Four stands is a brigade, and I had 4 infantry and 4 armor brigades, a small division. Bob Hurst had the same, and we faced each other across 5 feet of table while referring to a brand new, absolutely brilliant (and historically realistic) set of rules I had concocted. I had read a couple of reviews of WW2 boardgames in which, when one group of stacked counters engaged another, the combat result was to have the losing side disperse his counters… he had to break up his stack… some units went one way, others that way, while others went over there. Having been distributed all over the landscape, he then had to gather his troops together again, trying to build up to his former combat strength. I liked the “dispersement” idea, and thought I’d gin up a set of rules to test the system. And so both my combat charts, firing and close assault, had a listing of results which would penalize a targeted unit (brigade), temporarily reducing its strength. There were three basic results tabulated in the charts: First, a “little d”... (d) When you saw a little d, then one, or more, stands in the brigade were driven back and were placed 10 inches from the mother brigade. When a side was active, it was given a total number of actions which could be used for firing or movement. An action permitted a group of stands to move 5 inches. With a dispersed stand 10 inches out, it would take 2 of the precious actions to bring the stand back within the fold, thus penalizing the force. Second, a “big D”… (D) Seeing a big D on the combat chart meant that you placed a stand in the off-board rally zone, where it waited for a particular phase in the sequence to see if it rallied and rejoined its unit. If the unfortunate stand didn’t rally (70 percent chance to do so), it was destroyed. Third, a “Kill”… (K) Here, you immediately knocked off a stand. At the beginning of the battle, all our forces were off-board, and when our side was active, we diced to see the number of actions we received to bring our brigades on-board. The maximum number of actions was 8, the minimum was 6. Below is a section of the fire chart. All the stands in a brigade fired together, and we’d add up its total fire points. When an infantry stand fired, it added 2 fire points to the brigade’s total, hence a 4-stand brigade looked at the chart with 8 points. Each tank stand contributed 3 points and the tank brigade totaled 12 points. Refer to the fire points in the left hand column get the appropriate row, and toss percentage dice to get the appropriate column along the top. Fire Pts 1-20 21-50 51-70 71-80 81-100 8,9 1K /1d 1D/ 1d 1d NE NE 10,11 1K/ 1D 1K/ 1d 1D/ 1d 1d NE 12,13 2K 1K/ 1D 1K/ 1d 1D/ 1d NE When we began, whenever Bob diced, he continually got favorable numbers… whether he was dicing for hits or actions or morale tests or rallying, or whatever, things went well for him. First Moves On one of my first moves, I diced and received 8 actions for my units. I assigned all 8 of them to one particular tank brigade… this gave the brigade 5 inches for each assigned action, resulting in a 40 inch movement. By doing this, I penalized my other units… there were no actions available for them for either fire or movement. My intent was to take the tank brigade and make a swift, across-the-board, long distance move, switching it from my left flank to my right. After I moved, Bob fired and he targeted my brigade, now strung out in column, with a couple of his own units. As the chart above indicates, low dice tosses are good ones in most Simon rules systems… and here, Bob completely pulverized my brigade… big Ds, little ds, Ks… My brigade never recovered… its stands were all over the place, my attempt at a cross-country run failed and I never could assemble it again. When a unit was hit, there was no morale test… the charted factors handled all the appropriate results. A K result in the chart wiped out a stand, and the only other way a stand could be eliminated was for it fail its rally test in the rally zone. At battle’s end, I had lost 3 of my 4 tank brigades, and 1 infantry brigade… you just can’t fight them there low dice throws. And now for something different… a second battle, using yet another set of rules. No fire or combat charts here… simply take the fire points of each stand firing, and total them to get a Probability of Hit (POH). But the critical factor in this set was to obtain and keep the initiative. Here, I was trying to emulate the procedures of Artie Conliffe’s CROSS FIRE (CF), wherein a side could keep going and going and going until it lost the initiative. Most of the time in CF, initiative was lost by attempting to fire at an enemy unit and failing the attempt. And so, in these rules, the active side moved all of its units and then diced to see how many of the units had to fire and successfully hit the target. If it didn’t, i.e., if any of the prescribed units failed, initiative passed immediately to the other side. There was a basic 8-phase sequence: 1 Active Side (AS) moves all its units 10 inches 2 AS then dices to see how many units must successfully hit their targets, either 3, 2, or 1. The AS then fires. 3 Non-Active Side (NAS) then has “opportunity fire”… a number of limited shots 4 NAS then moves its vehicles 10 inches 5 AS dices to see how many additional “free” shots it may get 6 Close assault is resolved. 7 AS dices for its “field orders”, permitting it to receive certain fire tokens, and so on. 8 Clear up casualties, rally units, adjust morale level. If, on Phase 2, the AS failed to get the requisite number of hits, initiative passed to the opposition, starting again on Phase 1, and the AS was thus deprived of its advantages in Phases 5 and 7. The “opportunity fire” of Phase 3 was controlled by a “clock-die”. Roll a 10-sided clock-die, and have the first unit fire. Roll the clock-die again, and see if the total of the two clock-die numbers reached 10. Keep tossing the clock-die… when the accumulated number totaled 10, that was the last unit that could fire. Note that by tossing a consecutive number of very low clock-die rolls, a side could continually keep firing. Each side’s initial Morale Level (ML), applicable to all units in the force, started at 90. Thus at first, when a unit was hit and took a morale test, it commenced with a basic 90 percent rate and deducted 10 points for every casualty figure it had. When a target was hit, several things happened, all of which had an impact on the Morale Level (ML) of the entire force. First, the target unit was given a casualty figure Second, the target unit took a morale test. If it failed, one stand in the unit was placed in the rally zone, and the force’s ML decreased by 5 points. Third, during the rally phase (Phase 8, above), stands in the rally zone attempted to rejoin their units. Each stand was “rolled off” separately. If it failed, the force’s ML dropped by another 5 points. Fourth, during the same rally phase, all the casualty figures which the sides had collected during the firing and melee phases of the bound, were looked at… there was a 70 percent chance they’d be removed successfully. Each casualty figure was “rolled off”. If it failed, the force’s ML would drop again by another 5 points. Using the above procedures, the ML points of both sides dropped rapidly from their initial value of 90, zipping down toward the zero mark. And since all units used the force’s ML as their reference point for the morale test, the situation could only get worse, and never better. The “initiative ploy”, upon which the game was based, wasn’t too bad… when it was time for the Active Side to fire its mandatory number of units, it selected those with the highest POHs. Most of the time, the assigned POHs were in the order of 60 to 70 percent, so there weren’t that many failed attempts. But what bolluxed up the game were the ever-decreasing Morale Levels (ML) which all units used in their morale tests. As these MLs dropped, it became impossible for units to pass a test. It was a vicious, self-feeding cycle… use a low morale level in the test, fail, and decrease the ML yet again by 5 points, thus making the next morale test even more difficult to pass. What I should have done was to have changed the terminology… instead of a “Morale Level” for the force, call it a “Coherency Index” or some other high-faluting name. When the Coherency Index dropped to zero, that indicated that the force was exhausted and the battle was over. The true Morale Level of each unit should have been independent of the Coherency Index, and it should have been somewhere around the 70 mark, with a couple of points deducted for each hit on a unit. Using a “universal”, ever-decreasing reference for the morale level of every unit wasn’t too bright an idea. But you win some, you lose some. It is probably pointless to say this, but once again Bob Hurst beat the pants off me. I make up the silly rules systems, and he uses ‘em to win. There is no justice in the world. Back to PW Review November 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