Brian Dewitt appeared at the June PW meeting, lugging his entire collection of ECW figures, a large green cloth, a dozen terrain items, a brand new set of rules and a lot of poker chips. The good Professor Dewitt is an honorary member of the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis, and he had just completed an extremely detailed research effort into the ECW. In particular, he focused on the use of the poker chip as used by King Charles, Cromwell, Prince Rupert, and other notable figures of that era. The Professor had determined, by a painstaking examination of the personal letters authored by these men, that in all the engagements fought during the ECW, the opposing commanders had each selected a number of poker chips, comparing their numbers, to determine who won the initiative in battle. Brian's historical simulation of this situation was reflected in his set of rules, and he chose PW as his test bed. In the battle, there were three participants per side, and I was selected as commander of the Parliamentarian forces. At the outset of the game, the other Parliamentarian players kept muttering... "What's going on?" and "What should we do?" and "What does this mean?" "and "Where does this unit go?"... and so on. I, who probably knew even less than the others as to what was going on, just kept my mouth shut, and tried to look wise. The others, therefore, thought I knew all the answers, and when they addressed their questions to me, I squinched my eyes and knowingly replied: "You'll see, you'll see." And that's why they elected me, a veritable font of information, as commander. Opposing us on the Royalist side was General Tony Figlia, a man to be reckoned with, a mighty warlord in his own right... he had been appointed commander because he outweighed, by a factor of three, each of his fellow commanders. First turn. I selected 4 green poker chips, Tony selected 6 green chips. Tony had outbid me, and his side went first. I had no idea of what I was doing... and I suspect, neither did Tony. Brian had given us one chip for every unit on our side. We Parliamentarians had 13 units, hence we had 13 chips. Not all were green. Some were red, some blue, some white. Aha! The plot thickens. When you selected your bidding pile, it could contain chips of only one color. All greens, or all blues, etc. Each had a different function in the game. Green Greens were "fire or move" chips. If you won with a pile of greens, you took each chip in your pile, placed it in front of a unit, and that unit could move or fire. Blue Blues were "change formation". Each unit which was given a chip from your pile (assuming you won the bid) could change formation. White These were "rally" chips. Given a white chip, a routing unit could attempt to halt its flight off the board. Red These were "melee" chips. If you won the bid with a pile of reds, this ended the turn, ended the bidding phase, and the melees of all opposing units in contact were resolved. It took about 4 or 5 turns before we actually got a glimmer into the options available. For example, there was the "Hammer Tactic", used, according to the researches of Professor Dewitt, by Cromwell at the Battle of Knewcombe Knitt. Under the Hammer Tactic, there were two phases. First, you would play a huge pile of greens. If you won, you'd move your units into contact, trying to gang up on individual enemy units. Second, you'd play a huge pile of reds, so that the melees could be quickly resolved. It was important to win the bid on this second phase, since if the opposing side won, using a pile of his own greens, he could then move up his units in support and dilute your attacks. What's wrong with the Hammer Tactic? For. one, it was a one shot deal. If you played all your greens in one fell swoop, you had to win the second phase, for you were, thenceforth, "greenless", and your opponent could play his own greens in subsequent bids and run rings around you. Note that when you won a bid, you distributed your pile of chips, each one to a unit. They were gone for the rest of the turn. In contrast, when you lost, your chips were returned to your pile and could be used again. And so in the Hammer Tactic, having won the first phase with green, you had to ensure you had enough red chips to commence melee resolution on the second phase, for your opponent still had all his green chips, and could play them at leisure. Toward the end of the game, I successfully employed the Hammer against Royalist General Doug Butters, who sat opposite me. Doug had 3 units of heavy cavalry, I had one of medium plus a pike unit or so. Earlier, Doug's cavalry had easily defeated mine, but I bounced back into contact, winning with a green pile, singling out one of his units, supporting my cavalry with some pikemen. Then I won the right to have melee resolved by bidding a huge pile of reds. After some dice tossing, my boys won. Off went Doug's cavalry. In fact, off went his other cavalry, for the routing unit had triggered a morale test for the unit through which it ran, and this second unit also took off. Now here's the rub. Not only was I the Parliamentarian commander, but I was in charge of our right flank. Which meant that when I chose the color and number of chips to bid, I was more than slightly influenced by my own right flank requirements. Never mind about the rest of the Parliamentarian forces... I had the power to pick and choose, and we all know that power corrupts... Indeed, from far over on my, Parliament's, left flank, came the voice of General Jim Butters: "Say there, General... I could use some rally and change-of-formation chips!" Rally and change-of-formation chips? Not on your life! These are sissy chips! Not for me! I want only macho chips, red chips, melee chips! Butters, you're on your own! I noted that as the game wore on, General Butter's voice got weaker and weaker. Then... silence. I never did find out what happened. No matter, what was important was that we were winning on our right flank. More to the point... I was winning on M flank. The good General Figlia, my worthy opponent, had the same problem. His choice of chips was, in theory, reflective of the needs of all of his units. In practice, however, he had to make the command decision, each turn, as to which part of the field to favor. Command and Control In several ECW rules sets with which I've experimented, the critical area was that of command and control. In an effort to restrict the commander's ability in having absolute, immediate control over the units in his force, I've tried point allocation systems, and card designation systems, charts indicating how many units will react at any given time, and assignment of officer figures to a command staff, etc., etc. The Dewitt chip system works as well any of 'em, perhaps better. It calls for a certain amount of tactical know-how and a willingness to gamble to gain the initiative. Brian appeared at my house shortly after the PW meeting for a follow-up game. The basic concept remained, but lots of changes were made. After a round of bidding, the winner assigned his chips to his units, using them up, while the loser retained all his chips, giving him a "come back" ability in the next round. And then, after someone won with a handful of red chips, and all melees were resolved, both side replenished their chip supplies, drawing a chip for every unit in the force. Thus if one side continually lost a series of bids, he'd have a huge pile in inventory... chips retained from the rounds he had lost, plus those he now drew for the new turn. This ensured that one side could not forever pound its opposition into the ground... the loser could always fight back. It was found that the greater percentage of the time, when the time came to replenish, the participants drew greens, to ensure a supply of move-and-fire chips to enable them to keep on the offense, while the blue rally and white change-of-formation chips lay unused and neglected. This, in turn, meant that because the players drew so few blues and whites, they really never accumulated enough to make a substantial bid with them. Which meant that when a unit routed, it wasn't worthwhile to bid your blues... there weren't ever enough in your hand to outbid your opponent's handful of greens. The answer: to evaluate the blues and whites as 3 points each. In contrast to the 1-point greens, one blue was now the equal of 3 greens. Now it became worthwhile to draw a few blue chips in your hand to have them handy for a rallying phase or two. Every time a player won a bid, he received a freebee red chip... hence by winning a series of bids, your supply of reds increased to the point at which you could go for the dreaded Hammer Tactic. Another interesting ploy introduced by Professor Dewitt concerned the relationship between the musket and pike components of a regiment. Some rules lump the two components together, some treat them as separate entities, some ignore the issue. The Professor's research, however, revealed a unique bonding between the two, one which Lord Fairfax utilized at the Battle of Cratchitt's Copse. Morale Level: 70 65 60 55 50 45 Support: 20 20 10 10 5 5 The musket component and the pike component each had its own morale chart; a sample is shown above. The line marked "Morale Level" is the basic level of the component. If the component was hit, it used this line when taking a morale test. As the morale level decreased, however, the component could call upon its fellow component for support... the increase available is on the line termed "Support". The potential penalty for assisting in the morale test is that if the test failed, both components fell back. Back to PW Review June 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 (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com