At the November PW meeting, Joe Austin set up a huge table for a 15mm game and walked us through a Gregg Novak set of rules titled YELLOW RIBBON (YR), Rules For Indian Wars, 1850-1890. This was published in 1988 in a small booklet (5 1/2 x 8) format.
Some 6 of us joined Joe... 4 for running the units of our Red Brethren, 2 for the U.S. Infantry.
YR was written during the era in which it was fashionable to use many of the procedures published in Larry Brom's THE SWORD AND THE FLAME (TSATF). Hence movement distance is decided by the sum of the toss of a number of 6-sided dice (mounted units throw 4 dice, charging infantry get 2 dice, etc.). And when units are hit, a 52card deck is referred to: for each wound, a card is drawn... hearts are serious wounds, diamonds are light wounds, etc.
YR's methodology follows that of TSATF's... scenarios seem to consist of a small number of the good guys - in this case, the Yankee soldiers - continually under attack by hundreds, thousands, yea, even millions, of the bad guys - in this case, Indians.
We good guys started out on the eastern edge of the field as shown on the map; our objective was to get our wagon train to the far western edge of the field, some 10 feet away. With the wagon train moving a maximum of 6 inches per turn... that is, when it moved at all... this was going to be a difficult trek.
Accompanying the train were two howitzers and crew, and 4 companies of infantry. Each infantry company consisted of 8 men, including an officer. Unit size seemed to vary... I didn't pay that much attention, but it seemed the Indian units, all mounted, had anywhere from 8 to 12 men in them. Our Yankee cavalry, 2 units, each had 10 men in them.
On Turn 1, out of Woods #1, to the south, charged an 8 man Indian unit, run by Sam Hepford. Sam throws himself into these scenarios, and so the charge was accompanied by Sam's whooping and yipping.
The word "charge" is somewhat of a misnomer, for the Indians were not permitted to make contact with our infantry on this first turn... the rules required them to stop 3 inches away and "skirmish", i.e., halt and fire their rifles, before contact.
The "skirmish" requirement is instituted to make the game more playable. Without it, the Indians would charge out of cover, and contact their target units immediately, with no opportunity for defensive fire from the army units. Hence the game would deteriorate into a series of charge/ melee/ charge/melee cycles, and the soldiers would never get to fire their weapons.
With the Indians halted, our charged infantry, the 8 men of Company K, traded fire with them.
The Indians took a morale test, failed, and with some more of Sam's whooping and yipping, they fled.
The actual sequence of the turn consists of 3 basic phases:
- a. Place order chits beside units. This is a simultaneous move game and the order chits take the place of order writing. Chits are only necessary for movement, and consist of such orders as "March", permitting a unit to zip along, or "Move", for which dice are thrown to determine the actual distance moved, or "Charge", or "Reform", permitting a unit to change formation or the guns to unlimber.
b. Next is a fire phase. Units that received March orders can't fire at all. Units that received Move orders will fire at h effectiveness, and so on. Target units take a morale test.
c. Then there's a melee phase, after which engaged units that took casualties take another morale test. If both sides hold position, the melee continues on the next bound, and more units may charge in to participate.
On Turn 2, more Indians appeared, this time from Woods 12, to the north, more whooping and yipping, more firing, more morale tests. When our 8-man infantry unit tired, each man received a 6-sided die, and, I think, a toss of 5 or 6 was a hit. Units were graded Crack, Average and Poor, and the required dice throws varied according to unit status.
A hit on the die roll wasn't all, however... it was the signal to turn to the 52-card deck, and to draw them to determine the extent of the wounds received. The draw of a heart indicated a kill, and one figure was knocked over (no casualty figures were used).
The appearance of a black card indicated nothing happened, and ordinarily, the draw of a diamond indicated a light wound, but Joe stated that for this game, he'd ignore diamonds. Which meant that with diamonds, spades and clubs ineffective, only a quarter of the hits really counted.
