The British were defending, the French were attacking... all in 20mm. I have a huge collection of old, old 20mm Scruby figures which, on occasion, I place on the table. This game was scaled up... one stand was denoted as a battalion, 4 or 5 battalions as a brigade, and some 3 brigades as a division. Musketry range was defined as 6 inches, which (and I know this without your telling me so) was way, way out of scale. With a single stand representing a battalion, the effective musket range of, say, 100 yards, should have been closer to an inch or so, 2 inches at the most. But holding the range down thusly, to my mind, restricts the game, makes maneuvering too inflexible, and makes the game resemble a board game in too close a fashion (even though, with the scale as described, that's really what we were playing). I assigned the French about 9 divisions, breaking them out into 2 corps, while the defending British had only one corps of some 6 divisions. Each division had its own data sheet, with its component brigades listed as shown below: Division: Fire Class: Unit Efficiency Points 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Bgd O O O O O O O O O O O O Bgd O O O O O O O O O O O O Bgd O O O O O O O O O O O O Bgd O O O O O O O O O O O O Artillery O O O O O O Arty Ammo O O O O O O O O O O O O Casualties were noted in several ways: a. Each time a brigade received 4 hits (crossed off 4 boxes), one stand was removed. b. The entire division disappeared when either (i) all its brigades vanished, or (ii) when its total of 12 Efficiency Points were crossed out. Both in fire and melee, the sides tossed a number of 10-sided dice, termed Hit Dice, and hits were incurred with: 1 1 hit on the target unit, and 1 divisional Efficiency Point crossed off 2,3 1 hit on the target unit 4 - 10 No effect The sketch below shows the field; the attacking French force was assigned the task of taking all 3 villages. British troops were initially placed in the two towns to the east and west (Plac and Plac), while the center village of Plic was unoccupied. Jeff Wiltrout was the prime commander of the Brits. He conducted what may be termed an "aggressive defense" - an understatement - since he just about wiped out we advancing Frenchmen. I blame my defeat solely on the rules structure; it couldn't possible have occurred because of any lack of skill. For starters, all divisions were graded on their fire power. Note on the data sheet, there's a notation called FIRE CLASS (FC) for the division. Prior to the game, the FC of each division was diced for, and recorded. There were three FC's... FC1, the worst, to FC3, the best. The Basic Sequence Consisted of: Side A move Fire Phase Melee Side B move Fire Phase Melee Note there were 2 fire phases per bound, and here was where we poor French got our heads handed to us. On each fire phase, we referred to a deck of 6 cards, the Fire Deck. Each card listed the FC's of the units permitted to fire. For example, FC3 units were listed on 5 of the 6 cards, FC2 units on 4, while FC1 units were listed on only 3 of the 6. The firing sequence consisted of: a. A Fire Deck card was drawn, and the appropriate units would fire. b. There was a 20% chance the fire phase terminated. c. If not, another Fire Deck card was picked, and the designated FC units fired. d. There was a 40% chance the fire phase terminated, etc. Note that each time a Fire Deck card was picked, there was an increasing chance (20% chance per card, cumulative) of ending the fire phase. Where we French got into trouble was that, when we initially diced for the Fire Class of each of our divisions, two of them turned out to be FC1. Why the French high command sent us such poor troops I cannot imagine... but we were stuck with them. Note that FC1 units fire only half the time (they're listed on only 3 of the 6 Fire Deck cards), and in many instances, as we diced to see if a fire phase terminated - and it did - they never even got a chance to level their muskets. In contrast, Jeff's Brits had a goodly share of FC3 troops, and one unit I must note is the artillery battery manned by the Norwich Volunteers. This FC3 battery was placed in midfield, and poured a huge hail of lead on the advancing French troops. Prior to the game, the ammunition supply of each battery was diced for (either 8, 10 or 12 rounds) and the Norwich battery, gifted with a total of 12 rounds, fired its entire ammunition allotment, probably causing more casualties than any other British unit. A battery tossed 4 Hit Dice each time it fired, and if the target was within canister range (6 inches), it received yet another 4. The high point of our French attack occurred when we entered the central town of Plic. In truth, it really wasn't that much of a high point since the town was empty, unoccupied by the Brits, but I'm afraid we French had so few high points, that there's not too many to choose from. And we didn't occupy Plic for any appreciable length of time, for Jeff came down on us with his redoubtable Highlanders, who drove us out with what appeared to be a minimum effort. In melee, each side received one Hit Die for each stand in combat, and a couple of bonus dice if the situation was favorable (defending works, cavalry attacking infantry-not-in-square, etc.). The casualty table was the same one used as in the fire phase (given on the first page of this article). After all dice were tossed, the winner was assessed on the basis of the number of hits inflicted on the opposition and the remaining number of Efficiency Points in the engaged divisions. Our best French divisions, ie., those classified as FC3 and FC2, were placed in the center of the field, and our worst, the non­firing FC1's, placed on our flanks. Our attacking division on the left flank, going against the British troops holding the western-most town of Plak, was commanded by one General Count Alucard. Not only was Alucard hampered by the rotten FC1 troops assigned to him, but, sad to say, his Military Capability (MC) was a poor 50 percent. Each division general diced, prior to battle, for his MC rating (either 50, 60 or 70) and Alucard diced poorly. The MC rating of a general helped out in several procedures: a. It determined if units within the same division could enter melee to assist an engaged sister unit. b. It determined if a force received additional staff officers. These officers could augment a unit's morale level or could, in melee, contribute an additional 2 Hit Dice to the encounter. As Alucard set out against the Brits stationed in Plac, he soon found out that the defenders consisted of three brigades of a Rifle Division, the redoubtable 95th. I forget whether the Rifles were FC2 or FC3, but Captain Sharp would have been proud of them. As soon as the troops in the Rifle Division determined they were up against veritable non-firing pussycats, out they stormed, and Alucard's units just couldn't stand the heat. Alucard's men were outgunned, and bound after bound, fire phase after fire phase, the Rifles inundated them with leaden pellets, huge half-inch leaden pellets, while, for the most part, the Alucardians did not, could not, return fire. On the draw of each card from the Fire Deck, after all appropriate units fired, target units took a morale test. This meant that, for just about every card drawn, as the Rifles kept pouring fire on them, Alucard's units underwent a test. The basic morale level of units in a division was defined to be: Morale Level = 40 + (5 x Efficiency Points) As the number of divisional Efficiency Points decreased, so did the morale levels of the division's component units. A staff officer could be tossed in to increase the morale level (the officer contributed an average of 15 percent), but Alucard could draw on only so many officers. It became obvious that we brave French were not going to win any glory this day. "Sauve qui peut!" was the cry... and off we ran. Back to PW Review July 1994 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 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