A couple of years ago, I picked up a number of 10mm renaissancish-looking figures at one of the war gaming conventions. Bob Hurst was with me at the time, and he, sometime before, had purchased his own 10mm army. And if Bob had an army, then I had to have one. The figures were designed to be used with Games Workshop WAR MASTER (WM) rules, and I tried the WM rules set once or twice, and then, as is usual, since I was not at all enthralled with the Games Workshop product, went my own way, designing a system, or systems, for my own enjoyment. Occasionally, I try a solo game or two with them, but, for the most part, the little people remain on the shelves. But ‘twas now time to put them on the table again, and in this effort, the attacking side was given three divisions of troops, as was the defending side. The defenders were slightly outnumbered by the attackers, but the defenders had two strongpoints in their favor. On the attacking right flank, in the Duke of Largo’s division, were the following units… two heavy cavalry, one medium cavalry, two light guns, one heavy gun, two missile units, one light infantry, and two heavy infantry, a total of 11 units in all. His opponent, Lord Buffo (commanding the defending left flank), had less cavalry, fewer missile units, fewer infantry… but he was in possession of the Retlaw Redoubt, an imposing work. Units came in two varieties. Missile units (crossbowmen and arquebusiers) and artillery guns were single stand units. All others, infantry and cavalry, were of 2 stands. Stand measurement was ‘standard’, being about 1˝ inches by ˝ inch for all types of units. On the first bound, the attackers appeared on the field, each unit moving 10 inches, and the defending units fired. In each half-bound, there were three sub-cycles, each involving movement, and each ending in a phase resolving the melees that occurred because of the movement. First sub-cycle Active Side (AS) moves Non-Active Side (NAS) fires defensively Resolve melees resulting from AS movement Second sub-cycle NAS cavalry move AS fires defensively Resolve melees resulting from NAS cavalry movement Third sub-cycle AS uses Reaction Points (RP) to move or fire selected units. NAS uses RP to reply, either move or fire AS and NAS alternate in use of RP Resolve melees occurring from movement within the phase None of the units were labeled, and when casualties occurred, I didn’t want to remove entire stands due to the small size of the units on the field (one or two stands each). So I turned to the officers commanding each of the divisions. I diced for the capabilities of the Generals. Each General took a certain amount of losses before his units started to desert him. The Loss Threshold (LT) table looked like: 01 to 33 General’s division takes 5 hits before one of its units may run 34 to 66 General’s division takes 4 hits before one of its units may run 67 to 100 General’s division takes 3 hits before one of its units may run Lord Buffo, when I diced for him, turned out to have an LT of 4. Each time a unit in his division took a hit, I recorded it on Buffo’s sheet, and when 4 hits were recorded, he diced to see if one of his stands could take no more and would run off the field. I noted that the other two defending Generals, allies of Buffo, each had an LT of 3, making their divisions much more sensitive to their casualties. Each time an enemy unit fired and successfully struck at one of Buffo’s units, I recorded a hit on Buffo’s chart. Each time one of his units failed a morale test, I recorded a hit, and each time one of his units lost a melee, I recorded 4 hits on his chart. Note that the individual units weren’t recording their hits… only Lord Buffo himself. When the LT was reached, and the requisite number of hits were recorded, there was a 70 percent chance that a stand would flee the field. Design of this type of solo system bears with it two problems. First, what should the chance be that a unit, or a piece of a unit, flees? At first, I used a 50 percent chance, but too many units were surviving… there weren’t enough casualties. Which meant that the battle could grind on and on and on. And so I upped the rate to 70 percent, which seemed to work adequately. Second, when a stand is to flee, which stand? How to select it? Initially, as the sole player table-side, I selected the stands of least value, of least importance, to the General… light cavalry, light infantry. But after awhile, I changed my outlook. I decided to work "from the top down". First we knock off the heavier units, and then, the lighter ones. One rationale for this might be that the heavier units were thrown into combat more often, and drew more enemy fire, than the light ones, and would thus incur more hits. Lord Buffo, although on the defense, decided to use his heavy and medium cavalry in an offensive role. And off they charged into his opponent’s lines. There was no sense in standing in place and dying. His opponent, the Duke of Largo, had more troops, more missile units… more everything… and if Buffo were to simply stand, his attrition rate would do him in. Buffo’s cavalry chose the most tempting targets. His 2-stand heavy cavalry closed with one of Largo’s 1-stand missile units. Each unit was given a number of dice: Heavy cavalry 4 dice for attacking a wimpy unit 2 dice for having more stands than opponent Missileers: 2 dice Each side tossed its 10-sided dice. A successful strike was indicated by a toss of 1 or 2. Then each side added the number of hits to a single 10-sided die, and the higher total won the melee. With Buffo’s 6 dice to the missile unit’s 2, he easily won. The missileers were destroyed… I placed them back into the box. If the losing unit had been a 2-stand unit of infantry or cavalry, then I would have placed one of its stands in an off-board rally zone, instead of it being instantaneously wiped out. And since Buffo’s troops had been in a melee, I gave Buffo one hit on his data sheet. Of more importance, I gave his opponent, the Duke of Largo, 4 hits. Buffo’s cavalry continued to charge into Largo’s units, and Buffo kept winning. And for each win, he suffered only a single point loss, while the poor Duke of Largo recorded 4 hits. Remember that Buffo’s LT, his hit threshold, was 4. At battle’s end, he had recorded 7 hits. Which means that I diced for his potential losses only once, for the first 4 points. With a probability of losing a stand at 70 percent, it was no surprise that he did… and in accordance with the "top down" theory, one of his heavy cavalry stands took off. Buffo’s 3 point excess (I diced for 4 of his points, and he had a total of 7) was carried over to the next bound. But, in contrast, the Duke of Largo had been beaten badly, suffering 21 recorded hits, in contrast to Buffo’s total of 7. Just like Buffo, the Duke also had an LT threshold of 4, and I diced for each set of 4, to see if any of the Duke’s stands ran off. Alas! After dicing five times, the Duke was "5-for-5"… 5 of his heaviest stands took off. I carried over the single point remaining on the Duke’s chart (I had diced for 20 of his 21) for the next bound. These losses were in addition to the losses the Duke had taken when Buffo’s troops had crashed into the Duke’s single stand missile units and obliterated them. For all practical purposes, the Duke of Largo was out of the battle, and the attacking force had no right flank division to continue the fight. The same held true for the attacker’s left flank. General Riggo was one of the better commanders on the field… he had an LT of 5… his division could take 5 hits before he diced for possible losses. But he, too, had lost his heavies and he couldn’t press on. Only in the center did the attacking army seem to stand up well. The center division, headed by Lord Phlab, had also lost its cavalry, but it had a good reserve of heavy infantry. The problem was that both flank divisions of the defender, now freed from any opposition, could turn in and assist its own center division. And so the attackers rode off, while the defenders cheered. The battle took about an hour-and-a-half, which is purty good for a solo affair. With 6 Generals on the field, the only record keeping I had to do was to note the hits incurred by each General’s division. This meant only 6 small data sheets, as opposed to the usual need to record losses for every unit on the field. Back to PW Review March 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