On a Saturday in early December, we had three battles... one good, two not-so-good. ECW The first not-so-good was an English Civil War presentation, based on a devastatingly historically accurate set of rules that I had devised. There were the Royalist forces, on their way to London, and there was the Army of Parliament, blocking the route. The King's army slightly outnumbered the opposition, but numbers were more than balanced due to the heavy-machine-gun-fire effect with which the Parliamentary musketeers fired. Each side was given a number of actions each turn, with each action devoted, at the option of the commander, to either firing or moving. Parliament, on the defense, naturally focused on firing, while the King's units tried to move up under an overwhelming hail of musket balls. No use. After three turns or so, it was obvious that the King was going nowhere, least of all London, and we called it quits. "Reduce the firepower!" was the cry, and I promised, in the best guttural Arnold Schwarzenegger fashion I could muster: "I'll be back!" Another goof which rapidly displayed itself in the rules was the introduction of what I call a 'twiddle-your-fingers' melee system. The melee procedure was fairly lengthy... first, each unit received a couple of dice, then each commander had to decide if he wanted an officer to assist (more dice), then he had to decide if he wanted other units to run over and help (more dice), then he had to draw cards from a 'melee deck' listing the advantages of certain unit ­types against other unit-types (more dice) , then he had to toss all his dice to determine the casualties inflicted on the enemy units, and then, after all this, we still had to determine who won the fight. While all this was going on, the rest of the table-top proceedings came to a complete standstill... all the other players simply sat around, discussing the good and bad aspects of NAFTA, whether Clinton's popularity rating should be 20 or 50 percent, but mostly, twiddling their fingers, hence the name. I seem to have a penchant for rather complicated melee resolution rules. The two parties that are facing off are kept busy with the decision making process, but everyone else at table-side has nothing to do, and the flow of the game comes to an abrupt halt. Napoleonics The second not-so-good was a published set of Napoleonic rules which Tony Figlia brought over. Tony was quite excited over the rules... fast moving, easily understood, and, best of all, he said, there was no dice tossing! The rules were called THE EBB AND FLOW OF BATTLE (EFB), by Peter Heath, who had put on the cover, not to be outdone by Scotty Bowden, "The game system of the future!", and "Histogaming has arrived!" The introduction declared: ... the use of dice is made redundant, both due to its element of time wasting (throwing the dice, consulting innumerable charts, etc) and the undisputed fact that luck on a battlefield was (sic), and is not six, eight or ten sided! (emphasis in the original) I read this several times over, and decided that Mr. Heath meant well... he merely had trouble expressing himself. We knew what luck was not, but what exactly was it? Fortunately, Mr. Heath continued: Luck on the Historic Battlefield was, amongst other things, being at the right place at the right or wrong time, whether the orders are applicable to the situation, whether the Reserves are in the right place... Each section in these rules gives its own rationale, based on Historical precedents, and each chart includes all legitimate factors which would influence a result. "... the right place at the wrong time..."? I defer to Mr. Heath. EFB uses 6mm figures and, for its battle presentations, evidently represents every battalion, battery, and squadron present on the battlefield. Tony's scenario, taken from the EFB listings of 1809, pitted a joint force of Russians and Prussians against the French. The team of Hubig/Simon handled the Russian/Prussian forces... we had an order of battle approximately five typed pages long, all very historically accurate, and it took about an hour to pick and sort out all the little units. The battle starts off with a computation of the Combat Initiative (CI) of each side. This is done at the Corps level, and each Corps commander is given a basic grade, usually around +3. The basic +3 is then modified by one or more factors in a list of nine, and if the resultant is 0 or more, then "Units may move and fire in accordance with orders." An example is given in which Oudinot, the French Corps commander, has a CI which works out to +5, while his opponent (Kolowrat) registers a +4. The text then states: "... Oudinot has CI advantage, and Kolowrat's Corps is disadvantaged." Disadvantaged in what fashion? The text never states what a +5 gives with respect to a +4, or what disadvantage the side with the smaller CI suffers with respect to its opponent. Perhaps the disadvantaged side qualifies for a federal loan... About the only truly clever procedure instituted in EFB was the introduction of the Firing Factor (FF). Each battalion on our five­page order of battle was given a series of FF's. For example, my 2-battalion Jaeger brigade had something similar to the following: 1st Battalion A A B C C 2nd Battalion A B C D E When a battalion took a hit, one letter was crossed off. The letters indicated both the current quality of the unit and its own fire power. An "A", for example, meant that the battalion, when it fired, registered 4 hits on the target, a "B" registered 3 hits, and so on. As shown in the above example, units were short-lived entities. Advancing against the French, two or three blasts from a defensive "A" unit, each knocking off 4 letters, and the 26th Jaegers were rapidly out of the picture. I found that the most irksome procedure consisted of having to continuously reference the sheets containing the orders of battle at least twice per bound. First, when the enemy fired, we had to flip through our five­page order of battle several times to find the 26th Jaegers to register its losses. Then, several minutes later, we again had to find the unit when its own turn came to fire, for we had to know its current letter rating