Our end-of-February convention came and went... we counted around 700 admissions -- including dealers. And this with an exceptionally late mailing, virtually no advertising, and no attempt at all to play up the affair. It was held at the Ramada Inn at New Carrollton, in the northeast suburbs of Washington, DC, and it was as crowded and as noisy as ever. If these events are judged by factors such as crowding, pushing, noisiness, etc., it was a vast success. One of the first games that I sat in on was an ON TO RICHMOND (OTR) affair run by Dick Bryant of THE COURIER. At our local PW meetings, we're running a three battle series... the same ACW encounter in 15mm fought with three different sets of rules: a new set by Rich Hasenauer, Paul Koch's OTR, and my own. It's been a long time since I engaged in an OTR game, and I wanted to renew my acquaintance with the game. At the start, Dick asked who wanted to be a Union general, who wanted to be a Confederate general, etc. And then he said: "Who wants to be a Union Side General?" I immediately raised my hand; a "Side General" looked easy... some sort of adjutant who'd command, perhaps, a reserve unit and come on the field around Turn 25, allowing me to observe the game undisturbed. But I discovered that Bryant's definition of a "Side General" was The Union General, i.e., I was in command of the Union forces. This meant that I couldn't go to sleep immediately; it was too responsible a position, and I had to stay awake for the preliminary strategy... but then, who ever listens to the Commanding Officer? There were four others on the Union side, including Dan Beattie and Jay Hadley. Our mission was to link up with the "lost division," a unit way out on our right flank. It turned out that Hadley, who ran the "lost division", had no problem at all ... he linked up with us! We still lost, mainly because of a rather neat Confederate movement which ate up our left flank. As the "Side General", I had no troops of my own to move, and perhaps this aided my impression that the game seemed to be rather slow moving. It was surprising to me that despite OTR's popularity over the years, no one seemed particularly familiar with the rules. familiar enough, for example, to adjudicate a melee by themselves. All waited 'till Dick Bryant arrived at that part of the field where a melee was to be resolved and read the appropriate factors from his chart. I must note one excellent procedure in the game. I don't know if it's in the original OTR, or only in the Bryant version. It started off with a Union cavalry charge upon a fairly well beat up Confederate brigade only two stands left out of seven.  OTR does not encourage frontal cavalry charges, but here, the attack was successful; the horsemen accumulated enough melee points to completely wipe out the two infantry stands. Then it was "breakthrough time"... and the cavalry smashed into the front of a nearby column of Confederate cavalry. The gaming procedure that so impressed me was that the Confederate column was permitted to deploy and counter the charging Union horse! Years ago, when I first participated in Paul Koch's initial OTR playtesting, such a thing was unheard of... the targeted cavalry column would have had to stand impotent, immobile, not permitted to change formation and respond to the attack. There are many rules sets - COLUMN, LINE & SQUARE immediately comes to mind - in which, during a breakthrough move, the target unit cannot respond but must accept the charge in its existing formation. This has always been a wee bit illogical to my mind... one would think that the second target unit, seeing the melee going on nearby, in which the first target unit was getting chewed up, would deploy to be ready "just in case". I never thought to ask Dick if, had the second target been infantry, whether they, too, would have been allowed to react. A group of our local PWers helped out the Smithsonian Associates program by presenting a series of games for a "hands on" demonstration. I was quite surprised at the reaction of the Smithsonian attendees... at past affairs, they have appeared reluctant to participate in the demonstrations. This time, they actually sat down, threw dice, and pushed toy soldiers around the table. At the ACW game I set up, I started out by telling the small group at my table: "Now, remember, this is a game... and a table top game cannot really be a simulation... Heretical talk And so, about five minutes into my spiel, I came to my senses and realized: what am I doing? This is not the thing to say to the Smithsonian group members who, supposedly, are all historic buffs and came to the lecture specifically because of the simulations they would see. And so I sort of backtracked: "...cavalry rarely closed frontally on infantry, so we'll give the cavalry a hard time if they try to do so...", and "...the rifled