Unit size: 5 men *The credit for this superb name goes to Bob Hurst Card Deck Increments : No of Cards 1 : 3 2 : 4 3 : 3 10 cards total for each side Movement Infantry 4 inches per increment Cavalry 8 inches per Increment Artillery Infanfry move when unlimbered and Cavalry move when limbered Morale Checked only when casualties from fire occur. The number of morale checks for a unit equals the number of hits. Modified Die Roll : No of Men Placed at Rally Point 01 - 10 : 0 11 - 15 : 1 16 - 20 : 2 Modifier to die roll: Add Number of men missing from group of 5 Rally Each group of 5 at the Rally Point checks-after move/fire/melee completed. Each figure counts as 2 men for rallying purposes. Rallied men are immediately placed with a unit as long as the number of men in the unit does not exceed 5. Modified Die Roll : Number of Men Rallied 01 - 10 : 0 11 - 15 : 1 16 - 20 : 2 Modifier to die roll: Add 2 x (Number of Rallying Figures) Firing Groups of 5 men fire. Artillery use same firing procedures as small arms. Native guns are manned by 3 figures, each of whom counts as 3 men for firing calculations. British guns are manned by 5 figures. Modified Die Roll : Result 01 - 10 : No hits, no casualties 11 - 15 : One hit: Die roll is odd -- man placed at Rally Point Die roll is even -- kill 16 - 20 : Two hits: one man killed, one placed at Rally Point Die roll modifiers Add Number of Increments of fire Number of men firing ( max of 5 per group) +1 if target not in cover +1 for British unit firing Subtract 10's digit of range measurement Melee All men in opposing units are paired off and fight until only one unit remains. If a unit is contacted, melee is held up until the next (the defender's) card draw, when the unit contacted may fire at its attackers for the full number of increments. Type : Value All artillery : 4 All infantry : 5 Irregular cavalry : 6 Regular cavalry : 7 Add +1 to value for any advantage Combat Points (CP) = (10-sided die roll) x Value Combat results: If CP(1) is greater than CP(2), loser is placed at the Rally Point If CP(1) is more than twice CP(2), the loser is killed. Rally Point This set of rules uses the concept of the "Rally Point". Note that on the fire and morale result tables there is a special provision for men that flee. Having withdrawn temporarily from the action, these men are immediately placed at the Rally Point, a specified site of vast importance for each side ... for to have your Rally Point captured means to lose the battle. The Rally Point is a symbolic portrayal of Headquarters, where the High Command, the General Staff, the Joint Chiefs, the Supreme Authority, i.e., the brains reside. Headquarters gathers up and sends men into battle. At the end of each turn, there is a rally phase, and men who rally are instantly placed in any unit anywhere on the field, as long as the number of men in the unit does not exceed 5. Note that men are apparently transported to, and sent from, the Rally Point in rather telekenetic fashion. A man's morale fails, and even though he may be 47 inches from the Rally Point, he is immediately picked up and placed there. Similarly, he rallies and is immediately taken from the Rally Point and placed with any unit on the field, regardless of the distance traveled. This flow of men into and out of the Rally Point represents the continual influx and outgo of stragglers associated with units in battle. When a man rallies, and is made to magically appear somewhere to join a squad, it's not as if his corporeal body was wonderfully wafted through the air to land near the unit. In essence, he was there all the time, albeit out of action, hence ineffective. His being placed there thus represents a rallying of the cloud of ineffective men with which every force on the field is endowed. A battlefield is full of idlers, shirkers, deserters, skulkers, cowards, etc., who contribute nothing until properly recalled to action. The rally function represents the activation of a part of these idlers, perhaps hurried along by an officer seeking to round up a few more men to strengthen the line and using the flat of his sword to good effect. As each ineffective recovers, he rejoins the responsive elements of his force, and we symbolize this by moving the rallied man from the Rally Point to the desired unit. I like the Rally Point concept, for it rids the field of pieces of routed units with which most wargames are afflicted. One never knows quite what to do with routing units ... how far they must flee, in which direction they must run, how long to recover ... the Rally Point neatly solves this problem ... if a man's morale fails, he's simply placed in limbo until he recovers, and until that time, his force is deprived of his services. By putting the Rally Point on the field, each side thus has established a very vulnerable point at which the enemy may strike. Capturing the Rally Point deprives the opposition of recovering routed troops. Men at the Rally Point, being in limbo, don't fight ... if the enemy breaks in amongst them, it's "free hack" time. Scenario The terrain for one of our scenarios is depicted in Figure 1. British objectives were to recapture the 2 cannons which the natives had previously taken fron the British and were now using to good effect, and to break through to the horse compounds and bring back horses to weaken the native cavalry. The natives were not told of the British goals; their own orders were