Brian Dewitt set up an evening's entertainment using Arty Conliffe's TACTICA rules for ancient warfare. The first game had Greeks and Persians-against each other, the second had Romans and something else... I forget what, but if Brian set it up, and Arty wrote the book, it was without doubt all very historically accurate. The book states that casualties of the heavier units are never removed, thus the area covered by a unit is constant throughout a battle. Instead of removing figures, says the text, use rings (ach!) or casualty caps (ugh!) to denote losses. Brian did not have the prescribed unit sizes... his available supply of figures fell far short of the troop listings in the rule book. On the table, therefore, he set out "half-size" units, and decided to use no casualty caps, bless his heart. To ensure we could adhere to the procedures in the TACTICA manual, we kept a record of the casualties of each unit on a separate data sheet. Recording losses is essential, since it is important to know just when it is that a Unit has had one of its back ranks shot away, depriving it of a couple of combat dice. One significant change instituted in the Dewitt game was to give a main battle unit the ability to pivot. In the TACTICA scheme of things, main battle units simply forge ahead along a pre-set track with no change of direction permitted... they seek to engage the enemy directly in front. Here, Brian's modification added a couple of leaders, and stated that, if a leader was attached (each side was given three leaders), then and only then was a main battle unit permitted to pivot in place, changing its direction of facing. During the first game, the good General Hubig, in charge of our right flank Greek troops, found that he was about to be outflanked by a number of enemy horse, elephants, wolf riders, orcs, beastmen, and other horrors of the Persian army. What he did was to immediately call into play the Dewitt rule, employing a leader to have his right flank main battle unit wheel to the right to face the threat. If there's one thing to be avoided in playing TACTICA, it's to have one of your units hit in the flank. The unit thereafter sits in abject impotence, and dies the death of a thousand cuts, since it's not permitted to face, to move, or to strike back... all it can do is absorb hit after hit after hit, as the enemy, each turn, gets three times the normal allocation of combat dice. Knowing this, General Hubig faced his end unit, attempting to prevent its being flanked. But in doing so, he essentially stopped the advance of our entire main battle line. TACTICA mandates' .that, between each main battle line unit, there is a maximum distance of 4 inches. Another way of saying this is that each unit is tied to the next with a 4-inch string. And so when the Hubigian unit turned to face, stopping its own forward advance, the 4-inch strings between units were suddenly stretched to their maximum. Our battle line sort of "echeloned forward", anchored on the right where stood the Hubigians. Whether or not this contributed to our defeat is a matter for debate, but the fact remains that our battle-line came to an abrupt halt, and the Persians simply ate us up. Now, the first item of interest to me is that this first TACTICA game, for some reason I can't quite fathom, proved exceptionally "un-enjoyable" to me. I've played the game before, and like it, and when we sat down table-side, I fully expected to enjoy myself again. But no. Nothing seemed to "jell"... this rule seemed silly, that procedure seemed inconstant, this system seemed outdated, and so on. But, having said all that, the second item of interest is that the second game proved absolutely delightful... the exact opposite of the first. I should note that we lost the second game, so that the win/loss factor cancels out... but your guess is as good as mine as to why my outlook changed so radically. Perhaps it was something I ate... perhaps it was something I didn't eat... One procedure, in particular, of the TACTICA game that definitely promotes participant interest is the fact that the victory conditions are so explicitly defined. Each army will, by definition, leave the field to its opponent when a pre-set number of its main battle units are destroyed. As a true indication of victory, whether the numbers involved actually reflect what happened way-back-when is another issue. But, as far as the game goes, and the sides lose one main battle unit after another, and each approaches its own "I-give-up" number, your attention is riveted to the combat dice throws and you can't help but maintain a very high interest level. All of which tells me of the importance of the existence of victory conditions in any game you play. Many times, I set up a scenario to test a particular set of rules, and the game drones on and on and on, with no conclusion, with all those sitting table-side bored to death, with the only fella taking an active interest in the proceedings being me. And, I must admit, sometimes not even me. Should the victory points reflect units lost, or melees won, or towns occupied... or what? I shall have to cogitate on this. Back to PW Review July/August 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