1. I have tried... oh, how I have tried... to live up to my vow to learn to play the WRG Ancients rules in order to enter the lists at the HMGS convention, COLD WARS, in March of next year. I have played several games, each time attempting to grasp the fine points, the nuances, the subtleties, the scholarly distinction between different types of weaponry... 'tis no use. Somehow the game doesn't flow for me. This is not to say that I have withdrawn from the contest; no, having pledged my troth (what's a 'troth', Daddy?), I shall live up to my word. In the games I've played, I've seen the following historically accurate occurences pop up: a. Cavalry announce a charge against a light infantry unit. The charger and the chargee each toss a die, and the light infantry "evade", the twinkle-toed little fellows actually outrunning the oncoming horsemen. b. Opposing elephant and cavalry units meet in combat. The elephants disorder the horse, and the cavalry lose the combat and rout. The winner and loser each toss a die, and the great lumbering beasties whiz across the countryside, keeping up with the fleeing cavalrymen, successfully pursuing and hacking at the poor horsemen, who cannot seem to outrun their fleetfooted opponents. c. The dreaded scythed chariot automatically zeroes in on, and charges, the nearest enemy unit. The driver, having read the 48-page Scythed Chariot Handbook, and having done his duty, abandons the vehicle as indicated in Section 2, Article 5, Paragraph 7; he hops out in midfield, letting it go on its own. The chariot is zipping across the field, in its Tomahawk Cruise Missile mode, locked on to its target. It finally approaches to within 2 inches, i.e., charge distance. A die is tossed... the unmanned chariot, suddenly imbued with a mind of its own, "refuses" to close. Am I picky, or am I picky? Somehow, I cannot forget that this is the SEVENTH edition of this set of fine tuned rules, and that this sort of thing has been going on since the early 'seventies. 2. Another set of rules that refuses to flow for me is THEY DIED FOR GLORY (TDFG), Dave Waxtel's Franco-Prussian set. In last month's issue, I described the goings on at a TDFG battle. Since then, we've fought a second large-scale engagement. And we experienced the same problems as the first time out... a choppy sequence, and lots of instances that are not addressed in the text. One item of interest mentioned last time, and with which we again found fault, was the use of 6-sided dice. With only 6 pips, i.e., 6 levels available, the firing and melee tables provided very little gradation amongst the different situations that occur. For example, although the firing tables purport to list a variety of situations (target is in cover, target is skirmishers, target is behind works, target is artillery, target is in building, etc), the requisite toss always came out to be a 5 or 6 for a hit. And a toss of 6 covered even more ground. There were just too many results squnched together at the upper end of the die. It has been, is, and will be, my considered opinion that 6­-sided dice simply cannot hack it if a rules set is intended to allow for all the nitty-gritty historical factors inherent in a given era. During the "good old days", the 'sixties and early 'seventies, the 6-sider may have been appropriate, but, as we approach the year 2000, there is a better way. 3. Bob Wiltrout reports that, at the September PW flea market, he put up for sale a virtually untouched copy of the Bob Coggin's rules, NAPOLEON'S BATTLES. Despite the bargain sales price (and I refuse to quote it, so embarassingly low was his offer) there were no takers. It might be time for a second edition to be published. Although author Bob Coggins told me, some time ago, that the rules were perfect as is, and hence there was no need for a second edition, perhaps they could "fake" a few mistakes, just to gin up interest... for example, state that Austrian cuirassiers don't really move at 12 inches per turn, but move at 11.5 inches. It's things like this that warm the blood of the true historic gamer. 4. Just received the latest issue of WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, No. 74, Duncan MacFarlane's British glossy publication. On page 15, a fellow named Lance Kizer describes his Old West campaign, circa 1830. Each player controls one or two mountain men, and, says Lance: "Some players may not like the fact that that it can take almost 30 turns to reload your muzzle-loader..." Now this is my kind of game! Fast response! Smooth flowing! Nonstop action! Rapid movement! Back to PW Review November 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