We Yankee units lucked out during the first few turns... just about every hit we took resulted in a diamond/spade/club draw, hence our casualty rate remained extraordinarily low.
On the Indian charge of Turn #2, despite their casualties, the Indians held, made contact and a melee took place. Our soldiers knocked off an Indian or two, and the Indians knocked off a couple of our boys.
In melee, men are paired off a la the TSATF procedures, each man tosses his die, and looks for a "6". The mounted Indians received a modifier of +2 on their toss, a significant addition. At the end of the first phase of melee, with both sides passing their morale tests, it looked like we were in for another round of combat next turn.
And so, on the next turn, with an unending supply of Red warriors apparently pouring out of Woods #2, it seemed the right thing to do was to halt the wagon train, unlimber the artillery, and get ready to fight off what looked like a potential Armageddon.
But Sam's well-trained Indians fooled us, for instead of standing for another round of melee, they voluntarily disengaged - more whooping and yipping - and rode off into the sunset (a distance of 5 dice) . Joe informed us that disengaging was permitted only to mounted Indians; our infantry wasn't permitted to withdraw once they were in contact.
As Sam's Indians rode off over the horizon, with nothing else to do on the fire phase, and with our guns unlimbered, we fired our long range howitzers at Sam's retreating units.
The distance was around 30 inches, well within the howitzer short range of 45 inches. Unfortunately, YR permitted the howitzer, even at "short range", only 1 lousy hit die! Looking for a "6", .e scored nothing.
The howitzer, with its single hit die at short range, was obvious:, a loser. We immediately limbered the guns up again, hoping that .: we used it as ordinary artillery, firing case, it would do a bit better.
Again, it was Woods #2 turn to vomit forth a slew of Indian bands. One band converged on Company K, the same unit that had just engaged. But this time, Company K, having just received a March order, wasn't allowed to fire. Which meant that the Indians, after skirmishing, wouldn't have to take a morale test, which, in turn, meant that they would engage next bound.
After each man tossed his hit die in melee, the melee results were as follows:
| Unit | Initial No Of Men | Final No Of Men |
|---|---|---|
| Company K | 8 | 5 |
| Indians | 15 | 14 |
Despite their many dice throws and their +2 modifiers, the Indians failed to wipe out Company K because of the 52-card deck draws which denoted the hit results. The Indians scored many, many hits, but we lucked out because we drew a lot of "non-wound" cards (diamonds/spades/clubs) from the deck.
Again, all units passed their morale tests, and it looked like we were in for another round of melee. Company I was given orders to charge in to assist the beleaguered Company K. Company I was around 10 inches away from the engaged units; it tossed its charge dice, 2 of them, and wound up moving a huge 3 inches toward the combat. But again, the Indians declined a second round of melee, disengaged, and ran off. I speak neither Comanche nor Kiowa, so I'm at a loss as to why the Indians kept ducking a second round of melee. With their +2 modifier added to their 6-sided die roll, they had an 81.3 percent chance to win each pair-off. I suspect, however, that their continually drawing back had something to do with "victory conditions" and "survivability", i.e, they couldn't squander their units away and win solely on the points gained from killing soldiers.
One of the rules explained to us by our host, Joe Austin, was that once a unit was given a charge order, it continued to charge forward until it made contact, or until "something" happened to change its status. Which meant that Company I, having started its charge move forward, was required to keep on charging, doomed, in effect, to charge forever.
But Joe took pity on us; Company t was permitted to halt, recover, and rejoin its sister units.
It was now around Turn #7; our wagon train had advanced almost halfway up the field, but the situation looked hopeless, since there were so many Indian units surging about that progress was impossible.
Indian morale rolls were interesting. Evidently, Indians started with a Morale Level (ML) of around 6 or 7. If, during a morale test, the unit failed, off it went.
I should note that Indian morale was termed "medicine"... these units didn't have morale levels, they had medicine levels.
