It is a scientific, irrefutable fact that, directly opposite the sun from our own planet, Earth, is a sister planet, Pearth, which always rotates around the sun such that it is hidden from our Earthly eyes. Pearth is a mirror world of Earth, and the history of Pearth closely parallels ours. I first wrote about Pearth in the REVIEW in the early ‘80s, telling of the exploits of Panoleon the First, Emperor of Prance, and his attempts to conquer the continent of Peurope. Panoleonic warfare is rather similar to that which occurred on Earth during the reign of Napoleon... Panoleon used skirmishers and lancers and horse artillery and cuirassiers and the Young Guard and the Old Guard and so on. And so, recently, I thought I’d dust off my handbook on Panoleonic warfare, and set up a battle, in particular, the battle of Puatre Bras, at which Panoleon’s forces won a great and deserving victory. The scale of the battle was fairly huge... 2 inches equated to 1 mile, and so the ping pong table (9 feet, or 108 inches long , by 5 feet, or 60 inches in width) represented a field of battle measuring 54 miles by 30 miles... in effect, almost a large theatre of war, rather than your usual, everyday, dinky 2-or-3 miles-across, battlefield. In keeping with the huge table-top scale, was the troop scale. I set out my 15mm units, and defined each stand as an entire brigade. In turn, 3 to 6 brigades constituted a division, and a corps was made up of, perhaps, 2 to 4 divisions. The scale was so large that musket fire was subsumed into the regular combat procedures. Even though a division was represented on the field, an entire corps was defined as the basic maneuver element. And since we’re dealing with the movement and deployment of army corps, the time scale has to be somewhat expanded. The 24-hour day was divided into 5 game-time increments. Phase 1 : 0600 to 1000 : 4 hours of early morning Phase 2 : 1000 to 1400 : 4 hours of mid-day Phase 3 : 1400 to 1800 : 4 hours of afternoon Phase 4 : 1800 to 2200 : 4 hours of evening Phase 5 : 2200 to 0600 : 8 hours of night Battles could occur during the first four increments, and, if the forces held on, could last a maximum of two 4-hour increments. I assumed that if two corps had butted heads continuously for some 8 hours, both of them would be only too happy to withdraw, and call it a day. If two corps were still fighting when the end of the fourth increment came (2200 hours), both would both draw back and rest for the night. The last 8-hour increment of the 24-hour cycle, the night portion, was used to bring up reserves for the following day’s battle. Panoleon had 3 corps to do his bidding. General Brask, on his left flank, commanding four divisions in his corps, was tasked to take the town of Poivre. On the morning of the first day of battle (Phase 1), Brask’s corps moved forward 10 inches (5 miles). I had a deck of cards on each of which was listed one of the corps on the field... pull a card, and that particular corps was activated. I ran through the entire deck for each of the four increments of the day. Brask didn’t make contact on the morning turn... he was still some 8 inches away from Poivre. To determine who won, the parameters of interest were first, the total number of stands (brigades) in the corps that were engaged in combat, second, the total number of casualty figures carried by the corps, and third, a random die roll. To my surprise, Brask came out on top... the town was his, and Kabar retreated 10 inches (5 miles) to the rear, all of his units in march column. Brask’s units, too, were now placed in march column... when a melee was over, both corps were placed in the "ready-to-move’ mode. I also "evaluated", and then removed, all the casualty figures which the corps had accumulated. Each casualty figure generated 15 Loss Points (LP), and I referred to the following chart. Brask’s corps had 6 casualty figures on it, giving it a total LP of 90 percent. He tossed a 55, which, on the above chart, resulted in the loss of a total of 4 brigades, just about a whole division. Instead of decimating an entire division, I selected various stands from different divisions. It was now Phase 5, the night phase. Recovery time. I diced to see if all the casualties, i.e., stands removed, that Brask's troops had suffered, were permanent. He lucked out, and two of his brigades reported back to duty. And so, to recapitulate... the first day’s happenings. During the early morning, Brask’s troops moved up. They moved again in mid-day. In the afternoon, they deployed, and they went into the attack in the evening phase. During this time, they were subjected to skirmish attacks and artillery fire, took casualties, but somehow, took the town. In truth, during the battle for Poivre, Kabar had been at a disadvantage. About 16 inches (8 miles) to the north-east of Poivre was the town of Peor, and Kabar had placed one of