During my April stay in England at Robin Peck's, Robin was kind enough to present me with a complete army - in fact, 2 armies of American Civil War figures in 6mm. Both armies (infantry, cavalry, artillery, command figures, etc. ) can easily be transported in one reasonably-sized box, and it was this easy-to-tote capability that persuaded me to present a game with them at HISTORICON. With teeny-weeny figures, the game scale has to be large, and so we developed a grand-grand-grand-tactical set of rules, almost like a boardgame, but still retaining the flavor of miniatures. The scale is 125 yards to the inch, and each stand represents a complete brigade of three regiments as depicted in the sketch. The brigade stand is one inch in depth and 4 inches long, i.e., the brigade in line has a frontage of 4 inches or 500 yards. At first, in addition to the regular stands on which the troops are mounted in line, I was going to mount a series of special stands with the squinchy 6mm troops in column formation. These would be used to replace the units-in-line stands whenever the brigades formed a column-of -march. I was, however, persuaded not to waste figures in this manner; some of my best friends are wargamers, and they said, in effect: "You can't focus on the little buggers, and who can tell if they're facing front or to the side?" And so the solution to the column-of-march problem was to place a horse' drawn wagon in front of the shorter edge of the stand to indicate the unit had formed column; the stand now moves in the direction faced by the wagon. The troops themselves, of course, are still facing the long edge, but if you keep at least two feet from 'em, you'll never know the difference. It will remain our secret. Knowing whether the units are in line or column is essential to the rules because there are tactical movement phases - applicable to units in line - and strategic movement phases - only for units in column. Tactical movement distances are fairly small: 4 inches for infantry, 8 inches for cavalry. Strategic movement, however, is just about unlimited, and depends upon the distance to be moved, and the Corps Commander's capability. The chance of completing a successful strategic move is: % = 60 + E - D where D is the distance to be moved, and E is the Effectiveness of the Commander. Note that the basic chance of success is 60% ... this increases with the Commander's Effectiveness, and decreases with the distance. Long marches, therefore, are inherently riskier than short ones, and the penalty for not tossing the dice successfully is for the unit to sit, immobile, for the remainder of that movement phase. Commanders will have either 20, 30, or 40 E points. A 40 point Commander, therefore, increases his basic chance of making a strategic move to 60 + 40, or 100%, less the distance traveled. The more capable Commanders, therefore, can zip their divisions around the field in a fairly fluid manner. The force starts out during a strategic move phase in column-of- march and ends up in that same formation... it's still vulnerable to attack until a tactical phase occurs and it can deploy. The sequence is a random one, governed by a 10 card deck on each of which is noted a particular action: Union Tactical Move, Confederate Fire, Confederate Tactical and Strategic Move, etc. In addition to 2 cards for each side permitting that side to fire, there is one card which mandates simultaneous fire, giving each side a total of three firing opportunities within the bound: Union tactical move 1 card Confed tactical move 1 card Union tactical and strategic move 1 card Confed tactical and strategic move 1 card Union fire 2 cards Confed fire 2 cards Simultaneous fire 1 card Simultaneous morale tests 1 card For HISTORICON, the game we're presenting pits three Federal Corps against three Confederate Corps. In the ordinary scheme of things, the three players per side - each commanding an entire Corps would have been quite busy pushing hordes of troops around the table. In our game, however, the opposite is true. With our 6mm scale brigade stands, an entire division consists of two, maybe three, stands. A Corps, therefore, with three divisions, is made up of some nine stands. Which means that in our game, we have to keep six players happy for about three hours, each in command of a Corps, each in "command" of a maximum of nine "tokens" on the field. If you think about it, that's quite an accomplishment. The ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill wargame keeps the participants quite happy by letting them push 24-figure battalions here, and 36-figure regiments there, and so on. And after the pushing is through, then come the multiple-dice throwing phases for fire and melee, followed by casualty assessment. That eats up a lot of time; it keeps the gamers content and the gaming hosts busy in monitoring and adjucating all the impacts that must be resolved on the field. Our problem was similar; we, too, had to eat up a lot of time, but we didn't have too many assets on the field per player. If a participant removed one of the brigade stands he commanded, held be eliminating over ten percent of his force in one gulp. Which meant that each of our stands had to have a greater "longevity" than normal. The concept of "longevity" is easily implemented by means of a brigade data sheet. Several hits are required before a stand, i.e., a brigade, is removed from combat, and the record of losses provides a quick reference as to how a particular unit is doing. A typical sheet, illustrating the forms for a division, is shown below. Note that each brigade has two pertinent