to find the impact on the target. Readers of the REVIEW know that I look kindly at the use of data sheets to record unit content, efficiency, strength, etc., but a five-page document proved a wee bit too much. Perhaps if the record sheets focused on the brigade, rather than the single battalion or squadron... We found that the melee procedures were somewhat less than well defined, and poorly written. The melee modifier chart listed 14 factors... add 'em up and the side with the highest total wins the combat. Now we come to a problem area: we know who won, but the rules are obtuse in assigning losses... losses being defined as the number of FF's to be crossed out on the data sheet. But, even more interesting, the rules state: "The loser does not inflict any FF's on the winners." This did not go over well with those table-side. It meant that in a huge attack, i.e., a division-versus-division-size combat (remember that each stand is a battalion), the winner emerges absolutely scot-free. But enough of EFB. Suffice it to say that it reminded me of a set of Pat Condray rules. One reads the rules book, and, apparently, everything needed to play the game is listed, but once you're into the nitty-gritty, you discover huge gaps in the proceedings. With the physical table-side presence of the author to honcho the game, explaining what this means and what that means, the game runs exceptionally smoothly; without the author as umpire, the game halts. I've remarked in the past that Pat hosts a series of very tight, smoothly run games at each convention; he's always table­side to declare: "That stand is matched against this stand, that stand will hold, and the other stand will fall back 5 inches..." As soon as Pat takes a break to dash to the men's room, the entire process comes to an abrupt stop, and the game resumes only with Pat's reappearance. Evidently, so it is with EFB. ACW Now that we've discussed the two not-so-goods of the three games we played, let's get into the only good presentation of the day. Brian Dewitt constantly comes up with some superior command­decision-making procedures. I continually wrack my brains, attempting to implement systems which... via a limited number of cards, or points, or chips, or staff officer figures... force the opposing commanders to choose where to commit their assets, when to bolster their units, when to add a 'morale point' or two. Brian seems to do it effortlessly. The latest Dewitt system was displayed in an ACW game. He took the order of battle from an old Strategy & Tactics game, and set out a fairly large 15mm scenario. Next we were given our chips... Brian is currently in his "chip" mode... several issues ago, I described his thoughts on an ECW set of rules using chips, the various colors of which were used to designate specific functions, and the numbers of which were used to 'bid', i.e., obtain the initiative each turn. This present ACW system had an alternate movement system... there was no 'bidding' for initiative. The chips stood for firing (red), for movement (green), for augmenting combat value (blue), and so on. Each bound, chips were renewed, and you drew a limited number of them. The team of Simon/Figlia ran the Confederates; we were permitted a maximum number of 12 chips... we could play any number of them, but the restriction was that on our renewal phase, we could only recover 6 chips. One of the chips was colored black... defined as a "rapid action" chip. If played with any other chip for a specific action, the black permitted a preemptive action to take place. This is better explained with a listing of the phases of the bound. The sequence for the bound was: (a) Union sets out its chips in front of each brigade, designating the particular action to be carried out. (b) Union then carries out orders. (c) Confederates then get their "free" actions. Brigades can fire, move, etc. with no restrictions. (d) Melee (e) Confederates set out their chips in front of each brigade, designating the particular action to be carried out. (f) Confederates then carries out orders. (g) Union then gets its "free" actions. Brigades can fire, move, etc. with no restrictions. (h) Melee (i) Both sides renew chips. Taking the Union side as an example, note that on Phase (b), those Union brigades with chips assigned get to do something. The entire Union side then gets another 'freebee' action phase on Phase (g). Which means that a Union unit has two phases during the bound during which it can be given orders. On the first, it must be specifically designated via assignment of a chip; on the second, it acts within the normal sequence of the turn. Via the use of green chips assigned for movement on Phase (a), therefore, the Union reserves can be given additional movement to bring them into the front lines. I must note a tactical error on the part of one Union commander in this respect. He was, indeed, in command of the reserves, and he consistently refused the offer from Union Headquarters of additional green chips... with the result being that his units never budged during Phase (b) and moved up only on Phase (g), far too slowly to enter the battle in a timely fashion. I mentioned the black chip, the "rapid action" chip. This, in effect, was an out-of-sequence override chip... it permitted the play of any chip at any time. For example, note that on Phase (g) the Union gets its 'freebeel actions. If a Union brigade surged forward to make contact this phase, the Confederate commander could play two chips: a red chip (fire) and a black chip (for instantaneous implementation), thus getting in a rapid volley before the contact was made. It is obvious that 'chip balance' is extremely critical. Too many chips, and a side gets to move, fire, etc., too freely; too few chips, and you suffer accordingly. In our setup, it looked like the Union forces were slightly undervalued in terms of chips assigned. In short, I wuz impressed. The Dewitt chip system provides an extremely brilliant way of implementing, in terms of the orders they issue, the capabilities of opposing commanders. We'll hear more of the chips... Back to PW Review December 1993 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com