About 20 odd PWers entered the Simon household on Saturday, June 11th, as I hosted a goodbye fest in honor of Mike Pierce. Mike is heading south and, as a Lieutenant Commander in the Coast Guard, is now assigned as Executive Officer on board a Coast Guard cutter somewhere around Canaveral. PW presented Mike with a nicely painted 54mm figure as a thank-you for his many past efforts in support of the club and his assistance at the HMGS conventions. Yes, this is the same Mike Pierce who mutters things such as "Hal Thinglum's magazine is the wargaming magazine I like most to read each month." and "PW REVIEW? Isn't that published somewhere on the east coast?" Yup, that's him. I set up two tables to accommodate the crowd, and at the larger one, Bob Coggins hosted his grand-tactical BATTLES OF NAPOLEON (BON) in a huge Prussian vs French 15mm, 15 player affair. There are not too many truly "grand tactical* rules sets around; Pat Condray uses single stands as entire regiments for his 1870 Franco- Prussian games, while BON's basic maneuver element is the brigade of 16 to 24 figures. Bob started off the day around noon as the attendees began to straggle in. At 12:30, enough people were present, the terrain set up, and the armies appeared. At exactly 12:41 on the Simon chronometers Bob said something like: "We need ten minutes of familiarization and then we'll start." The better part of an hour later, just after 1:30, we started. I had expected a small scale demonstrative effort... what Bob planned to put on was a five hour, 16 turn game with 6 French Corps on one side, and a slightly larger Prussian force on the other. Some guys go for this long term stuff; my interest dies out after the first three or four turns and I've sampled the gaming system sufficiently to understand what's behind the dice throws. On the French left flank, I was put in charge of the 6th Corps, composed of four brigades and a gun. When I say "gun", remember this is a large scale effort... the "gun" represents the Corps' entire artillery reserve. My brigades had either 16 or 24 figures apiece; at a 1:120 figure scale, that's 1920 men (3 battalions?) and 2880 men (4 battalions?), respectively. Here's a quick calculation: The 24 figure brigade,, in line, was measured to have a 4 1/2 inch frontage. Assuming the 2880 Frenchmen are arranged in 3 lines of 960 men each, and each man takes 2 feet of space, then the frontage of the brigade should be 2x960, 1920 feet, or 640 yards. Thus if 4 1/2 inches is 640 yards, the distance scale becomes 142 yards per inch, which admittedly, is quite grandiose. The reason I bring this up is that BON's "musketry" range tables permit a brigade to fire out to 4 inches, i.e., 4x142, or 568 yards. When I asked Bob about this, he explained the design intent: "musketry" is not "musketry" per se... it includes not only the fire of the main body, but the effect of skirmishers and the brigade artillery, neither of which are actually displayed on the tables and both of which impact on the enemy beyond normal musket range. This makes sense to me; if you're going to go "grand tactical," then forget about the nitty-gritty battalion level details. As a force commander, you're basically interested In the command structure and whether or not your brigades received and carried out their orders successfully... it's not your job to ensure that each of the guns are loaded with cannister, or that the First Battalion deploys in skirmish formation. The BON command structure gives the Amy CINC a radius within which his Division Commanders must be to exercise divisional control. Our French CINC had a 36 inch "aura" and, way out on the left flank, my 6th Corps Commander exceeded this. The result was that each of my Division Commanders were on their own; they each had to toss under some referenced threshhold to move their divisions out. The Corps Commander has a 9 inch "aura"... ordinarily Division Commanders must stay within this zone. And Division Commanders themselves have a 3 inch zone... brigades outside of the Division Commander's aura can't move at all. Hank Martin doesn't like the firing or combat procedures. They have what he terms "savings throws." My Corps battery, for example, fired up to 12 inches, 12442, or 1700 yards. When I fired, I tossed a 10-sided die and added a +2 modifier for heavy artillery... call this total GT. The target also tossed a 10-sided die (Hank's "savings throw")... call this total TT. a. If GT is greater than TT, one hit is scored. b. If GT is double TT, two hits are scored. c. If GT is equal to, or less than, TT... no hits. In the firing calculations, the highest GT was defined as 10, i.e., even if my die roll was a 9 and my heavy artillery modifier of +2 brought this up to 11, my maximum total was "topped out" at 10. The target's die toss is - and isn't - a "savings" throw. Bob Coggins said it was put in to give the target "something to do" while being fired at. But what it actually does is to set up the percentage range of hits. For example, the procedure described above for artillery fire is exactly equivalent to the results obtained from the following percentage dice toss: 01 to 41 0 hits 42 to 68 1 hit 69 to 100 2 hits Why the rules crafter decided there was a 41% chance of not hitting anything... that's another story. Incidentally, if the first die toss is not "topped out" at 10 (a roll of 91, plus 2 for artillery, truly equalling 11, not 10), then the following table is set up: 01 to 37 0 hits 38 to 65 1 hit 66 to 100 2 hits There's such a small difference in the results between the two tables that one wonders why the "topping outu procedure was instituted. In combat, the same competitive die roll procedure is used. Here, we have both a "topping out" at 10, and a "bottoming out" at 1. The result, many times, is a tie: a. If the tie is at the high end i.e., both sides total 10, then each takes a casualty and the melee continues next turn. b. If the tie is at the low end, then neither takes a casualty, and melee continues. BON's sequence has alternate move, fire, etc., plus provision for a reaction phase wherein, if you hold your cavalry in reserve on your portion of the turn, you can