The above remark was uttered by Fred Hubig after we had played a game placed at the turn of the century, circa 1900. We had some British troops, some troops of Another Foreign Power (nationality not quite known), some trained native contingents, some savage type fresh-from-the-Kalahari melee troops (no fire power but supposedly fierce enough to eat their enemies' belt buckles), and so on. At the COLD WARS convention in March of this year, I had picked up a quantity of painted units, which, I believe, were made by CONNOISEUR. These sell as 25mm figures, but in reality are 30mm in size, and quite compatible with the 30mm lines of SCRUBY, STADDEN and SUREN. With a number of 30mm figures I already had in inventory, acquired over at least a decade, I set up the game, drafted a set of rules ("... new figures, new rules..." is my motto) and we were off and playing. What I wanted was a British colonial game of sorts, but not the type of game which takes place in the era covered by Larry Brom's THE SWORD AND THE FLAME... a game in which two British units take on three hundred native units. My setting was the early 1900's, pre-World War I, the very end of the colonial era, at which time we could have fairly even forces set out on the table... everyone is armed with rapid firing, long range rifles, and the forces could include some German troops traipsing around southern Africa, or the Italians running around another part of Africa, Belgium units deep in the interior, and perhaps even some Frenchmen dashing through yet another part of Africa. In our scenario, on the ping-pong table, we had two outposts about 6 feet apart, in each of which was a single British unit of around 12 figures, defined to be a regiment. All the units on the table had from 8 to 12 men in them... I have never been a stickler for a particular, standard unit size. In fact, on occasion, I go overboard to vary the sizes of the units involved, because I think it's part of the challenge presented to the player in controlling his command. More British units were on the way, but because the outposts were so far apart, it was obvious that one of the outposts was going to be on its own... there was no way that reinforcements, moving at 8 inches per movement phase, could reach both British garrisons in time. And so Outpost Alpha, manned by the 21st Lincolnshire Regiment, under Captain Wicket, was deemed expendable, while efforts were concentrated on rescuing the force in Outpost Beta, the 4th Fusiliers, under Captain Dratt. The title of this article, the comment of Fred Hubig's, resulted from a post-game analysis of what had gone on during the encounter. In particular, the "uninteresting" aspect seemed to focus on the firing procedures, which, I must admit, I had pared down to the bone in an attempt to keep the flow of the game going at a rapid pace. Obviously, I had achieved the exact opposite of what I intended. The sequence essentially consisted of 3 phases: movement, then weapons fire, then close combat. The ultra-simplified, rapidmoving, scientifically-researched and awe-inspiring firing procedure consisted of drawing a "Fire Card"... one card out of an 8-card deck... and reading off the type of unit firing, and the number of hits scored on the target. For example, a card might state: "Each British unit scores 3 hits on a target unit; each trained native unit scores 2 hits"... and so on. Now I thought the idea was kinda "keen"... no dice throwing, no big casualty chart to reference, no counting firing figures, no summing of numerous modifiers, no measurement of range, no totaling a bunch of fire factors... no nuthin'. Just pull a card, and if you had a unit of the type listed, then presto!... there are your hits! Alas! Not only was the procedure deemed dull, boring, insipid, uninspiring, uninteresting... but, said Jack Culberson, by "prespecifying" on each card the hits on the target, the true firepower capability of each firing unit was being ignored, i.e., whether a unit had 5 men in it or 10 or 12, it still scored the stated number of hits. - Now in truth, in ginning up the rules, I had considered this aspect... that by "pre-ordaining" the number of hits, larger units were, in a sense, getting "gypped", since they scored the same as smaller units. And my response was: so what?? To my mind, whether you inflicted 1 or 2 or 3 hits was less important than the fact that the target had taken casualties, and that, because of the impact, it was then required to take a morale test. I'm big on morale tests... these, to me, are the heart of the game, any wargame. To me, the game itself is really an exercise in statistics as you attempt to have the units under your command obey your orders despite the "obstacles" thrown in your path by the opposition. And the obstacles are negative probability factors which have a negative impact on unit morale levels. Each unit has a morale level, representing, in effect, the percentage chance it will keep on doing what you want it to do. As casualties go up, the morale level goes down, and its up to the participant to choose wisely, i.e., play the odds, in selecting the particular units to carry out a particular assignment. Which is why, incidentally, in the Simon scheme of wargaming rules, there's always an active role for unit officers. Many rules sets simply decree that if an officer is "attached" to a unit, he can do good things for it. And he never seems to run out of good things. This is a rather passive approach in that he's either there, or not there. I prefer that the player be given a range of values relating to the officer's ability... perhaps he can augment the unit's morale level with 10 percentage points, perhaps with 15, or with 20. And the number of times the officer can assist is limited... after all, the poor man can't be expected to be on top of all things all the time. The actual choice of how the officer assists is left to the player, for there is a risk to the officer proportional to the assistance he gives. The more the morale level augmentation given by the officer, the more, figuratively speaking, he runs up and down the line of battle exposing himself to enemy fire, the more he assists, and the more the risk that the enemy singles him out for a bullet. Back to the Game Having said all that, we now come back to my British colonial game. I gave each brigade officer - in charge of two units, each termed a battalion - two sets of points with which to augment his units' morale levels: If in contact: 10 10 15 15 20 Otherwise: 3 3 5 5 5 If the officer stood with a unit, he could use the higher numbers in the top line, i.e., by crossing out both a "10" and a "15", he could increase a unit's morale level by 25 percent. Since he couldn't be with both units at once, then to assist the unit he was temporarily neglecting, he could cross out one or more of the lesser numbers in the lower line. True, this didn't seem to be of much help, but on occasion, even 2 or 3 points could make a difference in whether or not a unit would hold position. And note that the officer has only 10 numbers, total, with which to help. Now, having written all the above, I think that for this turn-of-the-century set of rules, I'll stick to my guns regarding use of the "pre-ordained" fire cards. As a last note, the data sheet for a battalion looks like: LOSSES: 1 2 3 4 5 6 000 0000 00 000 000 00 For the above unit, when 3 boxes are crossed out, one man is removed; when the next 4 are crossed out, another man is removed, and so on. Unit sizes range from 8 to 12 men... note that regardless of unit size, when 6 men are removed, so is the unit. Back to PW Review May 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