his divisions there as reserve to hold Peor, should he be driven out of Poivre. It was now time to bring up his reserve and confront Brask again. The second day began, and in the morning, Brask’s card appeared and his men, in column, came out of Poivre, and moved toward Kabar’s position. Kabar’s card, when drawn, then permitted, not only his corps to deploy, but his reserve unit to advance to join his main body. It was now mid-day, and Brask advanced a second time, while Kabar simply sat, and remained immobile. Brask’s second move placed him within an inch (2 miles), or combat range, of his enemy. Mid-day passes, and we come to the afternoon phase, when Kabar’s card shows up, and he takes advantage of it to advance to contact against Brask’s men, who are still in column. I had assigned Brask an Efficiency Factor (EF) of 55 percent... here, he used it to see if he could get his men to respond to the oncoming attack. By tossing below 55, Brask was able to get all but one of his divisions deployed. Both sides took casualties in the afternoon battle phase, and the result of my dicing to see if the combat terminated, was that it continued into the evening hours. More casualties for the last phase of battle, and when it was all over, Brask retreated back to Poivre. Although he couldn’t break Kabar, he at least had captured, and held on to, Poivre. Panoleon was content. Phase 2 Phase 2 (mid-day) began, and when Brask’s card appeared, his corps moved up to within striking distance of Poivre... 1 inch (2 miles). The divisions in each corps on the field had to be in one of two formations... either in march column, and thus ready for movement, or they were deployed and ready for combat. A corps could perform one and only one of the following actions during a 4-hour increment phases: It could move : providing all its units were in march column, it moved 10 inches It could deploy : with each division getting ready for combat (conversely, it could also "un-deploy" and get back into march column) It could advance : Move to contact 1 inch to commence combat, and complete a round of combat. It took an entire increment, one complete 4-hour phase during the day, for a corps to complete each of the above actions. Using Brask as an example, one of his divisions had 4 stands, i.e., 4 brigades, in it. Assume that a brigade is composed of around 2,000 men, that gives 8,000 men in the division. With 4 divisions under him, Brask’s corps contained over 30,000 men, and I didn’t consider it illogical that to deploy a corps, a 4-hour time period would be necessary. After Brask’s card was drawn and his corps moved up (still in march column), the card of General Kabar’s was drawn. Kabar was in command f the defenders of Poivre, and his men had already deployed, awaiting Brask’s attack. Since Kabar’s men were already deployed, they could have charged madly out of town, one inch, in a pre-emptive strike, smashing into Brask’s still-undeployed units. But Kabar chose to hold his ground in the town, since he had read the rules, and the rules stated that if a corps was "surprised" and caught un-deployed, there was still a chance that its commanding general could make order out of chaos, and somehow reorder his units to meet the attack. And so Kabar stood pat in Poivre, but he did order his troops to act defensively. First, he directed harassing skirmish fire at Brask’s units. The scale of the game is so large that there are, in fact, no skirmishers physically displayed on the field... but they are there, non the less. And so, out ran Kabar’s "symbolic" skirmishers, with a 50 percent chance of inflicting a casualty figure on Brask’s corps. When Brask’s troops finally made contact, the casualty figure would count against them in the melee calculations. Second, Kabar ordered his artillery to fire. Here, too, there was a 50 percent chance to give the opposing corps a casualty figure. The third phase of the daytime sequence came, and Brask’s men deployed for the grand attack. It was now 1400, and Brask would move forward into the contact on the fourth phase, at 1800. But Kabar was equally as active... while Brask deployed, out came Kabar’s skirmishers, BANG! went his artillery, and Brask suffered more casualties. And then came the fourth phase... it’s evening, and Brask’s card was drawn and his men went into the attack. Each corps struck at the other. The percentage chance of striking was simply 5 times the total number of brigades in the corps. For his defensive position in Poivre, I gave Kabar another 15 percentage points to add to his total. A successful strike produced another casualty figure on the opposition. At this point, due to Kabar’s pre-melee skirmishing and artillery attacks, Brask had many more casualty figures than did Kabar. Back to PW Review April 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 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