1. Lessons learned. Peter Dennis visited during the month of May, and for his two boys, ages 12 or so, I set up an American Civil War skirmish using the usual Simon procedures: a. Each side had a number of "actions", and each action contributed 30% to the chance of reloading your musket. OK, you guys, I said, how many actions do you want to devote to loading your weapons? The response: Huh?? b. Each time one of your men is hit, he gets a marker, and each marker counts as 10%. If this man has 5 markers, I said, what's the chance of his being knocked down? The response: Huh?? c. You have 12 melee points and you multiply them by your die roll of 7 to get a total Combat Value, and the high product wins. What's your Combat Value? The response: Huh?? From the outset, it was obvious that I am not a super-game designer for kids. What these young lads were looking for was their idea of a game in which you moved your toy soldiers and then a toss of 1, 2, or 3 hits the other guy's soldiers and knocks them down. What they got was my idea of a game, complete with appropriate gloss and grunge and glamor and/or garbage. In a sense, the kids were fairly representative of the entire wargaming community, which, on the whole, shies away from anything other than the "1,2,3 is a hit" approach. Once the community is presented with a simple system which seems to work in one game, the tendency is to run it into the ground. Witness (a) the incessant use of 6-sided dice, (b) red-card­for-British-move, black-card-for-native-move, (c) a toss of 6 hits at long range, and a 5 or 6 hits at medium range, and so on. Soon, I expect, we'll be inundated with "original" rules using the DBA/DBM move-a-group-per-pip system. I guess there's nothing really wrong with this. It follows the old theme of "... if a little bit is good, then more must be better". 2. During Peter's stay, he briefly watched a 30mm ACW battle in which our Saturday group was engaged. After some minutes, he commented: "What does all this have to do with the American Civil War?" I must admit that, after some reflection, I had to confess that, aside from the fact that some of the figures were painted with blue coats, while others were painted gray, the goings-on had nothing to do with the American civil war. And after some more reflection, I decided that this really didn't bother me, because no set of table-top rules, regardless of how loud the authors may shout, has anything to do with the era purportedly presented. A game's a game for a' o' that. 3. Had some feedback concerning the last issue, the double one of April/May. Brian Dewitt indicated that, because of the size of the package (almost 40 pages), coupled with the length of some of the articles, it was hard to digest. This was an eye-opener. Too much of the PW REVIEW?? Can such a thing be possible? Brian admitted that his indigestion was caused by his attempt to go through the entire double issue at a single sitting. This is, of course, a fool-hardy procedure. The subtleties, the nuances, the complexities, the ingenious and artful devices described in a regular issue may require more than one reading for proper absorption. Attacking a double issue in this manner simply courts disaster. 4. I thought I had learned a new military term... almost. In Hal Thinglum's Midwest Wargamer's Association Newsletter (MWAN), the latest issue (Vol 12, No 5, May/June 94) contains an extensive 20-page set of sailing ship rules. On page 110, I discovered a section called "Grappling and Upgrappling Phase". Aha!, sez I, the author must know a great deal about naval warfare, much more so than the usual run of ship-of-sail writers. Obviously well-versed in the lore of the sea, he's going to tell us that the standard reference to "ungrappling" is incorrect, and that Lord Nelson's diary contains notes to the effect that his crew is to practice their "upgrappling" procedures, etc. I read the rules rather closely to determine just what a crew had to do to "upgrapple"; I found, for example, that "A successful upgrapple negates all affects (sic) of the grappling." And there's even a reference to the "Upgrappling Table". Egad!, sez I, there's something to be learned here. Alas! My research was for naught. After a page or so, "upgrappling" reverted to "ungrappling". A mere 'typo'... in fact, a page or so of typos. There was no new facet of the art of naval warfare to be learned. All of which says I shall continue to avoid sailing ship rules. 5. The HMGS-DISPATCH is published by the HMGS Mid-South group, based in Tennessee. The organization's April, 1994 issue had an interesting (interesting to me) comment in its editorial column: The March 1994 issue of HMGS East's newsletter... had some interesting stuff in it, but what struck me most was a letter from a guy named Bob Giglio that was so vitriolic that it made some of Pat Condray's musings pure honey by comparison. After showing it around to several of our members, the general consensus was that if he ever carried on like that down here, we'd have a nice vat of road tar and a bale of chicken feathers waiting so he could leave town wearing a new suit... Bob Giglio is a PW member, and I didn't think his letter was vitriolic at all. In fact, in focusing on the perceived vitriol, the mid-southerners missed the point of letter. What Bob pointed out was that the HMGS-East election procedures of last July fell just short of perfection: a. The procedures didn't follow the requirements mandated by the HMGS charter, b. There was no opportunity for new candidates to inform the membership of who they were, and what they stood for, thus heavily biasing the election in favor of the existing Board of Directors (who, as ever, were candidates themselves), and c. The balloting itself was flawed and irregular. Bob was an unhappy, unsuccessful candidate in the election and he gave vent to his unhappiness. In short, Bob's point was that the election was both unfair and illegal. In short, most of the HMGS members with whom I've discussed this agree with Bob. In short, I think that most of the present reelected Board members, if cornered, would agree with Bob (unfortunately, you'll never get any Board member to admit error in public in outright fashion; just like Nixon and Rostenkowsky, each member simply shouts: "I didn't do it!"). But, whatta-we-care?? As long as the Board provides us with two super-conventions a year, and spends no more than, say, $30,000 a year on frivolities, let 'em have their way... Editor's Note: In the March issue of the REVIEW, I published an article of my adventures at COLD WARS, my experiences in registering for, and participating in, the WRG tournament. Scott Holder runs the event, and his comments below pertain to the article. (Copies of the article may be obtained by writing to the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis, enclosing a cashier's check in the amount of $49.95) Back to PW Review June 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 (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com