Most of the battles in this campaign are fought solo, unless some poor unfortunate shows up to take his place at table-side in my gaming room. In a previous article, I described the efforts of the Local Government (LG) forces to maintain the peace on the independent island of Ishtar. The map of Ishtar hangs on my gaming room wall… it’s a huge map, and has 44 areas, or sectors. The sectors are numbered, and each campaign turn, I toss percentage dice to see in which sector the bad guys, the rebels, called the Brotherhood Of Love (BOL), pop up to annoy the local citizens. If the dice toss exceeds 44, there’s no rebel attack that turn… I translate that to mean that the BOL is gathering its forces for the next strike. The next time they appear, the BOL will have added one more unit to its strength. Several such consecutive dice tosses can mean bad news for the LG. To me, the campaign serves as a test bed for a number of ‘modern warfare’ rules sets. There’ll be infantry and tanks and aircraft and anti-tank guns and so on. All these troop types are generic in nature. I’m not really interested in cataloging and differentiating the attributes of the Azerbajanian Z-45 main battle tank from those of the Ethiopian EX-89. To me, there are heavy tanks and medium tanks and light tanks. The previous article described the first two battles… the LG government loss in Sector 31 (still controlled by the BOL), and the subsequent win in Sector 5, when the LG forces severely whomped the BOL troops. LG forces always start out anew… the government has the wherewithall to continually put new troops and units in the field. All LG forces start out with 10 units… depending upon the rules, the units can be represented by 1 or 2 stands. In contrast, the BOL is limited to 10 specific forces, each starting at 9 units. After a limited amount of dicing, I discovered that BOL Force #7, the same force that had just been beaten in Sector 5, had the gall to attack in Sector 27 for the third battle. Some guys never learn. In the first two battles, the single-stand units were termed companies, and each had a data sheet, on which, after so many losses were recorded, the unit was removed as no longer retaining any coherent fighting ability. In this third battle, the units were termed battalions, and each battalion was composed of 2 stands. And again, I tracked the record of each unit. Loss Points (LP) were recorded… initially, at the 100 LP mark, one stand was removed, and at the 300 LP mark, the unit disappeared. Sector 27 The Sector 27 battle began with the BOL units concentrated mainly in the north as indicated on the map on the next page. Of the 3 main roads entering Sector 27, two of them require bridge crossings. I diced to see which of the 10 LG units would enter on which road, and got an interesting distribution of forces. Most of the LG units chose to cross the West Bridge Sector 27 contained 3 towns. I should note that of the 44 sectors on the map, only 5 of them had 3 towns… hence Sector 27 was quite significant for both sides. The force crossing the West Bridge consisted of 2 infantry battalions, one medium tank battalion and one anti-tank battalion… with each unit consisting of 2 stands. The town of Blit, at the eastern end of the bridge, was defended by a single BOL infantry battalion. This unit didn’t last too long, and by the end of the second bound, Blit was occupied by units of the LG. Each half-bound contained 8 phases… there was, first, lots of movement and firing, followed by close assault, and then the half-bound finished with an ‘additional damage’ check applicable to all units that had taken casualties during the previous 8 phases. The sequence used a clock… a 10-sided die tossed at the start of each half-bound, whose accumulated total was recorded. When the total reached 10, both sides checked to see if their units were ‘in supply’. If the side failed the test, its fire power was reduced, purportedly due to lack of ammunition. The phases of the sequence were: 1. The Active Side (AS) diced to see how many of its aircraft took off. One aircraft token represented a squadron of planes, and the side could get 2, or 1, or no aircraft airborne. Having determined its air power, the AS then moved all its troops, including the planes. Planes didn’t “fly”… they were merely placed at their target sites as supporting units. 2. The Non-Active Side (NAS) also determined how many of its squadrons were aloft, and placed its own aircraft in response to the AS movement. 3. Now we come to the first of 3 combat phases. Here, 2 units on each side were selected for simultaneous fire. 4. This was the second combat phase. I referred to a deck of 18 cards, each of which specified the side and the type of unit that would fire. For example, 2 cards stated “AS aircraft will strike at ground targets”. There was also a card for air-to-air combat. Another 3 cards would say “All NAS ground units and anti-aircraft guns will fire”. Of the 18 cards, 3 were annotated “End of fire phase”. When this was drawn, the fire phase was complete. 5. The third, and final, combat phase was the resolution of close assault. The AS, during its movement phase, had already closed to contact, and in the 2 combat phases, the sides had fired on each other, hence in this phase, all that remained was to decide who won the combat. 