Terry Sirk and I pounced upon an unsuspecting enemy force during our Entropian campaign exercises. Terry had some 700 Army Points (AP), I had 600 and Entropian Force D had 600 AP. Odds of 1300 to 600 sounded good to us. The terrain as derived from the campaign map was pretty bare as is shown in Figure 1 ... good cavalry country ... but in the interests of science, we decided to test out a set of infantry skirmish rules, a variant of those outlined in the March '85 REVIEW. Devotees of this publication will, sans doute, remember the accounting of how Osman the Skull Smasher was done in by Sergeant Mushe in our introductory game with the rules. An additional thought or two, a visit to the photocopy machine to print up some data sheets, and prestol ... we had Version 2, a slightly more sophisticated set. Each man in the skirmish has the following 5 attributes: STRENGTH (S) The ability to overpower AGILITY (A) The ability to disengage from melee DEFEND (D) Expertise with weapon STRIKE (H) Expertise with weapon MARKSMANSHIP (M) Expertise with weapon All factors except for MARKSMANSHIP, start out at a value of 10. There are good marksmen, these Commence with a MARKSMANSHIP of 50. There are poor marksmen.. their M starts out at 25. Depending upon the man's proficiency, therefore, the undesired M row must be crossed out on the data sheets shown at right in figure 2. With 10 boxes per characteristic, each man has an initial total of 50 boxes. For our Entropian skirmish, we gave each box a value of 1 Army Point, hence a man was worth 50 AP. I, with my 600 points, took 12 figures; Terry with 700, took 14,, and Entropian force D had 12 figures with its 600 AP. We used increment cards for movement; on each increment, a man could move 4 inches or fire. Each side was given a deck ( 3 held in the hand, 7 face down), cards were alternately played by both sides from the handheld trio, and were replenished every turn. NO OF INCREMENTS NO OF CARDS 1 3 2 4 3 3 10 cards per side On each increment, a man could fire a VOLLEY, not just a shot, of up to 10 rounds. That's where the row on the data sheet termed AMMUNITION comes in. in our game, we gave every man an initial AMMUNITION supply of 30 rounds. The probability of hitting the target depended upon the number of rounds fired and the range. In the open, we had: P = 10 x No of Rounds Fired + MARKSMANSHIP factor - RANGE in inches If a target was in cover, the number of rounds fired would be multiplied by 5 instead of 10. Thus on a 3 increment card, if a poor marksman chose to fire at a target 52 inches away on the first increment, move up 4 inches on the second, and fire again on the third: FIRST INCREMENT assume 8 rounds fired, Range at 52, P =(10 x 8) +25 - 52 = 53% THIRD INCREMENT assume 10 rounds fired, Range at 48 inches. P =(10 x 10) +25 - 48 = 77% The man has now used up 18 rounds; if he had 30 initially, he's now down to 12 rounds. The firing procedure was a 3 phase affair. The first encompassed a percentage dice throw to see if the target was struck in accordance with the probability-of-hit just described. Another dice throw was then made to determine just which attribute was impacted upon. This second dice throw was distributed thusly: DIE ROLL : AREA AFFECTED 01 - 10 : All Attributes 11 - 30 : AGILITY 31 - 40 : STRIKE 41 - 50 : DEFEND 50 - 85 : STRENGTH 86 - 100 : MARKSMNSHIP This same second dice throw also indicated the particular effect on the impacted attribute: Odd dice roll 1 box crossed off Even dice roll 2 boxes crossed off Doubles 3 boxes crossed off On the third phase, the target, if hit, now checked his morale. This time the SUM of two 10- sided dice were used. Here, this SUM had to be less than or equal to the total of the target's STRENGTH plus his AGILITY. Note that on the impact table given above, AGILITY would be hit 20% and STRENGTH 35% of the time, hence the target's morale would be affected on over half ( 55% ) of all hits incurred. Hand-to-hand was fairly simple in that each opponent chose one of four of his attributes. He could: STRIKE with his weapon DEFEND with his weapon Overpower with his STRENGTH Jump back and disengage with his AGILITY After each chose the appropriate factor, the opposing parties each threw a 10-sided die, multiplied their factor by the result and the higher product won. The winner then threw percentage dice to see the effect on his opponent