SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE (SWOP) was written by Marc Hayes and Tim Goodlett. They tossed in their own funding and published the rules themselves in 1989, selling around 800 copies. I’ve seen it for sale at every HMGS convention, and always disregarded it because it seemed to be full of charts, charts, and more charts. I recently attended a game hosted by Marc Hayes, again a British colonial effort, and this one an attempt by Hayes to simplify SWOP… When I queried him on the subject, he said he had grown unhappy with SWOP, that there was too much detail in the system, and he wanted to develop another, simpler, rules set along the same lines. In the scenario in which I participated, an advancing British force had, as an objective, two towns occupied by native forces. Hayes indicated that the scenario was set in 1890, and he was trying out one of his first cuts at his new rules. The table was full of 15mm figures, with every type of native troop imaginable present… Sudanese, Egyptians, Sikhs, Sepoys, Dervishes… you name it. Prior to the first move, one expert picked up a stand of troops: "These are Sudanese!" "No, they’re Egyptians!" "No! " I never found out who won the expertise contest. Hayes new fire chart was no bargain. To use it, you first determined the number of Fire Points (FP) generated by the firing unit. Most of the time, 1 stand generated 1 FP. Then, before tossing a 10-sided die, you looked up the appropriate modifiers to be applied to the die roll… such as a -2 if the target was in hard cover, a -1 if the firing unit moved, etc,... and then cross-indexed the FP (listed vertically) with the modified die roll (listed horizontally), and found out if the target took a disorder marker, or lost a stand, and so on. What made the chart inexplicably difficult to read was that the result depended upon the status of the target unit… different results were listed for veteran troops, experienced troops or raw troops. Which meant that a modified die toss result of "4," for example, could have no effect if the target was a unit of veterans, but could mean that a disorder marker was received if the target unit was composed of raw troops. Instead of listing different columns for each type of troop, and each type of result, Hayes could simply have given the types a different modifier for the die roll, and the fire chart’s complexity would have decreased tenfold. Hayes refereed the game, and there were 3 British players, and 6 native commanders, of whom I was one. A unit could consist of up to 10 stands, and only the front rank stands could fire. I suggested to Hayes that perhaps, if a unit commander chose to place his unit’s stands in 2 ranks, thereby sacrificing some of his firepower, he could receive a bonus in melee for the second rank. "No," said Hayes, "That wouldn’t be historically correct." Early in the battle, 6 stands of native camel cavalry charged 6 stands of Egyptian horse cavalry. Someone asked about the negative effect the camels had on horses. He asked if the cameleers should get an additional ‘plus’ in the melee. Hayes ignored this… Evidently, this, too, was not historically correct. Historically Correct What was historically correct was including a provision for the Gatling Gun jamming… and sure enough, late in the battle, one of the Gatlings went bad. I did like the sequence of the bound. 1. The Brits initially moved some or all of their units. 2. The natives moved all of their units. 3. The Brits then moved the rest of their units, the ones they hadn’t moved in the first phase. By holding back movement on the first phase, the British force thus had the capability of responding to the native movements. 4. Both sides fired simultaneously 5. Both sides then closed to contact. 6. Melees were resolved. 7. Troops were rallied on both sides. I noted that, despite Hayes' disavowal of his SWOP rules, he was continually referring to them… Did a unit pursue one that it vanquished in combat? What movement distance was sacrificed when a unit changed formation? And so on. For the first four turns, the British sat on the field in a huge square formation, not moving. Finally, Tony Figlia, who helped set up the game, stated that the Brits’ objective was to advance and capture towns and that if they continued to sit, immobile, a victory would be declared for the natives. That seemed to galvanize the British troop commanders. When a unit was hit by enemy fire, it took a morale test. The test outcomes were similar for both native and British units. My druthers would have been to have the native forces, when receiving an impact, to be disposed to advancing on the enemy, instead of falling back. But here, the units of both sides fell back with the same frequency. In fact, there was no "involuntary advance" listed as a possible outcome of the morale test. It was either "hold position" or "fall back". Hayes’ rules also incorporated the same silly firing ploy employed by FIRE AND FURY. Here, all the units firing on the same target summed their Fire Points (FP) for the look-up on the fire chart. This meant that two batteries, located a mile apart, could coordinate and add their FP together by targeting the same enemy unit. Someone raised this issue during the game, but no answer was ever given. Note I say "a mile apart", but I’m not sure of the scale of the game… rifles and muskets reached out to 24 inches, and cannon to 48 inches. Hayes adjudicated all the melees and kept saying that he wasn’t happy with his melee result chart. In truth, I thought he devalued cavalry considerably. A mounted unit got a measly +1 modifier in melee to add to its die roll. I asked about this, saying that Napoleonic cavalry got a nice big "plus" when attacking a unit not-in-square, and why didn’t he do the same? Hayes remarked that Napoleonic cavalry were much more powerful than the cavalry of the colonial era, because Napoleonic musketry was relatively ineffective. To me, this ignored the basic question… That if the cavalry did close, defensive fire or not, shouldn’t guys on horses, wielding big swords, always get a big "plus" against infantry? I, for one, wasn’t impressed with this first effort. 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