Don Featherstone recently submitted several interesting items, each of which we'll publish in the REVIEW. The first one below deals with a method of deciding who wins a given battle. In essence, the procedure deals with "Loss Points" rather than "Victory Points". The second concerns light troops. His input reads as follows: A. A METHOD OF PRODUCING A RESULT IN A WARGAME Currently, we are using an attrition-process which requires each adverse reaction on the part of a unit to be - penalized by marking a check against that unit - when 6 checks have been accrued, then that unit is removed from the table. In the future, before a battle, the total number of units involved on each side is multiplied by 3 to give a total valuation of the army ... representing half its strength... This represents the number of checks the army could acquire in the course of a battle. For example, an army of 10 units will total 30. When checks are placed against a unit, a corresponding number will be marked off on the Numbers Total Card - thus if four units have each acquired 2 checks, then the card will be marked up to 8. When an army reaches its total number of valuation points, it must concede the battle, having lost half its strength. This allows a degree of judgement, because when an army, nearing its total, realizes it cannot win, it can begin quietly withdrawing from the table. If it does so before its total is reached, then it is considered to have drawn the battle, and not lost. This allows for such tactics as retaining cavalry to pursue and administer more penalty points so as to defeat the withdrawing army, who, of course, are hoping to do this without the enemy realising the fact. B. LIGHT TROOPS Light troops (riflemen, cacadores, tirailleurs, etc.) may operate in woods amid rough groundand concentrations need not be placed upon the table in circumstances wherein they would not have been visible in real life. Reasonable numbers of light troops may be placed in woods or rough ground and represented by a REASONABLY concealed pin (use green for riflemen, green for tirailleurs, etc.) These pins must NOT be completely hidden but placed with a chance of being seen; to add to the uncertainty, two pins may be used for each single unit. When (...a pin is ... ) seen by the enemy, he is told if it is genuine, providing he throws over 50% on percentage dice. Back to PW Review October 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