to prevent a British breakthrough to their baseline. The British, with 10 5-man squads and one Gatling team, were permitted to come on the field anywhere along their baseline. The natives, on the first turn, were allowed to position three 5-man units anywhere they wished. There were 10 native infantry units, plus 2 cannons and crews, in all. Once the first 3 squads had been placed, the remaining units were diced for as to location. The native commander would point to a desired location and roll one 10-sided die. The distance, in inches, at which the unit was actually located away from the desired location was 3 x (die roll), hence the squad might be over 24 inches from where the commander wanted it to be. A die was also rolled for the direction of the offset: a one third chance each of being located 45 degrees left, straight back, or 45 degrees right of the location ... the offset was always behind the desired location, never to the front. The British divided their force in three, as shown in the Figure. Their western contingent of 4 squads, headed by Colonel Fred Hubig, went towards the Valley of Sorrow. Our man, Stumpy, was amongst these troops. Opposing them was I Ching Terry Sirk, commanding some 5 Chinese Boxer 5-man squads. Fred Haub, Great Pasha and Chief of the Afghans, was faced by Colonel Bob Hurst ( just plain 'Colonel Bob' to his men ), who commenced two separate thrusts: his Gatling gun crew set out for the Canyon of Tears supported by several British squads of the Volunteer Brigade, while other Volunteer units went west towards the Pass of Sadness.. It was noteworthy that Pasha Haub declined to place any of his Afghans in the Native Redoubt, which I had purposely constructed to command the entrance to the Canyon of Tears. The Pasha thought this was too exposed a position; he set his initial units out, 'a la Wellington' on the reverse slopes of the Hill of Doom. This cautious action on the part of the Pasha eventually led to the natives' downfall, for Colonel Bob took full advantage of the unmanned southern slopes of the Hill of Doom. Colonel Bob first set his Gatling up at the entrance to the Canyon of Tears, evidently expecting a horde of natives to come pouring out. When not a single Afghan berserker materialized, the Colonel then ordered his crew to slog up the Hill of Doom and set up the Gatling in the Native Redoubt. The Pasha fought this move quite fiercely, but despite many casualties, the Gatling finally appeared, the crew commenced to pump away, and the Pass of Pity was cleared. With a 5 figure crew, each counting as 3 men for firing calculations, there are, in effect, 15 men at the Gatling. Groups of 5 fire at one time, hence the Gatling, with 15 men, gets 3 blasts per turn. The gun is thus the equivalent of 3 full 5-man squads, and constitutes a fairly devastating weapon. Once Colonel Bob got going, the Hill of Doom was his. And while the Pasha was getting his fill of rounds from the Gatling, Colonel Hubig was proving a true martinet, maintaining straight lines, ensuring his men were in proper dress ... all this while advancing through the Valley of Sorrow under heavy Chinese fire. I Ching had placed two extremely fierce units, the Keepers of the Gate (I painted them myself with the fiercest paint money could buy), in the Woods of Loneliness and Colonel Hubig finally got close enough to charge them with 2 of his own units. A bloody melee ensued, the British were thrown back, and the Keepers of the Gate kept their position in the Woods of Loneliness. I must note that Stumpy, our stunted hero, half the size of his fellow squad members, was In one of the attacking units. Note that I say "was", for it turned out out - and this grieves me greatly - that during the advance of the British, and during one of the morale checks his unit was forced to undergo, Stumpy just couldn't hack it ... he failed his morale test and back to the Rally Point he went. Thus he never even got to participate in the defeat in the woods. While one segment of Colonel Hubig's force was opposing the Keepers of the Gate, and getting the bejeezers beat out of 'em, his remaining troops reached the north end of the Valley of Sorrow and turned to the northwest, closing in on the nearby corral. A turn or so later, and Stumpy, having recovered his aplomb, joined these units. This time he gave tit for tat, helping in the final push. Both cannon were recaptured by the British; the natives had been forced by the rough terrain and lack of fields of fire to bring their guns too far forward. This was not cannon country, and the only artillery piece of any effectiveness was the Gatling, and that occurred only after it had gained the heights of the Hill of Doom. One would think that with the rules employing a squad of 5 men, units would be fairly brittle and would disappear rather quickly in the heat of battle. Not so. The saving factor is the Rally Point. As long as 5 or less man exists in a unit, he can be reinforced during the rally phase up to the 5 man maximum. Hence, just as it looks as if a particular unit is so far down in strength as to be overrun, reinforcements can be thrown in to save the day. All of which leads to an interesting series of tactical ploys, for as men recover at the Rally Point, the commander must make a number of key decisions concerning which particular unit to bolster. Back to PW Review May 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