Even Though I Can't tell If There Are Two Words or One In The Name Wayne Jacobs, author of NEPANALTOWAKTSCHE, sent me a copy with a note to the effect that the idea for the rules came from an article in THE COURIER I had written some years ago. Wayne took the procedures and polished them up for a "flintlock and tomahawk" game. The booklet, of some 28 pages, was published by the Seattle Guardian World Press in 1991. It's available for $5. The rulesbook for "NEP ... etc." says that the title is Delaware for "They will be scalping each other." Is that the way the Delawares spoke to one other? No verbs? No pronouns? Wouldn't "Where is the bathroom?" have been much more helpful? After reading the text, I did recognize several familiar elements, and so I set up a solo game to run through the procedures. The sketch shows the locale, a small house in the wilderness, in which some colonials, Joachim and Frank and the young and beautiful Claire de la Lune (played by Paulette Goddard) are situated. Out in the woods, hunting lions and tigers, are Bert and Eldrid, two close friends. Advancing from the south edge of the table, not yet at the woods line, are four Alcohonka braves, whispering "Where is the bathroom?" to one another. None of this "NEPANALTOWAKTSCHE" for them. NEP's sequence is one of the most clever I've ever seen for a small skirmish action (no thanks at all to me... it's solely a Wayne Jacobs production). The sequence uses a chit for each man, all of which are placed in a container. Also in the container are three END OF TURN (EOT) chits, and all the chitties are shuffled, and drawn one at a time. The man designated on the drawn chit will move, fire, load his weapon, etc. Thus far, nothing unusual. When the first EOT marker is drawn, all the chits drawn up to this point are piled with it. Call these chits Pile A. Chits are continued to be drawn and piled up (a second Pile #2) until another EOT marker appears. This second EOT marker is placed on Pile #2; at the same time, the name chits and EOT chit of Pile #1 are tossed back into the container. Again chips are drawn, and when the next EOT marker appears, Pile #2's contents go back into the container. In this manner, each time an EOT marker shows up, a pile is recycled and the men get another chance to function in random fashion. The scenario started off with the four Alcohonkas reaching the tree line to the south. Each man is graded; his 'Competence' (C) level starts at '6' four hits take him down to '2', and the fifth hit kills him. Add a 6-sided die roll to the C level and that's the number of actions the man gets. Each action carries him 1 centimeter, says the rulesbook. Not on my table-top, says I. I'm an "inch man", and so in my game, each action let a man move 1 inch. The translation from centimeters to inches didn't seem to effect the procedures at all; even the firing seemed okay. The Alcohonka brave Swift Hands reached the tree line before his buddies. He had a C of 6; that plus a die roll of 6 gave him 12 actions. Here's how the actions work: a. He moved 2 inches to the tree line; he now had 10 actions left. b. I assumed his musket was loaded, and so he pointed it (1 action), aimed (1 action) and pressed the trigger (1 action). This left him with 7 actions. Note that while "pointing" and "aiming" are in the text, "pressing the trigger" is not... but I deducted an action anyway. C. Swift Hands now used his remaining 7 actions to start to reload his weapon. A total of 12 actions are required to reload a musket. When Swift Hands fired, three dice were tossed: a. A 20-sided die. A man firing his weapon always gets this die. b. A 6-sided die. This is a 'bonus' for pointing the weapon. C. Another 6-sided die. This is a bonus, for aiming the weapon. Now add the sum of all three dice to the man's C level to see "how far" the shot' ranged. In the case of Swift Hands, he must have been using low grade powder; his shot only reached out a total of 13 inches, and missed. Joachim, Swift Hands' target, was about 15 inches away, and the shot triggered a reaction on the part of Joachim. Even though the shot missed, Joachim was within "reaction range", and a 20 sided die was tossed to see what held do. The reaction sequence is the heart of NEP; it's what makes NEP an interesting game. Instead of a simple I-go/you-go sequence, the men get to react to their opponents' actions. The reaction chart is a simple one and contains provisions for he who is shot at, he who is charging, he who is being charged, and he who sees an enemy approaching. The chart provides for an unusual out-of-sequence response on the part of the involved figures. In this case, the chart said that Joachim would advance a couple of inches toward the sound of the shot. As luck would have it, Joachim's chit turned up next, and his C level plus a 6-sided die gave him 11 actions. He did the following: a. He spent 3 actions to move 3 inches toward the southern fence. He had 8 actions left. b. He saw Swift Hands, pointed his musket (1 action), aimed (1 action), and fired (1 action). He had 5 actions left. C. He used his remaining 5 actions to start to reload his musket. Joachim, for his shot, now tossed his 20-sided die, his 6- sided pointing die and his 6-sided aiming die. The total was more than sufficient to zap Swift Hands. In fact, it put two bullet holes in him (took him down two C levels). With a C level of 4, Swift Hands tossed a 20-sided die for his own reaction, had second thoughts about the whole thing, and fell back into the woods. The above fairly well describes NEPfs mechanisms, which gave rise to a logically sequenced run of events... no one did anything out of the ordinary, but on occasion, an unexpected event spiced