Some time ago, Jim Butters, Cliff Sayr and I formed the Ancient Mariners Eating Society (AMES). We’re all retired, we each spent some time in the navy, and about once a month, we meet, have lunch and spend the remainder of the afternoon in my rec room at the wargames table. This month, the AMES group was presented with a table-top area game which I derived from piecing together the ideas from several internet wargaming sites. Most of the games that I researched were 2-player card games, pure and simple, but being a toy-soldier-person, I adapted what I found to the ping-pong table, and worked in a bunch of 20mm plastic toy soldiers that I had picked up in the dollar store. The table was divided into areas (about 50 of them), each 6-by-6 inches, with each area termed a province. Each province had a stacking limit, defined as two 3-figure stands of WW2 20mm people. This 6-figure array was termed a corps, and the 6-man corps was the maneuver element in the game. A corps could have one tank attached, which gave it a couple of additional combat points, but tanks were rather costly, and I don’t remember anyone ever ‘buying’ a tank during the “raise troops” phase. Everyone concentrated fully on infantry. At the outset, each player was given 2 corps (one with a tank), one troop depot, one town, 5 cards, and the grand total of $12. The depots were where troops were raised, and, in order to encourage the players to run out and smash each other, the town had to be placed at least 2 provinces away from the depot. In this manner, I hoped to dissuade the players from selecting a corner of the table, and just sitting there for the remained of the game, ignoring the others and gathering victory points and accumulating dollars. This was a third outing for the game… Scott Holder had dropped in a couple of months before, and we had played it twice, each time making significant changes. The key to the game rested with the card deck, 35 cards in all. When it came time for the active player to move, he diced for his movement points (the chart told him if his troops could move 3, or 4, or 5 areas), and then played as many of his 5 cards as wished, interspersing both movement and card-playing to his best advantage. Example An example of the sequence, and of the types of cards available, is as follows:, (1) A player dices and finds that on this turn each of his corps can move 4 areas (2) He moves an existing corps into an unoccupied area. (3) He plays a “build town” card, and funds a town for $5 (4) He plays an “establish resource” card and gets an oil well (5) He plays a “produce resources” card, and his oil well produces 3 barrels (6) He plays a “market” card and sells his oil and banks the money. (7) He plays a “raise troops” card and raises 2 corps with his funds (8) He moves 1 of his new corps, 4 areas, to attack an opponent (9) If defeated, he can attack with his 2nd new corps Each player’s goal was to develop resources and collect lots of money. There were several phases required to be undertaken to do this, as I’ve outlined above. First, he had to have a town, so he moved his troops into an unoccupied province, and used his existing funds to build a town. Then he determined what type of resource was available in the area (oil or gold, with oil being slightly more valuable). Depending upon his resource, he was given either an oil well token or a smelter token to set up in his province. But he wasn’t through yet. Next, he had to produce barrels of oil or ingots of gold, and dump them in his province. And last, he had to market his treasures and place the funds in his bank account. Each of these phases required the play of a card as explained above in the 9-phase listing. When it became a player’s turn to be active, he could play a maximum of 5 cards, and he might not be as lucky as the player in the 9-phase listing, and be able to play all his cards in one turn. Which means that most of the time, players could play only 3 or 4 cards, and retained a couple, waiting for the next turn, hoping to get a better run of cards. In addition to the problem imposed by lack of good cards, was another one… this one a function of the friendliness of your opponent. There were 4 cards in the deck of 35 labeled “Prevent Action!”, and your good buddy, if he didn’t want you to carry out your plans, could essentially use this to ‘trump’ one of your cards, and prevent you from acting on it. The Prevent Action card cost me the game. Sometime during the 10th turn or so, I had accumulated a very favorable hand of cards, and when it was my turn to be active, I did the following, trying to take advantage of my only producing resource, a gold smelter. First, I played a “Produce Resource” card, and I diced to see how many ingots of gold popped out of the smelter. And then I played a second “Produce Resource” card, diced again, and more ingots appeared. And then, a third “Produce Resource” card... more ingots! And, hard to believe, but yet a fourth “Produce Resource” card… I was virtually inundated with ingots of gold!. And now, it was time for the coup de grace… time for me to play my remaining card, my “Market Goods” card, intending to toss the dice and determine the market price for my huge lump of ingots, sell them and bank my treasure. But my Worthy Opponent, Jim Butters, immediately I plunked down my “Market Goods” card, tossed down his “Prevent Action” card, thus annulling my attempt to cash in, and I was stuck with a huge pile of unmarketed ingots in my province. It was Cliff Sayr’s turn to move, and, seeing this huge mountain of 24 carat gold ingots in my province, he attacked. His first attack was beaten off by my 2-stand, 6-man corps, but in combat, the winner of the combat always temporarily loses one man… my 6 men were thus down to 5. A second attack by another of Cliff’s corps… which I won again, but now I was down to 4 men. A third attack… again I won, but my now depleted corps was down to 3 men, a single stand. And now it was “alas!” time, for Cliff’s 4th corps came in and with his overwhelming force (6 men to 3) did me in. The gold was his, and my dreams of glory vanished… and I retired, wiser, sadder and much poorer. Back to PW Review August 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