FIELDS OF HONOR appeared in 1994, written by Shane Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment. The book is nicely designed, and the rules purportedly cover the last 50 years of the 1800's ... from the Crimean War to the American Civil War to the Austro-Franco-Prussian conflicts to the British colonial efforts in Egypt. Tony Figlia set up a test scenario for us ... a French column (a punitive expedition, said Tony) trudging through the Sudan, circa 1880. We French commanders had 7 companies of regular troops, 4 stands each, plus a company of mounted spahis, plus Gatlings plus guns plus baggage ... the works. I stated above that the book was nicely designed... let me now state that it is not well written. Sad to say, we didn't even get beyond Turn 3. The going is slow! slow! slow! Perhaps with the author around to guide the players through the various tables and charts, a game would run faster, but we bogged down rather rapidly. Take the firing procedure, for example. Each weapon gets a certain number of 6-sided dice per stand, and one first makes reference to the Hit Table. This is, for the most part, solely a function of weapon range. Our French riflebearing troops received one die per stand, and the rifles themselves had the following ranges: Range Required Hit Toss up to 18 inches 2 to 37 inches 3 to 75 inches 4 I tossed the four dice for my 4-stand French company, and the dice throw had to equal or exceed the Hit number. At 24 inches, therefore, the die roll had to be 3 or more. Those dice that didn't equal at least 3 were put aside; only those that passed the hit test were used in the casualty phase. Suppose that of my four dice, three passed the test. I now could toss my 3 remaining dice to score hits on the target. Again I tossed the 3 dice, this time taking the total of the three. To find the number of hits, I divided the total by a base number which started out as "5". The base of 5 is now modified to account for particular situations. I don't remember the exact modifiers, but let's say that since my troops were trained, I deducted 1 from the base, changing it to a 4. Assume my 3-dice total was 12; then dividing by 4, the number of hits on the target unit was 12/4, or 3. Melee is resolved the same way: first a unit gets a number of dice, second, they are tossed to see if they equal or exceed the Hit number, third the remaining dice are tossed and added together, and finally, the total is divided by the base number to determine the number of hits on the opposition. There are words in the text indicating that fire is simultaneous ... there are other words that seem to say it is not. FIELDS OF HONOR has many army lists, many weapons lists, many scenarios, but as a rules book, it doesn't seem quite ready for prime time. It seems to cover too much. For example, it was pointed out that in the firing procedures, there's a bonus for "first fire". One might think that this is applicable for the musket era, but for the late 1800's, when rapid fire, breech loading rifles were in vogue, a "first fire" modifier seems out of place. 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