things up. For example, Joachim, having reloaded,, took aim and fired at another Alcohonka brave, Man Who Whistles. This fellow's reaction was an aggressive one... he got really angry, and ran out of the woods straight at Joachim, shouting in the purest Alcohonka "I weel keel heem!", but ending up some 4 inches short of making contact. Man Who Whistles finished his reaction, and in the random draw, his chit came up next and he hopped over the fence into the yard and finished his charge. Just prior to contact, Joachim had a chance to react, but his reaction toss indicated that, despite being charged by a bloodied and demented Indian, he was forced to hold position... he was, in effect, paralyzed... he couldn't even countercharges And so Man Who Whistles and Joachim traded blows. Each added a 6sided die toss to his C level, determined the sum, and inflicted great pain and suffering on the other. The basic melee result, each round, is determined by the 6-sided die toss. If it's odd, the opponent suffers 1 point damage (his C level goes down by 1), and if it's even, the C level goes down by 2. If a man's totals are twice that of his opponent, only the opponent suffers, but that wasn't the case here. There is no procedure in combat for "backing out", i.e., running off if you see you're getting the worst of it. Which meant that both Joachim and Man Who Whistles were locked in combat forever, or until one or the other ran out of C points. At about this time, Frank's chit appeared, and he ran over to help his buddy. The lovely Claire, of course, was, during all these goings- on, shouting "Give it to him, Joachim; stick it in his ear!" The rules aren't explicit on this, but I assumed that when Frank reached the two men, he struck at Man Who Whistles, and Man Who Whistles struck at Frank, while Joachim, the third man in the melee, merely stood there, shouting "Hit him good, Frank!". Frank did 'hit him good', and a chit or two later, with odds of 2:1 against him, Man Who Whistles ran out of C points and toppled over; he would whistle no more. Joachim and Frank shook hands; "Couldn't have done it without you." said Joachim. Another Indian, Dog Lover, seeing Man Who Whistles go down, fired and charged forward. He was some 3 inches short of the fence, and in response to the shot, Frank took a reaction test, and threw caution to the winds! Instead of waiting behind the fence, the reaction chart mandated that he lose his cool; he hopped over the fence and countercharged Dog Lover! The beautiful Claire was aghast! The woods were full of Alcohonkas, Joachim was out of the fight (he had only a single C point left), Bert and Eldrid are out hunting lions and tigers, and now Frank goes haywire and charges out to wrastle with an Indian! There was no one left to protect her! "Momma mia! Whattsa to become of me?" she cried. After that, the action was fast... another Indian, Lion Killer, charged to assist Dog Lover and took out Frank. Remember Swift Hands... who had been wounded earlier? ... he recovers and comes up. Claire is truly worried. Only Joachim stands beside her, and he's down to his single Competence point. Joachim's chit is drawn... he rolls a 6-sided die (the result is a '1', adds it to his C level of '1' and gets 2 actions! A far cry from the 12 actions required for a reload. The poor fellow can't even reload his musket! I should note that, far out in the woods, the two hunters, Bert and Eldrid, having heard the shots, were making their way to the house. It was slow going, but they finally made it. Eldrid fires at Lion Killer and wings him; Lion Killer's reaction is to move toward Eldrid, and finally, to close with him. Whilst Lion Killer and Eldrid are dancing around, Bert runs up to help Eldrid, mixes it up with Lion Killer, and discovers he's no match for the Alcohonka... poor Bert keels over. So now we've got Bert and Frank dead, Joachim with only 1 C level point left, and Eldrid down to 2 C level points. In contrast, we've got Swift Hands, Lion Killer, and Dog Lover, all of whom are in far better shape than the colonials. I didn't bother to continue the scenario. . . it was obvious that the beautiful Claire was going to spend several years amongst the Alcohonkas, learning the fine arts of moccasin making. Now for a Couple of Comments NEP has its soft spots, but it provided an extremely entertaining hour-and-a-half solo game for me. Take note that the chit-drawing sequence is a fairly restricted one in that, at most, it can keep two players per side busy. Since only one man on the field is active at any one time, the players commanding the non-activated men have to sit and wait for their men's chits to be drawn. True, the reaction table does draw other men into the sequence, but on the whole, only a single player does anything at any one time. I'm reminded of Paul Koch's ON TO RICMOND's sequence... each brigade has a card and only that brigade fires and moves when its card is drawn. ALL other players sit and twiddle their thumbs while the active players run through routines, waiting for their own cards to appear. NEP doesn't contain any 'morale testing' procedures; for the most part, the reaction charts take care of this aspect. In the back of the NEP booklet, there are optional rules for "morale', 'fatigue', etc., but it seemed to me that NEP played very well without these. The section on optional rules starts out by stating: "The following rules add realism but at the expense of additional complexity." Additional complexity: yes. Realism: no. Be happy with the basics. The small booklet is definitely worth the $5... order it from Wayne Jacobs, 2464 South Spencer Street, Seattle, Washington, 98108. 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