It never fails to amaze me how a game I design changes radically when presented at the gaming table. When I think the players should all go one way, they go the other, and force me to change and shift the rules structure to accommodate them. A case in point is a treasure hunting game I set out on the table-top in which there were 3 islands…one belonged to the Red Kingdom, one to the Blue Kingdom, and the third island was termed Treasure Island, to which both Red and Blue were to ferry their troops, plunder-and-pillage, sail their treasure home, and purchase even more ships and troops for even more plundering and pillaging. Or So I Thought. There were two types of ships… warships and treasure ships. Treasure ships did not sail by themselves… each treasure ship was “attached” to a warship, which sailed with it as a protective convoy of sorts. A warship could sail with 2 treasure ships in tandem, and each treasure ship could hold 4 “ingots” of bullion, the ingots having been gathered on Treasure Island by the invading parties. Once a treasure arrived at the homeland, the player referenced a table, and found out the true value of each ingot… each could be converted into either 3, 4, or 5 pieces of gold. After the conversion phase, there was a “buying” phase in which the player could spend his newly earned gold pieces and raise troops and purchase both warships and treasure ships. The presentation used my 10mm collection of medieval figures from Games Workshop. Slightly smaller than 15mm figures, the 10mm jobbies, mounted on stands measuring ½ inch by 1 inch, easily fit into a number of ships’ hulls I had fashioned on my bandsaw from pieces of plywood. Each warship could carry 4 stands. Two stands were defined as an army, and if they lost a combat, either on land or at sea, the entire army, both stands, was destroyed. There were five types of troops… Elephants Cost is 5 gold per stand Heavy cavalry Cost is 5 gold per stand Medium cavalry Cost is 4 gold per stand Heavy cavalry Cost is 4 gold per stand Medium infantry Cost is 3 gold per stand Elephants and heavy cavalry were the killer units on land, but they had one fatal flaw… they would not fight in a sea battle. In one instance, the Blue commander loaded up a warship with 2 elephant stands and 2 heavy cavalry stands (4 stands were the maximum a warship could carry), and sailed them off to Treasure Island. I mentioned to him that this warship was extremely vulnerable to attack at sea, since there were no defending infantry aboard to repel boarders. The Blue guy said “We’ll see!” and sailed anyway. Sure enough, up came a Red warship with lots of infantry aboard, contacted the Blue vessel, and immediately, without a fight, won control of the Blue ship. At one blow, all the Blue heavy cavalry and elephants were lost, tossed into the sea, and Blue never quite recovered. As icing on the cake, Red also captured Blue’s warship and promptly sailed it away. At the start of the game, both sides were given 2 stands (1 army) of each type of the above listed troops. When Blue lost his heavy cavalry and elephants at sea, all he had left were his medium cavalry, his heavy infantry and his medium infantry, and he had to start from scratch to build up his killer units. When a battle occurred between armies, each was given a number of 10-sided dice, termed Hit Dice (HD) Toss all your dice, look for rolls of 1, or 2, or 3, and the side with the greatest number of hits (greatest number of 1’s, 2’s, or 3’s) was the winner. The loser’s army was eliminated. After his initial disaster at sea, Blue loaded up another warship with both heavy and medium infantry (2 stands of each) and went seeking revenge upon the high seas. He came across a Red warship, and promptly smacked into it and boarded. Blue’s sub-commander, Adam, was the man who tossed Blue’s HD, and for this battle, he received lottsa HD. As umpire, I looked at the opposing Red and Blue forces. Each had 1 heavy infantry army aboard and 1 medium infantry army. Each chose to do battle with his heavy infantry; the medium infantry were used as “supports”. Blue’s HD allocation was as follows: a…For his heavy infantry army, he received a basic 4 HD b…He had a general aboard, who added 2 more HD c…For his supporting medium infantry army, another 2 HD This gave Adam a total of 8 HD, and he tossed them, looking for 1, or 2, or 3. I think only a single 1 turned up, while in contrast, Red, who tossed the same number of dice, scored 2 hits. Since Red had scored more hits than Blue, Red, by definition, was the winner, and all of Blue’s troops aboard his warship were destroyed. Additionally, Blue’s warship was captured! Another disaster at sea for Blue! A man can take only so much! The game took a surprising turn for me because I had designed (or thought I designed) a “sail-to-Treasure-Island-and pick-up-treasure” game, and instead, the people at table-side turned it into a sea battle game. Pillage and plunder took a back seat to “beat up on the other guy’s navy”, and the focus was on the number of enemy ships you could capture. Treasure Island itself was dotted with ingots… to claim them, an army had to move to the ingots and stop. On the next turn, they could then move the ingots themselves, escort them back to the treasure ship, off would sail the ship, and then the army could go also off, seeking more treasure. Also on Treasure Island were three native cities. Each turn, I, as chief umpire, tossed a die to see if native forces would pop up in any of the 3 cities. A toss of 1-to-4 produced a native army ( a 40 percent chance natives would appear). Native armies didn’t move too frequently… I had created them to harass and not to eliminate the armies of Red and Blue. But this too, went awry. Battle on Treasure Island One native force moved out, attacking the nearest invading army, which happened to be a Red one. The Red force was wandering around Treasure Island, and it had gathered 2 ingots and was about to take them back to the Red treasure ship. As umpire, I assigned both forces their dice. The Red army was composed of 2 stands of medium infantry. They received For the army, Red got his basic 4 HD The native army was composed of one stand of heavy infantry and one stand of medium cavalry… they received: a…For the army, a basic 4 HD b…For the heavy infantry, they matched up against Red’s medium infantry, definitely favorable to the natives. This gave them a bonus of another 3 HD c…For the medium cavalry, they matched up against the Red medium infantry, again a favorable situation for the natives, and so they received another 3 HD. In summary, Red’s total HD were 4, while the native force got 10 HD… it looked bad for Red. And so it proved to be… the natives scored more hits on Red than vice versa, and, by definition, Red’s army was destroyed and the 2 ingots were lost. The native army had advanced on Red because of the Random Events Chart, a must for all grand strategy games. I term the chart the “Whoopee Chart”, and it’s called upon once each turn to see what good or disastrous events occur on the field. There are a total of 20 possible events, such as “one Red warship capsizes at sea’”, or “Blue enlists one heavy infantry stand in his capital”, or “one Blue treasure ship loses 2 ingots overboard”, or “native forces move”, and so on. In our first game, poor Red lost 3 warships at sea, solely due to the Whoopee Chart results. For the second game, I revamped the percentages involved and it proved not nearly so disastrous. With 3 players per side, the game went swiftly… it took less than 3 hours to come to a conclusion… it was obvious that Blue, due to his disastrous beginning , was going nowhere. The sequence called for (a) ships to move, (b) troops to move, (c) resolve combat on land and at sea, and (d) a number of administrative steps in which both sides converted their ingots to gold pieces, took their gold and bought ships and raised troops, and so on. Not too bad for a first cut. Back to PW Review June 2002 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com