On Saturday, January 5th, at the Simon ping-pong table, the wargaming world was suddenly presented with 3-count 'em-3 new sets of rules. It seems everybody wanted to greet the new year with new and innovative ideas. Brian Dewitt's medieval rules focussed on both morale and command aspects. Our side, for example, had 3 Big Fellows: the King, and 2 vassals... the Earl of Kent and Philip the Dull. The first thing we did was to write orders for all units under the King. Items such as "Attack", or "Defend", or "Maneuver", etc. An attack order was mandatory to charge, a defend order was necessary for bowmen to fire, a maneuver order was required to change formation, etc., etc. There were, I think, 7 such orders. Also on the order sheet, we wrote a secondary listing of orders. Here, all units were assigned another order. At any point in the game, one could sound the alarum and all units so listed would immediately change to these orders. One could also list a third set of orders and so on. I had 5 units, including 2 groups of mounted knights, 2 units of bowmen, and one of foot knights. All, at the beginning, were given "Advance" orders and so they marched up the field in 15 inch moves or so. My secondary orders to the troops were: "Defend" to the archers to permit them to commence shooting and "Attack" to the knights, mounted and foot, to permit them to close with the opposition. The enemy started to charge, got within bow range, and I blasted away on the horn, sounded the alarum, beat the drum, blew the whistle... anything to signal the troops to obey their second listing of orders. The signal itself was supposed to emanate from The King, and be received by the Earl of Kent, who would then test to see if he understood what was going on, and if so, he would then ensure that the units received and obeyed the orders. The Earl had a Command Factor of 3, which meant that if I could toss above a 3 on a 10-sided die for each unit in question, the Earl successfully received the orders, and all would be well. I managed to throw greater than a 3 for all units except the foot knights. The mounted knights and the archers, therefore, shifted easily into the "second order model', i.e., attack and defend, respectively. The foot knights, on the other hand, due to the Earl's misunderstanding, stayed with their "Advance" orders, hence couldn't join in the attack. But now I discovered another problem... maddened with the lust for battle, I had beat the drum, -blasted away -on the horn and blew- - the whistle too soon! a.Problem Number 1. The mounted knights immediately went into "Attack", but I had forgotten to change their formation from column of march to line. Both mounted units, therefore, surged forward in the wrong formation. And once in the attack mode, there was no changing formation. b.Problem Number 2. Directly in front of the mounted knights were my archers, nicely formed in line. I had forgotten to clear the way for the mounted units. Right through the line of bowmen drove the knights, ignoring the screams and cries of the archers! Both the mounted units and the archers, as a result of this horrible mixup, went into something called "Regroup", wherein they tried to sort themselves out. But now, right into my rather disorganized knights plowed the enemy... two units of knights that were NOT in column of march, and HAD NOT ridden down their own troops. I can't begin to describe the carnage... In firing and melee, Brian used a deck of cards to note the impact on the target unit. Instead of actual casualties, he looked at the decrease in morale level of a unit resulting from combat. There were some 20 cards, and a simplified version of a sample card is shown below: YEOMEN: 20 MEN AT ARMS: 5 KNIGHTS: 15 The above card indicates that on a unit of bowmen (yeomen), 20 points will be added to their fatigue factor; on a unit of knights, 15 will be added to their factor. The fatigue factor was deducted from the unit's initial morale level (usually 100) to obtain a final morale value. This final morale value was the key parameter in terms of keeping the unit operational. For example, when the opposing knights smashed into my disordered knights, 3 cards were drawn against my unit. The result was that some 55 points were added to their fatigue factor, which meant that the final morale value of my knights was immediately driven down to 100 - 55, or 45 percent. Unsurprisingly, my troops routed, and the opposing unit pursued them... more drawn cards, more fatigue factors, an even lower final morale level, and my once proud unit fled the field. They had never even gotten out of column of march! We never really overcame this initial disaster. About the only way I got to zonk the enemy was to directly "attach" the King to the foot knights (who, if you remember, had never gotten their initial attack orders), and go plowing into the opposition. The penalty here, however, was that if the King was so attached, in combat and whanging away at the enemy, he was not permitted to issue orders, and so the rest of the units on the f ield sort of sat there, watching the King get his jollies in by smashing and bashing all who dared to stand before him. Back to PW Review January 1992 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 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