The "empire", said John, is the current Russian empire, and the battle pits an attacking Russian force against one from Chechnya. The name of the town in which the Chechnyans are situated is Burusk, said Tony Figlia, and don't forget the umlaut on the "u." But there are two "u", said I, shouldn't there be two umlauts? Enough silliness, said John, let's play the game. John set out his 20mm force of Russians and anti-Russians. The Russkis had about 60 infantry - singly based - plus 4 tanks plus 6 lighter vehicles plus one Hind helicopter. The Chechnyans also had around 60 infantry, but only one tank. The sketch shows the Russian attack; we Russians came in from three sides... we crossed the Burusk River (which, in effect, provided no obstacle), and in three turns, captured the town. END OF THE EMPIRE (EOTE) used essentially the same sequence as that in the FIRE AND FURY rules; the half-bound was composed of: Side A moves Side B fires Side A fires Side A assaults Side A rally pinned units Each turn, there was an additional phase of simultaneous fire (both sides) of off-board artillery and airstrikes. The defending Chechnyans had neither of these, and so we attacking Russians were able to bring in the Hind helicopter unopposed. Well, not entirely unopposed... the defending infantry had an assortment of weaponry they brought to bear on the big bird, and quickly scored 4 hits on it. Since 5 hits knocked it out completely, the Hind was quickly withdrawn until the final assault. The firing procedures used 10-sided dice. Tosses of 7-to-10 were hits, and the dice throws were modified by such things as - 1 if the target was in cover, and another minus for a range factor, and so on. Each type of firing weapon was given a number of dice to toss... a heavy tank got 3, a heavy machine gun got 2, an infantry stand got 1, etc. Similarly, each type of troop required a number of hits to destroy it... 1 hit knocked off an infantry stand, 5 hits a heavy tank, 2 hits for a Russian BMP, and so on. Note in the sequence given for the half-bound that each side fires once; for the entire bound, therefore, each side fired twice. My thought was that there was "too much" firing. As in most modern armor games, each stand (token) on each side threw its assortment of hit dice on the fire phases. With over 100 tokens on the field, the firing procedures were rather lengthy. John called EOTE an "experimental set", and several changes were made on the spot, as suggested rules modifications popped up. Movement was rapid... infantry moved 15 inches, light vehicles moved 40 inches and so on. Which meant that we moved up rapidly, held back solely by the firing procedures. When weapons fired, they fired in groups, and they were aimed, not at a single stand, but at a target group. For the most part, we tried to keep the target groups within a 3 inch diameter circle of one another, but as the Chechnyan defenders spread out, this wasn't possible all the time. If a casualty occurred, then the stands within the 3-inch zone would take a morale test. Here, the Chechnyan units were deemed "veteran" ... a toss on a 10-sided die of under '9' indicated that the target unit was in fine shape. The Russian units were at an '8' level. The die used for the morale test was biased by Several factors. One of them was a +1 for every 2-hits on the target. Early in the battle, my 4-tank Russian platoon took several hits, and tossed poorly on the morale test. They retreated, and only showed themselves on the final assault. Within Burusk, as we Russians closed, and our firepower increased, more and more Chechnyans failed their morale tests and were declared pinned in place. They could recover only at the end of their side's active phase. Off-board artillery and on-board mortars (indirect firing weapons) used an artillery template, an 8-by-8 grid, to determine just where it was that the shells burst. Each box in the grid measured 1-inch by 1-inch. Once having determined the box in which the round fell, all stands within a 3-inch area were affected. I started out with a platoon of 4 tanks, T-72s, which as I said, suffered an early morale failure, and retreated. I also had 20 infantry which fared a wee bit better. They rode up, debarked from their vehicles, and went up and over Chotchky Ridge, attacking the south-eastern town boundary. At the same time, Jeff Wiltrout's 20 man unit attacked from the west, and came up and over Slitsky Ridge. General Wiltroutsky's men seemed immune to Chechnyan fire... the General asked that the record reflect that, due to his superior tactics, he lost not a single man, while at the same time, his boys took out 8 Chechnyans. John Shirey had a third Russian unit of 26 men. They lined up on Grodsky Ridge before my men or those of General Wiltroutsky showed up. The result was that the defending Chechnyans focused just about every weapon in the town on them. The Chechnyans had one heavy tank, a T-55, which fired once, took a hit, failed a morale test, and decided that war was a bad thing... it took off. On Turn #3, my troops entered Burusk, capturing the south-eastern corner. At this point in the battle, the Chechnyans had lost around 20 of their 60 men. When we counted our own losses, we found that we Russians had also lost around 20 men... plus several small vehicles and the dreaded Hind helicopter. But we still had a full platoon of T-721s, giving us an adequate amount of heavy firepower. In contrast, the Chechnyans were down to AK-471s and a heavy machine gun or two. We decided it was time for the Chechnyans to surrender. My comment was that the sequence was "too busy" ... too many phases, and too much firing. John Shirey promised that the second edition would follow shortly. Back to PW Review July 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