At HISTORICON, 1999, Bob Hurst and I tried the new ACW board game put out by Hasbro, called BATTLE CRY (BC). BC uses large, 3-inch hexes, each of which can hold up to four 15mm figures. It’s an entertaining game, based on a one-player-versus-one-player configuration. The field is divided into three sections: left flank, right flank and center. The sides alternately draw cards, and the card denotes which troops on which flank will be activated. BC rang a bell… and out of the Simon archives I drew a yellowing manuscript, dated 1988, authored by PW reader Gary Haggerty. Gary’s piece was a set of rules called “1676”, for the English Civil War. 1676 used a small field, set up for a solo encounter, approximately 2 feet by 2 feet, on which each side had around 12 tokens. A token, or stand, was termed a complete unit, a la DBA. 1676 also used a deck of cards to activate the forces… as in BC, the field was divided into left flank, right flank and center, But unlike BC, since 1676 was oriented toward solo play, the mechanisms were much simplified. Ever since I saw the BC setup at HISTORICON, I had tried to develop a set of rules using the left flank, right flank, center, card system. I wanted it for multi-player use… not just 1-on-1. But it turned out that the card system, in activating only one sector at a time for a side, resulted in a slow, slow, game. Not only would several players on the active side - those whose flank wasn’t being exercised - wait and wait, but so, of course, would all the players on the opposing, non-active side. And so the resultant effect was to produce a slow game. Not as slow, perhaps, as those games employing card decks which activate only one unit at a time (here, I can think of ON TO RICHMOND, or AGE OF REASON, or the skirmish game DESPERADO), but slow enough. Finally, late in the year, I drew up a set of rules for the ECW using a card deck composed of 3 cards to activate the left flank 3 cards to activate the right flank 3 cards to activate the center Each side had its own 9-card deck. In the alternative-move sequence, a side would draw two of its cards, and thus be able to ‘energize’ two of its three sectors. If the cards that were drawn included 2 for the same sector, that would constitute a double-move for the side. Nothing new here. Brian Dewitt came over one afternoon, and we tried the system out. We each had a left flank division, a right flank division and a center divisions… each division consisting of some 5 or 6 stands. I termed a single stand as a unit, and when the stand took 6 hits, it was eliminated. When, for example, Brian would pull his two cards, he’d move or fire or have charge, all the units in the involved sectors. I needed some sort of response mechanism for the non-active side… and so I inserted the dreaded Reaction Points (RP) sub-system. This provided the non-active side with a chance to respond. Here, after the active side moved or fired or whatever, the non-active side allocated an RP to the unit he wanted to have react. He’d first allocate an RP point to the unit, trying to order it to fire, or move, and then he’d toss percentage dice… there was an 80 percent chance the unit got the order. If it failed, it could try again (another RP plus another dice throw). And after the reaction, we’d resolve melee. And then it would be the opposing side’s turn. Key Item But the key item in the rules, I borrowed from Gary Haggerty’s 1676. This had to do with Army Morale Points (AMP). At the battle’s beginning, each side was given 12 AMPs. There were 3 ways to lose AMPs: First, when a side won a melee, the loser gave the winner one of his AMP Second, when a side wiped out a unit (the unit having received 6 hits), he again received an AMP from his opponent. Note the first two ways essentially consisted of the sides trading off AMPs during the battle. You might say this was a zero-sum game. But there was a third way… when a side lost a melee, there was another impact… the division commander (left, right, center) was given a marker. These markers were then evaluated, and the side losing the comparison would lose another AMP. When a side was down to 5 AMP (out of its original 12), the battle was lost. Note that AMPs were lost solely based upon the outcome of melee. They could also have been based on troop morale status or actual casualties lost. The introduction of the Haggerty AMPs brought in a new parameter which perked up the game, as each side kept a careful watch on his supply of AMPs. Brian and I played some 7 or 8 turns, at which time, I decided that this particular card system of sequencing was not what I wanted for multi-player gaming. Jeff Wiltrout appeared the next day, and we decided to try the rules for a truly simple one-on-one game, as Haggerty had initially outlined in 1676. And it worked. The active player drew a sector card, moved his troops in the appropriate sector, the opposition reacted, melee was fought, and the sequence continued. All of which says it’s fairly easy to format a one-on-one game using the sector cards. Both players are continually busy, and both maintain interest in what’s going on. But when you restrict movement, based on the draw of cards, to only one part of the field, you run into trouble when there’s more than a single player per side. For some reason, I like the application of the sector cards to the ECW era, rather than to the ACW era, as is done by BC. Anyone out there with clever ideas… ? Back to PW Review October 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