musket range is effective to about 300 yards which is represented by some 20 inches on the table..." and other historical realisticities and simulationships. I don't know how it sounded to my audience, but it sounded good to me. The Smithsonians took all this in good stride. In point of fact, the ACW rules I used were brand new; my intent was to foist them upon the unsuspecting Smithsonians to see if someone completely unfamiliar with wargaming could quickly catch on. I was pleased to see that they did... bearing in mind, of course, that Simon procedures are designed not so much to tax the grey cells concerning the rules complexities (add 3 for Tasmanian elites, subtract 5 for all downhill charges by the Madagascar militia), but in terms of the command and control options open to the commander. I joined in a Greg Novak sponsored game: Bonny Prince Charles, trying to gain the throne, crossed swords with the King's general, the Duke of Cumberland, circa 1745. An interesting set of rules drummed up by Greg, printed out on both sides of one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, using an incremental sequence governed by the draw of a card... red, and the Royalists go; black, and the rebels move. The deck contains 1's, 2's, and 3's... hence if a 3 is drawn, all units on that side can perform 3 actions. The permitted actions for infantry, for example, were: a. Move b. Wheel c. Face d. Recover e. Fire f. Load g. Charge Since each unit had to be tracked to determine whether or not its weapons were loaded, markers were used to indicate weapon status. While muskets could be reloaded in a single action, it took three increments to reload a 12 pd gun. A half-turn consisted of (a) a card draw by the phasing side, (b) its performance of the required number of actions, (c) a single- action-response by the opposition, and (d) melee resolution. The single-action-response permitted defensive fire (assuming weapons were loaded) if the phasing side charged home. This very sequence, incidentally, is essentially the same as that derived by Fred Hubig in the REVIEW, sometime ago, for his French and Indian War rules, in approximately the same era. And as another interesting aside, I noted, as I wandered through the convention hall, that perhaps almost one quarter of the rules and games presented used some sort of card system. Bear in mind that use of the cards, per se, is not the unique element... the intriguing fact is that more and more rules systems are utilizing random movement sequences. Whether it's cards or "initiative" dice rolls, or whatever, the rules makers seem to be departing from the older formalized procedures. Back to Greg's Game Another ploy in the rules - to which I didn't cotton at all - was the use of different dice for the different types of units. For example. when muskets fired, up to 6 inches was defined as short range and a die was thrown per firing figure and a 5 or higher required to register a hit. Militia rolled a 6-sided die; their probability of a 5 or higher is 33%. Trained troops rolled an 8-sided die; their percentage is 50%. Veterans used a 10-sided (60%), and elites a 12-sided (66%). Thus far, this is fine, but the rules state that muskets will fire, not just to 6 inches, but to 12 inches (medium range) and 18 inches (long range). At medium range, it requires a 7 or better for a hit. This means that it's impossible for militia - with the 6- sided die - to reach out to medium range. Even without this, use of the four different dice confused me... I consistently grabbed the wrong size dice. Regardless, Greg has a neat set of fast playing rules. The game he presented used 25mm figures... an attack by the Bonny Prince on a town held by Cumberland's forces. It all ended rather sadly for the Prince, however, after his hordes of Highlanders were decimated by defensive fire. The Highlanders were rated as Elite in .melee, and whomsoever they rolled their 12-sided dice against, died. Fortunately for the Royal troops, the bulk of the Highlanders never made contact, and in desperation, the Bonny Prince himself led a charge against one of Cumberland's cavalry units. This target's status was Veteran... its die was 10-sided, while Charles Edward's own die was a 12-sided one. The unusual result: a "1" for the Prince, a "10" for the opposing cavalryman, the Bonny Prince fell from the saddle, and it was all over. The rebels fled. An issue or so ago, I mentioned a problem that Bob Hurst and I came across in our modern armor game: two tanks parked next to each other and began swapping shots. I questioned this tactic, and Hank Martin cleared things up in a subsequent article. At the convention, Bob and I were watching a 1/72 armor COMMAND DECISION game in which the "park and shoot" tactic was employed. A tank rumbled down the narrow street of a small town, and on the next turn, an enemy tank