After over two months’ hiatus on my Island of Ishtar modern WW2 battles, I finally got around to setting one up. In this game, the rebels (the Brotherhood of Love… BOL) outnumbered the Local Government (LG) forces… 12 units to 10. To recap the campaign behind the sequence of battles… I’ve got a map of the Island of Ishtar divided into 44 sectors. I toss percentage dice to determine the sector in which the BOL will strike. If I toss a number over 44, this means that the rebels are gathering strength, waiting to strike, and so I’ll add one unit to their force. In the current battle, I tossed the dice four times, the first three resulting in numbers exceeding 44, and so I upped the BOL strength, nominally at 9 units per battle, to 12. Jeff Wiltrout handled the LG units, and I took the BOL troops. We each had a partner… two friends of mine, Mike and Susan, dropped by for the game. I and Mike laid out, on a map of the sector, where our units would be hidden. The one great advantage of the BOL is that it’s permitted to lie in ambush, getting a first shot in, popping up when a government force comes into range. One of our immediate problems, however, was that we didn’t have our full 12 BOL units on the table… we had to place 3 of them off-board, and call them in during a special phase in the sequence. I also gave the LG two other advantages. In the previous six battles, the parameters of the BOL have been similar to that of the LG… the BOL uses similar equipment, their Morale Level is the same as LG troops, and their ability to pop up and fire first were pretty decisive in their winning 5 out of 6 previous encounters. But for this battle, I gave the LG force two key advantages. First, I lowered the Morale Level (ML) of the BOL units to 70 percent, while the ML of the LG units remained at 80 percent. And second, I added an aircraft capability to the LG inventory of units. During the bound, when the LG forces fired, they were also permitted to have an aircraft whiz by overhead, bombing and strafing. On the first bound, the LG forces appeared along the southern baseline… 3 tanks, some infantry, and a couple of armored cars. I had positioned the 2 BOL tanks in a hilly woods about 24 inches away from the LG entry point, and I fired first, but missed, tossing high on my percentage dice. Now that my tanks had exposed their positions, two of the LG tanks fired back. All units started out with a basic Probability Of Hit (POH) of 70 percent, and this was modified appropriately. The first modifier was one for range, and in this instance, we measured the range as being 24 inches. The range modifier takes the tens digit of the range measurement and multiplies it by 10. Here, the tens digit of 24 was ‘2’, and so the range modifier was 2 x 10 , or minus 20. Note that if the range was anywhere in the twenties, the modifier would always by 20, if the range was in the thirties, the modifier would be 30, and so on. The second modifier was a minus 10 for cover, since my targeted tanks were in the woods. Deducting the total modifiers from the basic POH of 70, we come up with a net of 70-30, or 40 percent. The LG dice toss was low… in fact, both LG tanks tossed low, producing 2 hits on the BOL tank. We placed 2 casualty figures on the tank, one for each hit. The BOL tank commander took a morale test. His basic Morale Level (ML) was 70 percent, and we deducted minus 10 for each of the 2 hits. His resultant ML was 70-20, or 50 percent. The tank commander failed the test, and drew back, 10 inches, out of the woods, and back down behind the hill. Parked behind the hill, he stayed there for almost all of the remainder of the battle… in trying to get up the hill again, he continually kept failing his ‘rough terrain’ test… he had to toss 70 or less on percentage dice. In the sequence, there’s a phase in which each side can issue ‘field orders’. There are several ‘field order’ choices. You can remove a casualty figure from one of your units, you can bring on an off-board unit, you can shift units around, you can repair a unit, you can receive a couple of ‘coordinative fire’ tokens (enabling you to concentrate fire on a given target), and so on. When the ‘field order’ phase came, you diced to see how many such orders you could issue, either 2 or 1 or none. And thereby hangs a tale… a problem… the “2 or 1 or none” choice was too restrictive. When our BOL phase to issue ‘field orders’ arrived, we kept using our field orders to remove casualty figures, and thus never had a chance to bring on our off-board units. At the end of every half-bound, all the casualty figures, which the units had accumulated during the bound, were assessed to determine the total resultant damage to the unit. Depending upon the dice throw, the unit could lose from 1 to 4 ‘Efficiency Levels’ (EL). Each type of unit was assigned a certain number of ELs… an infantry unit had 5, an armored car had 4, etc. When the appropriate number of ELs were lost, the unit was destroyed. When tossing for the loss, a high throw was a bad one… and each casualty figure on a unit added +10 to the toss, making the throw even worse. Our BOL forces were being battered. Lots of casualty figures, hence lots of ELs being lost. I think we destroyed only one LG infantry unit, while our BOL losses included our 2 tanks, an anti-tank gun, and several infantry units. Considering the fact that we could never get to call on our off-table reserves, we didn’t have enough on-board strength to continue the fight. And so the BOL units withdrew, their tails dragging. In the battle, each unit was represented by a single stand. Its ELs were tracked, and when the critical number of ELs was crossed off, the unit fled the field. In the sequence, I also tossed in the ability of each side to call on Reaction Points (RP) to move or fire outside of the regular movement and firing phases. Each side had around 5 RP, and when an RP was used (signifying that an order was sent), a dice toss of 80 or less confirmed that the order was actually received. New RP were assigned each turn, but there were never enough. 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