In the last issue, I wrote of a diceless game which wasn’t too well received by those at table-side.
In part, the problems were of my own making. Since there was no dice tossing, I had prepared a long listing of the outcomes of combat between various types of units, and I flubbed-de-dub in several instances… some of the combat outcomes were, at the least, extremely illogical. What happened, therefore, was when two units came into contact, we’d look up the purported result on the list, and someone would cry "That’s silly! Your listings are skewed!"
I decided to try it again, and this time, I would stick closer to the ground rules laid out by the original author of the concept, Chris Engle. In 1997, Chris had published a small 26 page booklet called FUSILIER, which focused on the horse and musket era. He laid out a table of 48 possible encounters between the types of troops present on the field (ranging from pikes to cavalry to arquebussiers to elephants to dragoons and so on), trying to anticipate the combinations one would encounter during a battle. In effect, the 48 listings represented a huge matrix of possibilities. One simply looked up the type of attacking troop, compared it with the type of defending troop, and applied the listed result.
Chris uses 10-stand armies, and the back of the book gives a number of army lists. I chose to pit a Scottish Covenanter Army against a New Model Army of Cromwell’s. The stands were:
| Scots | New Model |
|---|---|
| 2 Warband | 0 |
| 4 pike | 2 pike |
| 4 musket | 6 musket |
| 0 | 1 cavalry |
| 0 | 1 artillery |
Key Parameters for Each Army
M Movement points Both armies had an M of 3. This was the number of groups of stands that could move. In the language of DBA, this was the number of pips assigned to the army each turn.
KA An ‘attack factor’. The Scott’s KA was 2, while the New Model guys had 3. This was the number of attacks, stand-versus-stand, that an army could make each turn. Note it was independent of the number of groups into which the army was formed.
BP If an army lost this many stands, it lost the battle. BP stood for ‘breaking point’, and the Scott’s BP was 2, while the New Model Army had 3.
The game is one of micro-inches. Infantry move forward 1-stand-length (about an inch). Cavalry zip along at 2-stand-lengths. Musket range is around 2-stand-lengths, artillery reaches out to 4-stand-lengths. In the set-up procedure, both players alternate in placing stands, and each side may set stands out half-way up the field, so that, because movement distances are so small, the forces may quickly make contact.
Cliff Sayre arrived, and took the Scots Army of 10-stands. Our key parameters were:
- Scots M=2 KA=2 BP=2
New Model Army M=3 KA=3 BP=3
Immediately, we both saw that the Scots were hopelessly outclassed. With the Scot’s restricted group movement factor (M) of 2 against Cromwell’s M of 3, coupled with the lesser KA attack factor of 2 for the Scots versus 3 for the Cromwellians, the Scots could ‘move less’ and ‘fight less’ than the opposition.
This was our first game, and both Cliff and I slowly moved our 10-stand forces into contact. The sequence is essentially that of a board-game. It calls for the active side to first, move, and then, attack, and since Cliff was the player that made contact first, he then declared his attacks.
When he had moved up, he had taken one of his musket stands as shown in Diagram 1, and as one of his 2 permitted group movements, had pivoted and swung the stand around into the flank of my pike unit as shown in Diagram 2. Chris’ rules book didn’t seem to say there was anything wrong with this move, and so, Cliff immediately announced that one of his 2 attacks would be his musket attack into my pike’s flank.
We then looked up Chris’ listings for flank attacks and found "Pikes in square formation cannot be flanked." Were my pikes in square? I hadn’t declared so… ergo, they were not in square. Next we found "All types of troops defeat troops attacked in flank or rear". And so, my pike unit was ‘defeated’.
The term ‘defeat’ is discussed in the book. "A defeated stand is turned so that it can run directly away from the stand that attacked it." It appeared that my pikes would run away for one stand length. But as we read on, we came across another rule… if "anything" gets in the way of the running stand, and "anything" includes a friendly stand, the running stand is destroyed.