rumbled up the same street and went right up to the first vehicle... the commander of the second tank, it should be noted, actually pushed the opposing tank back an inch or two! Another armor game... another set of rules... and again the "park and shoot" tactic came up. No one seemed to regard this as unusual ... no one took any notice of it. Perhaps we PW historical realists are too sensitive to this sort of stuff. Dave Waxtel presented a "single-sided' game of the invasion of Tarawa in 5mm scale. His field of play was a single terrain board... a 3-dimensional model of the island of Tarawa approximately 2 feet by 4 feet, neatly done with little palm trees and other microarmor- scale items. While Dave ran the defending Japanese forces, there were about 8 opposing participants, each commanding an American unit. The American CO laid out his plans, briefed his men, and then retired to another table, linked to the players seated around the mapboard through a walkie-talkie. The game seemed to take an interminably long time to set up and get going. I sat in for about 15 minutes at the very start, and then wandered off, returning an hour and a half later to hit the end of the briefing session! Despite his slow start, Dave ran a good, tight game. At the beginning, as the American CO was instructing his force commanders as to where each unit was to land on the beach, what it would do, and what the objectives were, one of the players interrupted: "I resent being told exactly what to do with my regiment!" Dave immediately broke in, stopping an unnecessary debate over the scope of the command function before it even got started; to the "resentful one", he stated: "That man... " (pointing to the CO) "... is your CO. You will listen to him, you will obey his orders, or your men will die..." The "resentful one" shut up. The American invasion was not successful. According to Dave's summary, there was not enough local initiative displayed on the part of the unit commanders, coupled with a communications problem concerning just which Japanese installations were to be bombarded. Until recently, Pat Condray's line of EDITIONS BROKAW Marlburian 15mm figures pretty much had the field to themselves. But right next to Pat's set-up, at Dick Sossi's table for his SHIP & SOLDIER SHOP, appeared a competing line called ROUNDHEADS (?), or ROUNDERS (?) ... whatever, there they were. Pat's figures sell like hotcakes, and since the Sossi line is just about as good looking, one would expect that they will, too. Pat's advantage is that, at each convention, he hosts two or three games using his own rules derived for the era, pushing his figures, while Dick Sossi is tied to his dealer table. Another dealer that earns his keep is Mike Caum of SOLDIER WORLD. This fella, at every convention, trucks in about 42 tons of lead figures... used, new, painted, battered, etc. And with the figures comes a complete kiosk with walls, shelves, tables, etc., that has Mike and his family working over an hour just to set up, let alone placing the goodies out for display. At this convention, Mike's bargain box contained a huge assortment of old ARMORY paints, which I scooped up, despite the comment that if the jars were too old, the paint would seperate out. Just down the aisle from Mike's place was THE ARMORY itself. Roy Lipmanns who runs THE ARMORY, had brought in a glass counter, and a large overhead display of terrain tiles, each about 1 1/2 foot square. Unfortunately, the set-up looked as if the entire display was going to fall, raining tiles on the passersby. Fortunately, it never did. Roy is an inveterate cigar smoker... cigar smokers do not seem to be able to understand that when they puff away at their stogies, it seems as if they haven't used a deoderant for the last six months. It well may be, of course, that that's the reason that cigar smokers do puff away... I try not to get close enough to find out. In the main, however, the crowd responded quite well to our requests not to smoke in the gaming areas; we received many favorable comments to this effect. Another interesting trend I noted at our last few affairs is that there is less eating in the gaming area. When we first started out, circa 1982, there were MacDonalds' wrappers and pizza boxes all over the place. A not uncommon complaint would be: "I've a game ready to go and there's a pizza smeared all over my assigned table." No longer. This, to me, is a true maturing of the hobby. Forget about the complexities of the rules systems, the intricate nuances of the procedures, and the historical precedents built into the simulations... the real question is: how many pizzas are smeared on the gaming tables? Back to PW Review April 1988 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1988 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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