Brian Dewitt purchased a huge assortment of troops, a superb collection of 15mm ancients at HISTORICON, and this was their debut. Elephants and scythed chariots and velites and triumvariacs and hastites and psiloi (where would an ancients army be without psiloi?) and Thracian gondolier throwers and all kinds of ancient thingies. What battle are we fighting?, I asked Brian, and he pointed to the cover of a newly published board game by a firm named Zeno called Battles Of The Diadochoi. The cover of the box had an illustration of Alexander, an Alexander with a huge, heroic square jaw, and what appeared to be several of Alexander's friends, each with his own huge, heroic square jaw. At table-side, on "our" side, we had the elephants and the scythed chariots and an assortment of what proved to be losers. This was the side of Generals Simon and Dewitt and Shirey, fighting for brotherhood and equality and public toilets and love and affection (not necessarily in that order). Opposing us were Generals Haub and Figlia, fighting for freedom and motherhood and mom's apple pie and eat-all-you- want buffets. We diced, tossed high, and so we won the initiative on the first bound. That was the last good thing that happened to us. Infantry move about 8 inches, cavalry anywhere from 12 to 15 inches, and the phases of the bound split movement in two: (a) Side 1 moves half of its movement allowance. (b)Side 2 tests for reaction, and if successful, moves half. Melees resulting from contacts are resolved. (c)Side 1 completes its movement. Melees resulting from contacts are resolved (d) Side 1 tests for I'mom;ntum" to keep going. The entire sequence is tied in with the command capabilities of the generals on the field (by "generals", I refer to the teeny-weeny, little 15mm figures, and not we huge, heroic-looking, square-jawed players at table-side). Each general has a number of key parameters. In the first battle, my general, Euminids, commanding the right flank of our army, had ' an "Order Capability" of 5, meaning he could issue orders to 5 different units within his command radius. Five orders were sufficient for my flank, which contained five units: a unit of light horse, some drunken camel drivers and their camels, javelineerists, and two units of foot archers. When our side was active, therefore, Euminids had no problems. Nor, for that matter, did he have too many command problems when we were the non-active side. In addition to his order Capability of 5, Euminid had a Reaction Factor of 5, which meant that when we were Side 2, on phase (b) in the above sequence listing, he had to toss a 1-through-5 to react to the opposition. John Shirey commanded the center of our line, where were poised our devastating, multi-tusked elephant corps and a division of horrific scythed chariots. John ordered then t-o advance. FOOP! FOOP! FOOP! went the enemy archers, and our horrific scythed chariots disappeared. Brian's archery rules have an interesting twist to them. Firing modifiers are applied to the die roll itself rather than to the die roll multiplier. For example, if four stands fire at long range at light infantry, the modifiers become: Firing over 12 inches -3 Firing at light troops -2 The total modifier becomes -5, and the hit calculation becomes: (4 stands) x (Die - 5) If the die roll was an "8," we'd get (4 x (8-5]), or 12, indicating one hit, since a hit occurs for every 10 points in the resulting product. I think that three hits destroyed a stand, and our 3-stand scythed chariot unit never had a chance. Our own archers proved impotent, or poorly handled, or placed incorrectly, but whatever the reason, our troops were thoroughly chewed up well before the two main battle lines made contact. Battle the second. We did a little better this time. Euminids left me; he was assigned duties elsewhere, and in response to the brilliant job of troop handling I had displayed in the first battle, his place was taken by Teutamus. Teutamus had an Order Capability of 2 ... he could control only two units. Teutamus had a Reaction Factor of 5, the same as Euminids' factor. Where Teutamus excelled, however, was in his third parameter, his Momentum Factor, an 8. Af ter phase (c) was completed, then on phase (d), he could achieve additional movement and keep on going if he tossed 8 or less on a 10-sided die. Facing me, on my flank, were heavy cavalry and heavy infantry. Teutamus also had a heavy cavalry unit, but he was given the same unit of drunken camel drivers with which Euminids had been blessed. My javelineers tossed their missiles at the heavy cavalry, and angered them. The heavy cavalry charged and off ran the javelineers, right through those wonderful scythed chariots that John Shirey had sent to my flank to help out. Brian declared that the chariots were disordered; they had tried to close with the heavy cavalry, but disordered troops are not permitted to do so. As a last gasp, I tossed Teutamus' Momentum die, was successful, and sent in the camel drivers against the heavy infantry. Here, I received the following die modifiers: +2 Just for charging +2 For charging with momentum -3 For facing heavy infantry Melee calculations parallel the firing ones. My total of +1 was added to my die roll and the resultant multiplied by the number of camel stands, 3, in the unit. I scored one hit on the heavies. In contrast, the heavy infantry laughed a little, pointed at the camel drivers, muttered "Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!" and, without even blinking, scored 3 hits. One camel stand gone. Under the Dewitt rules, by definition, the side scoring the most casualties wins the melee. Off went the camel drivers. This last rule is the only one with which I'd take issue under the Dewittian scheme of things. The way the modifiers are laid out, he who has the largest, most powerful unit will always score the most casualties... hence he will always win the melee. For example, there was no way my camel drivers could outscore the heavy infantry; charging in on them was, in essence, a wee bit suicidal... the cameleers were bound to lose. By defining the winner as the side scoring the most casualties, there's no element of "surprise" present. Surely, sometime, somewhere, somehow, a teeny-tiny unit, against all odds, successfully beat off a larger unit, not by scoring more casualties, but, perhaps, because the larger unit lost heart... surely?? While my flank was being decimated, John Shirey's elephant corps finally contacted the enemy. With three elephant stands, each counting as two, John had an effective die multiplier of 6, surely enough to rip the enemy to shreds... surely?? Alas! the enemy scored 9 hits on the elephant corps; each three hits removes one stand, and so our highly trained, multi- tusked fierce-fighting, blood-sucking pachyderms vanished, beaten into the dust at their very first contact! And there went the ball game. Back to PW Review August 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 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