I've got a collection of 40mm single-mounted ACW troops, the figures of which were originally British colonial in nature. After lots of carving, soldering, dremeling, and a wee bit of sculpting by Fred Haub, they were placed in a mold and turned out en masse. I term each 5-man unit a regiment, with 3 or 4 regiments per brigade. Two brigades form a division, and each brigade is assigned its own battery. I've described these rules in the past, with the unique points being: a. 10-sided dice are used, and all die rolls, whether for morale tests, for rallying, for combat, or for firing, use the same basic chart: A modified roll of 1 to 10 produces no effect A modified roll of 11 or 12 affects 1 man A modified roll of 13 or over affects 2 men I call this approach the Simon Universal Gamery Tabulation (SUGT). For example, in firing, the SUGT table becomes: 1 - 10 No Effect 11, 12 1 man to the Rally Zone 13 and up 1 man dead, 1 man to the Rally Zone In all tosses, the basic modifier is a +1 for every man in the concerned unit. b. Men that are placed in the Rally Zone may, at the end of the bound, get to rejoin the units on the field. Here, the SUGT table becomes: 1 - 10 No Effect 11, 12 1 man gets back into action 13 and up 2 men get back into action These rallied men are permitted to rejoin any unit on the field. In effect, all troops are "generic" in nature, and may thus be used to assist anywhere. c. Each 5-man regiment has a sixth figure, a standard bearer. The only way to annihilate a regiment is to capture its standard bearer. If all 5 men in the regiment are killed or placed in the Rally Zone, and the standard bearer remains, he can be used as a rally point at which men who rally at the end of the bound may be placed. In effect, the standard bearer acts as a point at which the regiment may be "regenerated". Commanding the attacking Rebel force at Fort Fall was Fred Haub, who outnumbered my defending Yankee infantry by 3 regiments, i.e., one brigade. I had three brigades; he had four. Another source of no-help to me were my off-table Union cavalry. These were diced for each bound; they had a 10$ chance, cumulative, per bound, of showing up... they never appeared. The first Confederate attack focused on the western half of the front face of the fort. The Haubian Rebs attacked with one brigade and were thrown back... largely due to the efforts of the artillery crew manning the battery in this sector. During the movement phase, no units can approach closer than 2 inches to an enemy unit. Then, during the melee phase, the active side gets to select a lead unit and place it in contact. The subsequent 4 phases in the combat are: a. First, we call on the Melee Deck. There are 12 cards, each annotated with directions such as "Defender fires", or "Attacker tests morale", or "Defender may deploy and fire". In effect, as the cards are drawn, a brief fire fight between the two opposing units takes place. In other words, despite the fact that the two units were physically placed together, the attacking unit still hasn't really closed to the point at which hand-to-hand combat can take place. Two of the 12 cards note "End of Phase", and when one of these cards appears, the fire fight ceases and the actual melee begins, i.e., the attacking unit finally made it to point at which it and the defending unit can whup away at each other. b. But the whupping doesn't begin yet. Next, we come to the Support Deck. Here, there are 10 cards, each annotated with instructions such as "1 unit may advance" or "2 units may advance", or "No units may advance", etc. Cards are drawn alternately (attacker draws first) and each unit advancing to support the lead units may move toward the combat a distance of 4 inches. A unit is defined to have "reached" the combat when its movement carries it to the front line of contact between the two lead units which started the fight. Two of the Support Deck cards are annotated "End", and when one of these is drawn, this ends the support phase. It may be that, for one side, not a single support unit actually reached the combat, while for the other side, 3 or 4 units piled on. c. Now we're finally in the throes of melee, the actual hand-to-hand combat... we get to assess casualties. Here, the SUGT looks like the one used for firing: 1 - 10 No Effect 11, 12 1 man to the Rally Zone 13 and up 1 man dead, 1 man to the Rally Zone Note that when tossing the 10-sided die, we need some modifiers to enable the total to exceed 10, and so each unit gets to toss a die and add modifiers as follows: +1 for every man in the unit (maximum of 5) +1 if officer assists +1 if lead unit has an advantage (cover, etc.) d. After the casualty assessment phase, and after figures are removed from the affected units, the winner is determined using 2 parameters: N Total number of surviving figures on your side H Total number of casualties (either men removed to the Rally Zone or killed) you caused to the opposition. The winner is the higher product of: 10-sided die x (N + H) What happened in the first attack on the fort was that, during the draws of the cards of the Melee Deck (see Step a, above), the defending artillery crew got off a couple of rounds of canister which reduced the number of surviving attacking figures so that their "N" value in the above calculation was fairly low. When the artillery fired, the SUGT for firing was modified by: +1 for every man in the unit (maximum of 5) +1 for close range canister -1 if lead unit under cover As the Confederates pulled back from this first attack, the defenders, in their shrill 40mm voices, gave forth a loud "Hurrah!" Unfortunately, this was the last hurrah heard from the fort. Simultaneous attacks all along the front face proved successful, and over the walls came the Rebs. And to rub salt in the wound, the Confederate cavalry completed a huge sweeping movement to the rear of the fort, causing defending troops, needed badly at the front wall, to be diverted. My union cavalry could definitely have come in handy at this point. Back to PW Review February 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.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com