Sam Hepford gifted me with a huge assortment of his single-mounted 20mm figures and said ‘take care of ‘em’. What more could I do than to present a game the following week in honor of the Hepford bounty? He had included lots of WW2 figures, some ECW figures and a buncha other figures. It was these “other figures” which I grabbed. Many of the “other” 20mm figures seemed to be the “future-type” miniatures… little soldiers and military people dressed in star-wars uniforms, and a bunch of civilians, both male and female, who were armed with pistols, rifles and sub-machine guns, all ready to battle in the 23rd century. I decided to group them all together in one scenario, and have the civilian types battle the military types in a riot-cum-uprising affair. The field of battle was a table-size map of areas, each area around 6-inches by 6-inches. The map represented a town and it contained 7 key areas. There were 2 Police Stations… from which the police would emerge to battle the rioters… there was a broadcasting tower from which the rebels… if they captured it… could announce their independence to the world, there was an armory of weapons available to the side that held it, and so on. Each of the key locations was valued in terms of Victory Points (VP), as the rebels tried to collect as many VPs as they could. There was a port area on one side of the field. Here, a couple of naval units waited to see if they’d join the rebels… more VP. And there were some National Guard units which could be called in if the situation got out of hand for the police… more VP for the rebels. Each side was given a number of units, where a unit consisted of 5 to 7 figures. A couple of the military and police units contained 7 men, simply because Sam had painted… and I have no idea why… 7-man units, men wearing the same uniform. I divided the civilians into 8 units, or groups, of 6 people each. The police also had 8 units. At the outset, the rebels moved first, the idea being that they had caught the police flatfooted. They diced for the number of units moving onto the field (either 2, or 1, or none) and then diced to see how far their units could move (either 3 or 4 areas). The rebels could have their groups show up, when they were the active side, only if they possessed either the Town Hall or the City Hall… these two key locations were worth money in the bank to the rebels. In effect, they were holding public meetings to get the people to join their cause. They diced for each location they held, and, with lucky dice tosses, could bring as many as 4 units on board at a time (until they hit their own maximum of 8). Movement throughout the city could be penalized. I placed a number of terrain markers all over the city… in these affected areas, there were either 1, 2 or 3 markers. I used little ‘bushes’ as the markers. To pass through such an area, a unit had to toss a 6-sided die and throw a number more than the number of markers present. Thus in a 1-marker area, any toss of 2-through-6 enabled the unit to pass through successfully and not be held up. In effect, a terrain marker didn’t represent rough terrain so much as it did a crowded city street in that area, littered with all sorts of debris, holding up movement and traffic. For the first couple of turns, the rebels, on their “how-many-units-appear” tosses, tossed low and only one mob showed up. The police were even more unfortunate, since for the first few turns, they could get no reinforcements whatsoever. And so, initially, the rioters outnumbered the police units. But despite being somewhat overwhelmed, the police managed to run a unit across the board and get it into the Armory. Whichever side held the Armory during a fire phase could toss a 6-sider and a 1, 2, or 3 would produce an MG. As long as your troops held the Armory, there was an infinite source of MGs. MGs were powerful weapons. Not only did they outrange the other weapons (a range of 2 areas) but the MG could fire for a distance of 3 areas, and they tossed more hit dice. During the fire phase, when a group fired, it tossed a die for each man, and looked for doubles. Every double that showed up meant a morale test for the target unit. Thus a group of 6 men, tossing its 6 dice, could score, at most 3 hits (3 doubles). An MG, when firing, was given 2 “bursts”… it tossed two sets of 4 dice each. This gave the MG a potential of tossing 4 doubles… requiring the target to take 4 morale tests. From the point of view of the target, the worst double that could appear was double-1. Here, not only was a morale test mandated, but one figure was removed to the off-board Rally Zone, temporarily weakening the unit. Each side had 8 units, and I decided that no one would actually “die” in the game… no permanent casualties. Victory Points would be scored for possession of the key locations and for knocking guys into the Rally Zone. But, once in the Rally Zone, the men would eventually recover, even of it took a couple of turns to do so. Along about the 8th turn, my carefully calculated plans were not working out. The Victory Points collected by the sides closely matched up… they equaled each other. Neither side could gain any leeway. And so it appeared that the game, if there would continue to be no permanent casualties, would be a draw. Not good. At that point, I switched ploys… forget about the Victory Points, and concentrate on the permanent casualties. And this time, to assess casualties, if a man failed his rallying test, trying to rejoin his unit, he’d keel over. The rioters slowly pulled ahead. Sequence The sequence was pretty basic: There was first, a movement phase for the active side. This was followed by “free fire” for the non-active side… all of his units could fire. The third phase was a “reactive one”. Here, the sides spent Reaction Points (RP) to permit individual units to fire. The sides would alternate in their RP allocations until they ran out. Fourth was close assault. Fifth and last, was a rally phase, enabling men in the Rally Zones to get back on the field. I was interested in the participants’ reaction to the third phase, the reaction phase ploy. At first, I heard grumbling about the Reaction Points procedures… that if a unit wanted to fire, then let it fire… why go through the silliness of assigning it points? But the grumbling died out, and a quick head count indicated that most of the gamers present found no fault with the procedure. They agreed with me that with all the units on the board, some sort of limitation on the firing sequence was logical. Here, for example, with 4 Reaction Points assigned to a side per turn, it could have only 4 of its 8 units fire, hence there were decisions to be made concerning the priority of fire. The rebels seemed to have great success in capturing just about every one of the key locations except the Armory. For some reason, every assault on the Armory was beaten off. The defending police unit would fire at the attacking unit, toss one or two doubles, causing morale checks, and the attackers would fail their morale tests and be forced to retreat. And, in the meantime, every turn that the police held the Armory, they tossed a 6-sided die, looking for a 1, 2 or 3, which would indicate a MG popped up, with its greater range and larger dice toss. Lucky for the rioters, many of the police MG tosses didn’t pan out, and during the battle, they only came up with 3 MGs. And whenever the rebel saw an MG within range, they’d target it, force a morale test, and hope to drive it off the field and into the Rally Zone. The morale test was a simple die roll… a toss of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 was fine.,,, the unit held position. A 5 or 6 on the morale test was bad news… it meant that one stand from the testing unit had to go to the Rally Zone, and with a regular unit of 6 men, one guy off to the Rally Zone wasn’t that big a deal. But since the MG was a 1-stand unit, a failure meant that off it would go. Exit one MG. I was disappointed that my Victory Point tallies hadn’t worked out. I thought that the police’s totals would simply swamp those of the rebels’, and that the rioters would have great difficulty in spreading across the map, capturing the key locations and amassing points. Not so. About the only key location that held out for any length of time was the Armory. And, in truth, because of the police rotten dice throws to come up with an MG, even possession of the Armory wasn’t that great a factor. The rebels even closed on one of the police stations. A brief exchange of fire, and out ran the defending police (having failed a critical morale test), and the rioters were in charge of one of the two police stations! The other police station fared better, beating off a couple of attacks. When we decided to call it quits, the rebels possessed all of the key locations but one… a sole police station still under police control. The rioters had managed to capture and raise the flag of liberty throughout the city. Not a long game… about 2 1/2 hours, and it kept most of us awake. Back to PW Review October 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