6. During the previous combat phases, units were given casualty markers, and all units that had markers on them took a morale test. 7. This seventh phase was for ‘additional damage’. Unit data sheets recorded Loss Points (LP) and here, if the unit had taken a hit during the half-bound, it would receive additional LP. 8. This last phase only came into play when the clock total reached 10. There was a 60 percent chance that the side would be ‘in supply’. A negative modifier occurred if the supply dump had taken any hits. The dump was a viable target, especially for aircraft. Of interest to me was that when I started to play out the battle, I used a fairly comprehensive list of Fire Power Points (FPP) for each type of unit. To differentiate the capabilities of the units, an infantry unit was assigned so many points, and a heavy tank unit had so many, and an aircraft so many. Then, having determined the firing unit’s FPP from the table, I diced to see how actually effective the unit was… for example, an effective volley could have the FPP multiplied by a factor of 3. Following up on the example, the 2 tokens in a heavy tank unit each started with 10 points, giving an initial FPP of 20. Then there were modifiers for cover, for firing on a light tank unit, etc. and finally, a dice toss to see if the FPP were to be multiplied by 3, or 2, or 1. Thus, with a good volley, the heavy tank unit could score a possible 60 or so Loss Points on its target. A total of 300 points was required to completely knock out a ground unit, and 200 to destroy an aircraft. The problem was that I became awash in Loss Points and tables and data taking. Each time a unit fired, I had to refer to the fire power table to determine its effectiveness, and then come up with the impact produced by the volley. Keep in mind the main combat phase referred to the 18-card fire power deck, and that if no “End of combat” card appeared, I’d have to keep drawing until it did. Much, much firing, much much calculation. Too much for ol’ Unca Wally. Let’s knock off this historical accuracy crapola, I sez to myself. Around Bound #4, I halted the battle and sat down to develop another method of determining fire power. I worked out a simpler technique, and around this time, in the door came Jeff Wiltrout, wargamer extraordinaire, who, like me, gets a kick of trying out new procedures. I explained to Jeff what I was doing, and we agreed to reduce the number of Loss Points required to destroy a unit. Instead of a 300 point total, we used: Infantry 150 LP Light tank 100 Medium tank 125 Heavy tank 150 The thought behind the above table was that the infantry battalions, while they didn’t do as much offensively as the heavy tank units, had as much staying power, and were just as difficult to destroy. I didn’t want to start the battle anew, and so this meant that we had to pro-rate all the existing recorded data. Under the new system, when any unit fired, it always started out by inflicting 20 Loss Points on the target, and certain modifiers (not too many) were applied to get the total fire power effect. For example, a heavy tank unit started with its basic 20 points, to which the following modifiers could be applied: -5 Side is out of supply -5 Target unit in cover +5 Per grade of lighter target armor (medium tank is one grade lower than heavy, etc.) Back to the battle. The BOL forces at Kwil, the northernmost town, put up the heaviest defense. There were 2 infantry battalions (2-stands each) in the town, and they were soon supported by the BOL anti-tank unit, which turned its guns on the LG heavy tanks crossing the North Bridge. The LG heavy tank unit was very ineffective, and it soon disappeared in a puff of smoke. The BOL Kwil force also beat off an attempted charge by an LG unit… an infantry battalion, on its movement phase, surged forward, and tried to enter the town to close assault the defenders. There was a 70 percent chance to enter the town… and the unit failed its test and halted and was caught in the open. Despite all the good doings of the BOL units, they were steadily losing ground. By Bound #8, the entire southern half of the field belonged to the governmental forces. The BOL retained control of Svarna, in the middle, but its one defending battalion, having accumulated over a 100 Loss Points out of its maximum of 150, wisely retreated. The BOL’s remaining force was now down to 4 infantry units, it had lost all its armor, and it was time to pull back and off the field. In truth, the LG force was hit almost as hard as its opponent. The LG had lost 3 tank battalions, one light, one medium, one heavy, while still retaining a number of its infantry and anti-tank units intact. When I say “intact”, I don’t mean “undamaged”… for most of the LG units were pretty badly beaten up. This was the first time out for the rules system, and despite the fact that I changed the combat procedures and loss points in midstream, all seemed to work out well. For me, the critical factor was the use of the combat deck, which stated which units would fire, thus taking the decision of who does what to whom out of the hands of the umpire. Back to PW Review May 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