1. Bob Wiltrout and I were locked up together in a car going down and back to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a game for the weekend, and we had our usual "I have no idea of what you are talking about" discussion.
Bob first mentioned what he terms the Simon "Penalty Box"... i.e., the Rally Zone... an extremely clever idea set forth in many of my rules sets. "Just what is your Penalty Box?", sez he. "I have no idea of its meaning and why you remove figures during a game." I tried to explain, using clear and simple language, that the concept really didn't employ a "Penalty Box"... but that several men, as a result of fire or melee, decided to temporarily take off, or refused to fire their weapons, or were cowering on the battlefield. These men were of no use to the unit until they were rallied, hence the unit's efficiency would be downgraded, and the men were temporarily removed from the field until they "rallied", i.e., came back into the ranks.
We had just engaged in a battle using IN THE GRAND MANNER (ITGM), and in that set of rules, when a unit retreated or routed back say, 12 inches, the owning player selected its path so that it would impact on as few units as possible. If a unit was forced to run through a friendly unit, the friendly unit would be in disorder, or worse, for a turn until it tossed its rally dice and got reorganized.
What perturbed me about the ITGM routing rule was that the owning player, faced with a unit gone completely bonkers, the men in it having lost all cohesion for the moment, could direct these men to follow a path with the least impact upon allied units. He could say "Let's see, the unit should rout to the left to avoid the Curassiers, and then straight back... it will have to run through and impact on either the Grenadiers or the militia unit , and, obviously, I'll choose the militia."
This made perfectly good sense to Bob. It's essentially the same rule employed in NAPOLEON'S BATTLES... another one of my favorite rules sets.
But, alas!... I just couldn't convince Bob of the validity of the Rally Zone concept.
At another point in the conversation, the topic of discussion was card-activated systems. Systems in which one side selects a card, and the card gives the active side a number of actions to be undertaken... as an example, say, 2 actions, which could be devoted to fire and move, or move and fire, or fire two volleys, or move twice.
Each side holds a number of cards in its hand, and selects the best... if a critical point occurs, a '3 card' would be most helpful, permitting a 3-volley blast. And if a '3 card' isn't available, it shows the command structure has broken down for a minute. Bob's thought was that a side should not be able to select a particular card... card draws should be random. In truth, I can go either way on this, it amounts to the same thing.
And then, Bob, in referring to card systems, brought up his very favorite rules set, PIQUET (PQ). This system also employs cards for action... cards that say "infantry move", and "cavalry move", and "commence melee resolution", and "deploy", and so on. And he said that he was satisfied with the "illusion of reality" given by the PQ system. Yes, he actually used the term "illusion of realty"... As soon as he said this, I knew we came from different planets. End of discussion.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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