When you play DBM or DBA or its clones, should you toss a "1" on your pip die, you’re in trouble. You can move only one group of units, and your opponent runs rings around you. And if you toss a series of "1’s" on consecutive turns, you’re in even more trouble. Your opponent simply eats you up. I ran up against an unlucky string of dice tosses in a Franco-Prussian game in which I faced Bob Hurst. His regiments would fire, my regiments would record losses, they would take a morale test, they would fail, and they would run back. Time after time after time, I’d repeat the process… I was locked into a temporal lousy-dice time-warp, and couldn’t get out. We each had 3 infantry brigades, with each brigade consisting of 3 regiments. A regiment was composed of 8 stands, so that the brigade consisted of a total of 24 stands of 15mm troops. There were also 2 cavalry brigades, but the cavalry regiments within the brigades had only 6 stands compared to the infantry’s 8. The rules I originally ginned up required unit losses to be tracked: First, when a regiment was hit, it received a casualty marker. Second, in addition to the casualty marker, it also had a number of Loss Points recorded on its data sheet. Third, during the bound, an administrative phase occurred, and the casualty markers which the units had been toting around were translated into even more Loss Points. Fourth, and this also took place during the administrative phase, a total of 50 Loss Points resulted in one Unit Coherency Level (UCL) crossed out. When 10 UCLs were lost, the unit, i.e., the regiment, was taken off the field. So here, a regiment remained intact, no stands removed, until it hit the magic 10 UCL threshold, when, POOF! off it went. Bob and I tried the above procedure for a couple of bounds, and we shook our heads in unison, and decided that too much was too much. And so we went to Plan B… knock off the casualty markers, knock off the Unit Coherency Levels, but keep recording Loss Points. But we kept the administrative phase, and here we referred to a chart and took off stands: 01 to 33 Every 40 Loss Points result in the removal of 1 stand 34 to 66 Every 30 Loss Points result in the removal of 1 stand 67 to 100 Every 20 Loss Points result in the removal of 1 stand During the bound, prior to the administrative phase, regiments would accumulate well over 100 Loss Points, and a lousy toss on the above chart (a high roll of the dice) could result in a huge proportion of a unit disappearing. Bob commanded the French forces, and he was able to bring all his infantry and cavalry brigades on the field during the initial stages of the battle. I was slightly disadvantaged, since one of my two cavalry brigades, and one of my three infantry brigades (40 percent of my total force) remained off-board until a couple of bounds had passed. Which meant that, initially, I was outnumbered and outgunned. We each had a card deck from which we drew ‘Action Cards’. Each card gave a certain number of movement actions and a number of volleys. If, for example, your card stated "2 movement actions and 2 volleys", you could first advance all your troops a distance of 10 inches (since a movement action permitted a 5-inch forward movement) and then have all your units fire twice. It is de rigeur that, in a set of Franco-Prussian War rules, the French rifles are more deadly than those of the Prussians, while the Prussian artillery is more effective than those of the French. Firing The firing procedures were all deterministic… no dice tosses required. If a French regiment fired at a target under 10 inches, then 20 Loss Points would be scored against the target. At the same range, a Prussian infantry regiment would score only 15 Loss Points. This held true through-out the range bands… losses inflicted by French infantry were slightly more than those inflicted by Prussian troops. The procedure was reversed for the artillery units. When the Prussian artillery fired, it caused more Loss Point damage than that of the French artillery. If a French Action Card permitted 2 volleys, then, at short range (less than 10 inches), the target would record a total of 40 Loss Points (2 volleys of 20 each). In this manner, losses accumulated rapidly, and it was during the administrative phase that stands were removed. And every time a unit was hit, a morale test was mandated. Failure of the test resulted in the testing unit’s noting additional Loss Points on its sheet. It was here, during the initial stages of the battle, that I ran into my bad-dice mode. Virtually every Prussian unit of mine that was hit, failed its test, and fell back. The outcome of the morale test provided an option to the failing unit… first, it could take its loss and simply fall back. Or, it could hold position, and have a chance of taking even more losses. At first, I tried to hold position, thinking that my off-board brigades were soon to appear, and I should try to keep my front line intact. But the losses piled up on me, and my Prussian troops took it on the chin during the administrative phases, when stands were removed. Final score: French: 1, Prussians: 0 Back to PW Review January 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