Each time an Indian unit was hit, its medicine level went down, making it that much more difficult to pass a medicine test the next time.
But here's a rule which didn't quite make sense to me. Indian bands received "Glory Points" for each kill. These Glory Points were accumulated and tracked. Under YR procedures, when an Indian unit's Glory Points, i.e, coup points, became greater than its medicine level, the unit went home... off the field... its members were well satisfied with their day's work... the heck with their fellow Indians' requirements.
But the problem was that as an Indian unit's losses became greater and greater, its medicine levels became less and less. In other words, it was easy for a hard hit unit, with its relatively low medicine level, to achieve a number of Glory Points greater than its medicine level. Which meant that the hard hit units reached their trigger point, and went off the field.
In a way, this is logical... hard hit units that suffer many casualties should have some sort of "break point" which, when referenced, causes them to think twice about carrying on. But why the reference was made to be their "Glory Points" was a mystery.
Joe tried to explain it to us, but didn't succeed too well, and wound up by saying that we just weren't thinking like Indians. I had to agree.
This topic opened up another conversation between two table-side Indian experts. This is not the way Indians fight... said Expert #1... they won't just run off; Indians will always stay and fight to the last man.
Up your nose... said Expert #2... Indians do fight this way, and they'll run off at the slightest pretext.
It was no surprise that Expert #1 couldn't convince Expert #2, nor vice versa, and the argument died after only a brief moment. The two Experts, of course, thoroughly understood what was going on, but the rest of us remained in the dark.
But back to the game. Things were rather slow, men were not dropping fast enough, and our host indicated that the casualty rate was way behind schedule. He explained that henceforth, to speed up the game, the rate would be increased: when a unit was hit and tie 52-card pack was called upon to determine the extent of the wounds received, any red card (hearts or diamonds) would be a kill, while any black card would signify nothing.
On Turn 8, having been charged, one of our Yankee units, Company H, failed its morale throw. The unit had been hit, it was down from 8 to 6 men, and its morale level was 9... it had to toss 9 or below with 2 6-sided dice. Company H failed its dice toss.
What this meant was that the oncoming Indians wouldn't be shot at, and since the oncoming Indians were some 12 in number, things looked bleak for the 6 men of Company K.
Another of our units, Company J, was down to a single man. If things looked bad for Company K, they surely looked hopeless for Company J.
The change in casualty rate had an abrupt effect on our Yankee army losses. What had looked promising before, looked rather hopeless now.
But on Turn 10, a momentary respite!... there arrived the U.S. Cavalry, but unfortunately, even though the mounted troopers gave one Indian unit whatfor, there was no way our slow moving wagon train would make its way up the field.
Turn 10 also produced the saddest moment of the day for the Indian side. On previous turns, Fred Haub, alias Lone Wolf the Comanche, had led his men into battle and scored many coups. Bill Rankin, alias River In The Sky, another Comanche chief, had also engaged and scored many coups.
And now it was Yellow Dog's turn. Yellow Dog was chief of the Kiowas, and Jim Butters had been patiently standing at table-side for 10-count 'em-10 full turns (2 1/2 wonderful hours of game time), waiting to bring Yellow Dog in and grab his share of the glory.
Alas! Yellow Dog failed his dice toss... we heard a cry of anguish from Jim Butters, as he discovered that Yellow Dog was not to partake of the festivities.
Slow Movement
The game was a slow one in terms of movement. Our wagon train zipped along at the tremendous rate of 6 inches per bound, tryinq to make for the opposite end of the field, some 10 feet away. After Turn 2, the wagon train didn't move at all, because of the continual array of Indians and melees going on. In fact, there was very little movement on the field on the part of the Yankee soldiers after Turn 2... the only movement was that of the Indians as more and more of them appeared and charged in.
The firing procedure was rapid, but the melee procedure took a lot of time... since men are paired off, dice have to be thrown for each man on the field, and this consumes quite a bit of time.
In all, though, an interesting game, if not my favorite set . rules...
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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