This is quite similar to the procedure in DBA/DBM, wherein if your stand retreats and steps on the toes of an ally, your stand is destroyed.
As shown in the diagram, my pike’s rout took it right into its neighboring pike, and Cliff’s first attack, therefore, was an instant success in wiping out one of my pike units. For his second attack (he was allowed 2), Cliff chose to fire on one of my musket stands, out in the open, with one of his own musketeers at a range of 2-stand-lengths. Again we referenced the rules book. "Muskets firing on muskets." Nothing, nada, silence. But we noted that the firing stand had another musket stand beside it to lend support, again a la DBA/DBM.
Back to the book. "Musket fire with one supporting stand will defeat heavy infantry, and cavalry". But my stand, the target stand, was muskets, hence wasn’t affected by this rule. A little further down, we saw "Musket fire with two supports defeats all troops frontally." Aha! So that was the trick! Line up your musketry, 3 stands in a row, and BOOM! the target is gone!
And so, little by little, as our attacks and counter-attacks continued, we went through Chris’ listings and puzzled out which rule prevailed in a given situation. According to the rules book, as you went down the listings, the first applicable one you came across had precedence… even if the situation appeared to be listed twice, ignore the second, and implement the first.
Sounds simple… And it is, but Cliff and I had many a discussion, too many discussions, about how to choose the prevailing rule. Very, very time consuming, which took a lot of the joy and happiness out of the game. I amend my statement… it took all the joy and happiness out of the game.
Try It Again
Not to worry. When our first battle was over, I said "Let’s try it again!", and once more the Scots went forth to meet the New Model Army.
I had thought that our first run-through of the rules would make the second go-round easier. Wrong, again! Discussions, discussions. Plowing through a listing of 48 possible match-ups each half-bound, as both of us made our attacks, was too much. Cliff and I agreed that the rules were not quite ready for prime time.
But General Simon is not easily defeated on the battlefield. The major problem seemed to be the manner in which the various match-ups were listed and the resultant difficulty in looking them up. And so, I derived my own listing. But I included a Simon-type innovation. I tracked each stand in terms of Exhaustion Points (EP). I didn’t want the one-punch-and-you’re-out effect… this time, let’s have the stands die ‘in pieces’… take off EP when they’re hit, and remove them when the EP loss reaches 20. Below is the deterministic loss chart for infantry attacks. There are similar ones for cavalry, and others for infantry and artillery firing.
| TARGET | EP LOSS | TARGET | EP LOSS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inf-in-open | 3 | Cav-in-open | 2 |
| Inf-in-cover | 2 | Cav-in-column | 3 |
| Inf uphill | 3 | Cav flank/rear | 3 |
| Inf downhill | 4 | Cav disordered | 4 |
| Inf flank/rear | 5 | - | - |
| Inf-in-column | 5 | - | - |
| Inf disordered | 6 | - | - |
| Limbered art | 4 | Skirmishers-in-open | 2 |
| Artillery flank/rear | 5 | Skirmishers-in-cover | 1 |
| Artillery-in-open | 3 | Skirmishers disordered | 5 |
| Artillery-in-cover | 2 | - | - |
| Artillery disordered | 6 | - | - |
I first tried out the game in solo style. I also ‘opened up’ the game a wee bit, by increasing the infantry move to 5 inches. For my purposes, the game went well.
I had chosen to place 25mm single-mounted American Revolutionary War skirmish figures on the field, and so I had a 10-stand-versus-10-stand skirmish affair. And, in typical skirmish fashion, every stand took off on its own… as in the other games, it was impossible to maintain an ordered line of troops.
Brian Dewitt appeared… Aha! Another victim!
Brian commanded 10 colonials in a defensive posture, fighting my 12 attacking regulars. In this battle, all men were equipped with muskets, hence around half of the attacks were referenced under the fire table, the other half under the hand-to-hand listing. Brian and I went at it for about an hour, when we both shook our heads. "Needs more work." And Brian added the coup-de-grace… "No redeeming gaming qualities!" And that was that.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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