1. After a game at my house, the discussion turned to rules sets, in particular, something called WARRIOR, the WRG 7th clone whose rights Scott Holder and company bought from Phil Barker. WARRIOR is still in the play-testing mode... and its final publication date is unknown.
During the discussion, one of Bob Liebl's comments was that certain historical attributes were lacking in the original WRG 7th book, and, as an example, he cited the Battle of Hastings.
Bob indicated that under the rules, you couldn't "re-create" the Battle of Hastings, since there was no provision for "feigned flight"... the story about the Normans charging up the hill, banging on the Saxon shields for a couple of minutes and then purposefully backing off and running down the hill, hoping that the Saxons would break their ranks and follow them down.
My comment was that this "feigned flight" business may have occurred once in 1066 (to the best of my knowledge, people are still arguing about whether or not it took place), and was Bob now requiring that because of this one instance, all such rules have a "feigned flight" provision?
No, said Bob, this was a common ploy much used by the Mongols and Huns and other nationalities of that era.
I did remember that the Mongols used their horse archers to zip in and pepper their enemies with arrows, and then zip out, just as quickly, to avoid contact with heavier enemy cavalry.
And, during the crusades, Saladin's horse archers would do the same... they had no desire to close with the heavy cavalry of the Christian armies, and so they'd close to firing distance, twang away, and off they'd go. Early on, if the heavy horse followed them, Saladin's troopers were able to isolate the unfortunate slower, armored Christian horsemen and chew 'em up. But after awhile, the Christian horse gave up on this tactic.
But was this what was termed "feigned flight"? I was silent, and didn't reply to Bob. I had no reply, since the last time I read a history book, sometime around 1968, it didn't have a single reference to "feigned flight".
2. Played a 30mm game of the American Revolutionary War (ARW) with Dave Sweet, son of Charlie Sweet, one of the first wargamers in the USA. Charlie died a couple of months ago, and Dave used his father's 30mm collection, all hand-cast and sculpted by his dad.
The ARW game is played on a field gridded into 4-inch squares... infantry moves 1 square, cavalry moves 2. But of greater interest is that when your cannons fire, you take a small spring-loaded gun, insert a Q-Tip into the barrel, point it at your target, and let go! When the tip of the missile comes to rest, there's a "blast zone", about 3 inches in diameter, in which all figures are casualties.
What's even more interesting is that wherever the Q-Tip ends up will bring death and destruction, even if the Q-Tip ricochets off the intended target and strikes your own troops. Due to a bad bounce, I managed to wipe out an entire American unit of 5 men (I was one of the American commanders) with a single artillery shot. Not one of my prouder moments.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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