on the impact table at the top of this page. After the appropriate number of boxes were crossed out, the loser checked his morale ( the total of STRENGTH and AGILITY ) and if he did not run for cover, the melee continued on the next card draw. Having said all that, now let's get back to the skirmish. Terry's 14 men took over our right flank in the open as depicted in Figure 1, while I took my 12 men and made for the woods.. My squad of 12 included Stumpy ... and now I must digress about Stumpy. Stumpy We had chosen a British colonial era action and I placed my supply of single-mounted Brits and miscellaneous natives on the field, all sturdy looking figures.. All but Stumpy, that is. Stumpy is a misfit. Stumpy is, in truth, a handicapped person ( we don't. tell him that, of course ) ... how he got into the British army shall forever remain a mystery. I am told that Stumpy is a 25mm British trooper put out by FALCON, a firm now producing a British colonial line. Ron Prillaman, a PW member, sold me Stumpy... in fact sold me several Stumpies. Ron is a fan of THE SWORD AND THE FLAME, yet even Ron had to get rid of 'em. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first beheld Stumpy and his clones. My immediate reaction was to sever one figure at the waist, solder the top half to the bottom half of another 35mm British trooper I have, and thus develop a fairly respectable looking figure, compatable with the rest of my 35mm Brits. From the rib cage up, Stumpy is quite husky ... built like a 35, one might say. But Stumpy's problem is that his crotch appears to be directly attached to the lower end of his sternum. This makes it extremely hard for him to breath, impossible to run fast, difficult to urinate, and, without doubt, has ruined what little sex life he ever dreamt of. FALCON figures were reviewed in THE COURIER, Vol V/ No 3, May/June 1984. The magazine pictured two other figures in the FALCON line, who, I must admit, look much better than Stumpy. But how FALCON - assuming that FALCON is the manufacturer - had the nerve to put an abomination like Stumpy on the market is beyond me. Poor Stumpy simply has no middle torso ... no belly button. Please note that while I haven't actually unclothed Stumpy, what I say has to be fact... The interesting thing to me is that the reviewer in THE COURIER gave the FALCON line of 25mm figures essentially a 5 out of a possible 10 for "anatomy." The reviewer obviously had his dark glasses on at the time, examined the figures in a coal mine at midnight, and caressed-them, no doubt lasciviously, wearing three-fingered mittens. In no other way can I explain the rating. Back to the Game Despite the diatribe on Stumpy's marketable aspects, I must admit that Stumpy did well in combat. As twelfth man on his squad, he entered the woods 'midst a hail of bullets from the Entropians ensconced therein. One Entropian warrior, in particular, took a dislike to our stunted hero. Fortunately, the Entropian's MARKSMANSHIP - which started at 25 was down to 20, and when he fired at Stumpy at close range of 4 inches the multiplier of 5 ( since the action took place in the woods ) saved Stumpy's skin: P = (5 x 10 rounds] + 20 MARKSMANSHIP - 4 inches range = 66% Even with several such volleys, the Entropian's dice throws were way off and he just couldn't zero in on Stumpy as the wee one dodged to and fro in the woods. Our lad even got off a couple of accurate volleys himself despite his own MARKSMANSHIP factor, which commenced at 25. As for the battle itself, even though the Sirk/Simon team walloped the Entropians with very little loss themselves, they didn't accomplish their objective... which was to eliminate Force D from the campaign completely. Force D was reduced to about 260 Army Points and the campaign rule for forces under 500 points came into play. When a force drops below 500, its chance of staying on the field as a viable fighting entity is: P = [No of Army Points]/ (500) In this instance, 260/500 is 52%, and Force D thus essentially had a 50-50 chance of staying on. The dice were thrown, and the upshot was that Force D was not driven from the campaign. It merely fled, to remain a thorn in the side of our valiant heroes and, of course, Stumpy. Part II: Stumpy Back to PW Review April 1985 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1985 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