of TL damage, one Efficiency Level was crossed off. An AG’s loss of 8 Efficiency Levels destroyed a unit. The sequence used a “clock”… at the beginning of each half-bound, a 10-sided die was thrown, and the total ‘Elapsed Time’ accumulated from half-bound to half-bound. When the Elapsed Time total reached 10, this signaled the phase wherein all the existing casualty markers were converted into additional temporary losses. Note that there was, in effect, a double whammy placed on the units… first, when hit, they immediately recorded their hits in terms of TLs, and second, when the Elapsed Time total reached 10, they then received additional TL damage from the casualty figures they had been carrying around. Commanding the defending Sgorblumian forces was Joe Walukonis. At the outset, when the Imperium troops landed, Joe had only 2 units on the table… one AG situated in an outpost not too far from the landing zone, and one heavy weapon ‘tower gun’ mounted near the transmitting tower. All the rest of the defenders… about 6 other Assault Groups… were inside the facility As the Imperium troops moved up, Joe’s advanced AG opened fire. Each stand contributed 20 Fire Points, and the 3-stand unit thus had a probability of hit (POH) of 60 percent. The percentage dice throw was referred to the following hit chart: DICE THROW: RESULT Over POH Target loses 5 TP Less Than POH Target loses 10 TP Less Than 1/2 POH Target loses 20 TP Some of the units had heavy weapon capabilities. The basic POH for these stands was 40 percent, less than the total small arms POH of 60 percent. But the heavy weapons stands were all permitted to fire twice when the crews fired. Joe’s defending AG tossed low on its defensive fire throw, causing the target AG to lose an immediate 20 TP. The target AG was also given a damage marker, whose impact, in terms of additional TP, would be evaluated later in the sequence. I instituted no morale tests in the rules. Units, when hit, just kept coming forward. It was up to the commander to judge when to pull a unit back when it appeared to have taken more than its share of hits. Around the third bound, Joe did just that with his advanced AG… it had accumulated several damage markers on it and during one of its movement phases, it fell back to relative safety. On the movement phase, units could advance 10 inches. But I also gave them the capability of “jumping”, i.e., moving an additional distance. Each AG had 8 Jump Points, and by crossing out one of its points, it could advance an additional 15 inches. And, if the commander so deemed, it could use yet another Jump Point and zip up another 15 inches, a total of 40 inches in all… a real whiz-banger of a move distance. Each AG could use a maximum of 2 Jump Points per movement phase. To counter the ‘jump’ capability, I stole a ploy from a science-fiction set of rules by Don Bailey. Don’s units also had ‘jump’ capabilities, and his men were limited by their power pack demands. But Don decreed that when a unit ‘jumped’, and ‘leaped forward’ into the air, it became an inviting target to the enemy, and the opposition could get a freebee shot at it while it whizzed by overhead. I thought this was well worth implementing in the rules. To my unhappiness, however, neither Ben’s nor Joe’s troops took full advantage of their jumping attributes. I had thought that the Imperium AGs, trying to get to the tower facility as soon as possible, would throw caution to the winds and jump and keep on jumping, until the tower was immersed in Imperium troops. Not so. Ben’s units kept slogging along on the ground and fighting their way forward at their normal rate of 10-inches per movement phase. And Joe’s one use of the jump capabilities occurred when he wanted to withdraw a unit beyond the enemy’s line of sight. Finally… around Bound #6, Ben ordered one of his Imperial AGs to jump! The unit was some 20 inches from the tower, and the jump easily took it to the roof of the building. But he didn’t back up the unit by ordering another unit to support the first. In all Simon rules systems, this is a horrible no-no, for in all my melee sequences I always permit the units in combat to call on a ‘nearby’ (within 10 inches) unit for support. Joe’s response was to immediately have one of his own units climb to the roof to counter the Imperium AG. All that Ben’s AG had to do to destroy the tower was to ‘place explosives’, back off during its next movement phase, and BOOM!…there was an 80 percent chance the tower would fall. Combat Technique And so we had a combat on the roof of the facility. For this phase, I borrowed a technique from the old, old Milton Bradley (MB) game, DOGFIGHT. Here, the MB method of deciding combat was to give the sides a number of cards, on each of which was a number from 1-to-5. The better pilots received more cards than the lousy ones. Each side would then select, I think, 3 of the cards in its hand. Each card would then be displayed simultaneously with that of the enemy and the higher number won the round. Now back to the roof of the tower facility. Here, too, I assigned a number of cards to each side in combat. There were 18 cards in the deck and they were numbered from 2-to-5 (there were five ‘2’s’ and five ‘3’s’, etc. The combatants ordered their cards as desired, and each played its top card. The higher number won the round. The winner of the combat was the side which first won 3 rounds. And for every round lost, the side received a damage marker. As to how many cards a side drew… first, it drew 3 cards for its leading AG, then another 2 if a support unit was present, then another 1 if it was a heavy weapons squad, then another 1 if the opposing AGs had lost more Effectiveness Levels, and so on. We had tried this fairly simple method for the first melee in the battle. Around Bound #3, two of Joe’s AGs had tried to close with an armored Imperium vehicle. The heavy weapon on the vehicle was causing much unhappiness to the defending forces, and Joe thought it would be to his benefit if the vehicle was taken out. Unfortunately for the Sgorblumians, the armored vehicle was able to call on a nearby AG for support, and in the close assault procedures, beat the pants off Joe’s units. I decided that I wasn’t too pleased with the simple card-comparison technique used at the start of the battle. And so, midway in the battle, I changed the rules. The new procedures called for, first, select your card from the ones in your hand, and second, add the toss of 10-sided die to it. The higher total won the round. In effect, therefore, possession of one or two ‘rotten’ cards, i.e., several ‘2’s’ in your hand, didn’t guaranty defeat. Even though the opposition held higher-value cards, there was always the chance that with a lucky die toss, you’d come out a winner. Back to the Roof Back to the roof. Both sides failed to bring in support units, and both had to rely on their basic number of drawn cards… no additions. Joe’s die tossing ability came through… Ben won one round, but Joe quickly won the next three… victory was his!… and the Imperium AG was tossed off the roof… the tower was saved. I should note that included in the sequence were a number of the usual Simon ploys… for example, each side was given a number of ‘reaction points’ which they could use to respond to the actions of the enemy. After crossing out the requisite number of reaction points, there was an 80 percent chance that your unit would do as ordered… otherwise, the reaction points were wasted. Another technique was one that I borrowed from Russ Lockwood’s Napoleonic rules. In Russ’ rules set, when a unit is hit, it must ‘roll off’ the hit by passing a morale test. If it fails, it goes down by one grade in status. If the unit suffers more than one hit, it must ‘roll off’ each hit separately until all morale tests are passed. Here, with all these damage markers on the various units on the field, then, when the proper assessment phase came in the sequence, they, too, had to ‘roll off’ each marker separately. The Imperium force was set packing, and the neuro-protonic transmitter tower never missed a beat. 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