Editor's Note: Doug Ziprick noted the comments I had made concerning my efforts to develop a satisfactory sequence for the modern armor rules. To my mind, the sequence should keep the articipant bus ... there should be little, if any, slack time...and the gamer should either be moving troops or throwing dice. In conjunction with the "busy" theory, there should be some element of uncertainty in the sequence... perhaps just when it is that a unit moves, or when it is to fire, etc. Doug writes of the system he and his group uses. Our gaming group evolved the following random move system seven years ago and continues to use this system, and has even added it to other gamea as well. In ACW, AWI, and 1890 Mars Colonial games, each brigade commander is named, has seven regiments attached, and may have cavalry or artillery supponts attached. In a WWII game, each battle group commander is named, has several infantry companies on tank troops unden his command, and any armored cars, heavy weapons, artillery, and assault gun supponts attached. A die is rolled for each commander to determine the number of 3 x 5 cards that his name is written onto: 6 = 3 cards 3 - 5 = 2 cards 1 - 2 = 1 card Also a commanding officer and one or two adjutant officers for each side are named and diced for in similar fashion. All of these cards are placed in a deck of cards. The deck of cards also has one card labeled: "Draw a special events card" "Roll for Union reinforcements" "Roll for Rebel reinforcements" "Reshuffle the deck"  In our WWII battles, the special events cards also include arriving artillery barrages and air strikes. In other battles, appropriate countries are listed for reinforcements. The table of reinforcements is adjusted to reflect the percentage chance for reinforcements for each side. In operation, the deck of 3 x 5 cards is shuffled. The first card is turned over and this named commander's troops are "active". The active troops may perform the following: They may move full distance, or They may move half distance and hasty fire, or They may hasty fire and move half distance, or They may remain in place and fire aimed fire, or They may remain in place and dig entrenchments, etc. For full movement, the troop unit tosses 1 to 4 dice, sums the total and may move up to this distance in inches. The number of dice depends on the troop type and the terrain the unit is traversing. The "casualty cards" described in your ACW game would result in the following: Hasty fire = draw 1 casulty card for each regiment firing Aimed firefight = draw 1 casualty card for every 2 stands firing. Because of the difficulty of a weak commander (one with only one card) to even to fire defensive fire, one addition has been made. Any regiment that is fired on may return "hasty fire" only against the firing unit, immediately after the attack, if the target is not routed by the initial firing. We have found this system to reproduce the "fog of war" as well as commander concern and frustration when one of the inefficient commanders is unable to get his troops moving. Try this system, you might like it as much as we do! 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