factors: on the left is a numerical figure denoting Morale Level, and the right half is composed of "casualty boxes", crossed off each time the brigade is hit. Note also that the listed Morale Levels are low... they range from about 60% on downward. The reason is that this is only one component of the brigade's total Morale Grade. When testing its morale, a brigade adds to its Level one of two other parameters to obtain its Grade. The two parameters of interest are: a.If the Brigade officer is "attached" to the stand, the Brigade officer's E point value may be tossed in. Here, depending upon what he's "worth", the officer can add in either 20 or 30 or 40 percent. Here, too, if the Officer intercedes, he places himself at risk... whatever E points he contributes becomes the chance that he's killed. b.If the brigade stand is "attached" to another sister brigade in the same division, it may add in the Morale Level of that sister brigade. The way the game is structured, the augmentation is one QR the other, but not both... either the Brigade Officer helps out, or the sister brigade helps, but not both at the same time. And also note that the officer or the sister brigade stand must be "attached" ... they must either be touching the testing stand, or they must be touching a stand that is itself touching the testing brigade. Divisional integrity, therefore, is enforced by the necessity of having all the brigades in a division adjacent to, and touching one Another. Note that while the "attached" or "touching" aspect is not a strict requirement, it's a rule that should be obeyed. The need to be "attached" means that a detached brigade has an inherently poor morale factor... it has only its own Morale Level on which to rely and can call on no-one and no-thing for assistance. In other words, in this fairly large scale game, we want divisional integrity, i.e., all the brigades wiV)-r, the division li-iad up and touching one another... no brigade is allowed to wander off on an adventure of its own. The HISTORICON program booklet announces that we're putting on the Battle of Pearson's Pass, which is rather loosely patterned after the encounter at Wilson's Creek. The Union is to do the attacking. Two of the three defending Confederate Divisions are deployed, while the 3rd Division sits on the Confederate left flank, in town, asleep, unready, undeployed, with only a 15 percent chance each movement phase (cumulative) of waking up and moving out. Here, I must admit, we're asking for trouble. What usually happens in a case such as this, is that as the unfortunate 3rd Division Commander keeps tossing his dice, waiting for the signal to start out... the signal never comes! The poor man stands impotent for the entire game, playing no part, cursing the scenario designer... while the scenario designer, in turn, keeps cursing the dice. I've written of this situation before... yet why do I persist?... I can only cite pure and utter pig-headedness. Start At the start of the scenario, the Union, too, has only two divisions on the field. But the Yankee third divisional force is the critical one... it's off-table, completing a flanking march to take the Confederates by surprise. Way back when, at the "real" Wilson's Creek, it turned out that even with the flanking force, there really wasn't too much of a surprise, so if the same happens in our game, we can shout "Realism!" or "Historical accuracy!" or other such drivel, and bask in the compliments of the participants. The scenario has been tested two or three times, and each time we've adjusted something here, or tweaked something there, to open up the game a little more. In truth, the major problem has been getting that #$%I&*@! Confederate 3rd Division out of bed and on the road. I thought the test games went fairly well... playing in this scale requires a slightly different outlook than when moving huge, 30mm figures around the table. Here, for example, a gazing procedure we've been using for the larger figures seemed to fit in rather well. This involves use of the "Melee Deck". Note that in the previous listing of the sequence cards, there is no specific card for melee. If one unit advances into contact with another, melee is not instantaneous. Instead, we whip out the oll Melee Deck and begin to draw from its 6 card content. one card states the attacker may fire, two state the defender may fire, and three state that melee is to be instantaneously resolved. Because of the scale, melee resolution draws on the boardgame procedure wherein each brigade is given a Defensive Value (DV) , and the opposition must top this value to drive it back. For example, an infantry brigade stand in the open has a DV of 80, while the DV of one in cover is 100. Stands are lined up in melee, and each regiment (there are three on the brigade stand) directly facing the opposing stand yields 5 points. Other point sources are: flanking attack, cavalry attacking, etc. The number of points is then added to the throw of percentage dice to see if the total exceeds the DV of the opposing brigade, in which case the opposition falls back, losing boxes on its data sheet. If this approach to grand-scale gaming works, we'll probably look at ancients next. Not because I am particularly entranced by the figures, but because the game-in-a-box concept appeals to me. Having lugged 30mm and larger figures around for years, the thought that two complete armies can be carried along with ease in one reasonably sized box is not to be ignored. Back to PW Review July 1990 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 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