unleash them during the other side's half. My left flank 6th Corps was pretty much creamed by enemy artillery fire. Each brigade has a designated threshhold, say 4 casualties, and if the unit takes 4 hits on any one phase, it's destroyed. Three enemy artillery units, each with a +2 modifer, banged the whatsis out of me. By the end of Turn 3, one brigade had gone, and the others were well on their way. I soon relinquished the reins of command - or what was left of my command - to Bill Rankin, who's quite excellent in the pursuit of lost causes. BON was interesting, and the most confusing factor in the scheme of things - confusing to me - was the data chart provided. Here, on one very crowded sheet, is all The data in the BON universe. Down the side is listed every type of unit in the world, and a cross the top are 12 columns, spelling out movement and firing and combat factors, and others with such intriguing titles as "CG FM d", and "DRD/RT NO". The first tells the deduction from regular movement for a formation change; the second consists of two numbers... first is the number of casualties for the unit to become disordered, the second for the unit to rout. The thought behind the coalescing of everything EVERYTHING! - on one sheet is admirable, but the result is not. Outside of this, my only constructive (?) comment would be to limit artillery fire. One turn in BON is about half an hour battle time, and the guns keep blasting away forever. Perhaps give each gun a certain number of hits? The Return: Double Blind But now let us return to the remainder of the tale of THE MIKE PIERCE CAPER. At a second tables Mike Montemarano set up a "double blind" Seven Years War game... each side had the complete field of battle laid out before it and saw only those troops that the umpire deemed visible at any given instant. Mike set up the fields as shown; Fred Haub came in from the north... the Dewitt/Butters team from the south. You will notes dear reader, that the fields are mirror images of one another. You will further note that because of this oddball setup, Fred Haub's left flank (to the east) is not the same as the Dewitt/Butters right flank. This did not deter the umpire in the least during the opening phases of the game. Still less did it bother Haub or Butters or Dewitt, each of whom had only their particular half of the field to view and therefore had no knowledge of anything unusual. When the keen, piercing eye of an observant, on-the-ball third party (no names, please) noted the problem, Mike took it in good stead, uttered "Whoops!", or words to that effect, and quickly corrected the playing areas so that they conformed. Mike Pierce, hi'sef, ran a huge cowboy/pony-soldier/western-town skirmish which kept around 16 people busy. The entire ping pong table was set up as one large town, complete with bank, stables, etc. I witnessed only a short portion of this scenario... at that time, there appeared to be a huge herd of some 20 longhorns stampeding down Main Street, heading directly for a group of 3 or 4 soldiers plus one officer, about 6 inches away. The soldiers had taken refuge behind a dinky picket fence, producing a great deal of laughter from the 2000+ pound bulls in the thundering herd. Players in the game each drew from a standard 52 card deck and high card was permitted to move his group first. Somehow, the fella that ran the group of soldiers was not permitted to move all of them at once, and so he chose to move only the officer out of ham's way, leaving the enlistees to their fate, i.e., a well minced, finely ground pile of sausage. And finally, I hosted a small, intimate tete-a-tete between Bob Wiltrout and Fred Hubig. Rare it is that I can con Bob into sitting down and playing a set of Simon rules, and so the opportunity was not to be missed. This was a 15m ACW game, on the published version of which I superimposed several critical changes. I had a printed copy of the rules before me, and so I could play it both ways: when necessary, I could refer to the printed rules with their awesome aura of legitimacy, and say: "Now look, on page 7 it specifically addresses this issue. It says..." On the other hand, when I wanted to change something, I could leaf through the printed matter, pretending to research some point or other, and mutter "Well, it looks like the modifier is plus 3, but only on Thursday afternoon." Of course, the modifier wasn't at all mentioned in the text... but I was the only one that knew that... No one ever questions the umpire, n'est-ce pas? A smoothly run game, if I do say so myself... despite the fact that both Fred and Bob are each Competitorss with a capital C. Neither gives an inch. Let me give an example. Now, Fred's southern regiment goes nose to nose with Bob's Union unit, which is defending the very outside edge of a rocky area. To do this, Fred's troops had to pay the "rough terrain" penalty. Now, it's melee time, and in checking to see if the Rebs close for combat, it turns out, by a dice throw, that they never actually close to contact. Now, the rough stuff begins; Fred says his boys are still in the rough rocky terrain and there's no need to pay another movement penalty. Bob says that since his troops were defending the outer edge of the zone, then if the southerners didn't close, then that meant that they fell back outside the rough terrain and must pay another penalty. I sat quietly through all this. Bob and Fred each are a head taller than I am, they each outweigh me, and their reach is longer. And what do I care if the Southerners were forced out of the rocks?... I was born in New York. Whatever... somehow the wind died down, and as the game continued, they both fixed me with the evil eye and muttered: "Obviously a flaw in the rules!" I didn't dare disagree. The only break in the day's gaming activities came around 5 PM when we had an eat-all-you-want hamburger feast. Statistic: I was mildly surprised to note that the PW crowd could engulf an average of only three hamburgers apiece. Gone are the days when men were men... Back to PW Review July 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. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com