There were three of us playing what was, purportedly, a solo game. Gary Haggerty, a subscriber to the REVIEW these many years, had forwarded a set of solo rules based on the English Civil War. The rules looked simple, playable, and, it turned out, it kept the three of us very much entertained for about three hours. The game is played on the ping pong table; 12 towns are set out, linked by a series of roads. The set-up we used is shown below: Prior to Turn #1, there's no one on the field ... at least, no one you can see. The good guys march on via one of the three roads coming from the western end of the table. Our forces were given to us by drawing a card from an 18-card deck. Each card denoted a commander; he was given a rank (from captain up to general), a Military Capability, an initiative number, and a listing of possible actions. The actions were Attack, March, Recruit, and Withdraw. I drew a card for Captain Askew. His card said he commanded a troop of 6 horse. We went to my 15mm collection and took out 6 stands of troopers for the Captain. Askew was a fairly aggressive commander, for his action listing was as follows: Attack March Recruit Withdraw Toss a 6 or more on a 10-sided die Toss a 4 or 5 Toss a 2 or 3 Toss a 1 or less Many of the other commanders required a toss of 8 or more to attack... Captain Askew was obviously looking for trouble. He found it in the first town. The rules state that when a commander approaches a town, he dices to see if any rebels are present. Incidentally, I should note that the three good guys, Simon, Fred Haub and Tony Figlia, in coming on to the field, were seeking to free the land of rebel forces, which meant that we had to occupy all of the 12 towns on the field. When a town was approached, a rebel force wold appear if a 10-sided die roll was LESS than the sum of three parameters: T E U The current turn number Number of enemy occupied towns adjacent to the town Number of unoccupied towns adjacent to the town For Captain Askew, this was Turn #1 (T=1), there were no enemy occupied towns (E=0) , and the adjacent number of unoccupied towns was 3 (U=3) . Which meant that the sum of the three parameters was 4 ... the die toss was a 2 and we drew a card to see what sort of force Askew had encountered. The card indicated that Rebel Captain Jejune awaited Askew; Jejune had 4 foot and 4 horse. Askew, with his 6 horse, was slightly outnumbered. Digression. Gary Haggerty's letter, which came with the rules, refered to March 1993 REVIEW, in which I spoke of a Dr. Dickson. The good doctor had published an article in the Solo Wargamer which sketched out this sort of solo affair. I had, in the March '93 REVIEW, outlined a simple game based on the Dickson concepts. Gary had fleshed out the rules, adding quite a bit of ploys and nuances of his own. End of digression. We return to Askew-versus -Jejune and their fight for the town. Combat occurs in three phases. In each phase, a side tosses a reference die (10-sided) to obtain a number, R. He then tosses a 10-sided die for each of his stands, and an enemy stand is eliminated if two things occur: First, the die tossed must be greater than R Second, the die must be even. The first combat phase concerns artillery. Here, neither Askew nor Jejune had any guns, and so we bypassed this. The second combat phase concerns cavalry only... all cavalry charge out, each stand tosses a die and tries to eliminate an opposing stand. And so Askew tossed his reference die, and 6 other dice, one for each of his cavalry stands. I believe the result was to kill 2 of Jejune's stands. Jejune, in turn, killed 3 of Askew's. The third combat phase is a general slaughter phase, in which both surviving cavalry and infantry participate. But just prior to this, each side tests to see if the cavalry units that survived on the second combat phase would actually join in. I assume that the rationale for this is that any surviving cavalry might just ride off to plunder the opponent's baggage train, instead of remaining on the field to help out in the third phase. When Askew's 3 remaining cavalry tested, only 2 of the 3 decided to participate; the other stand ran off into the hinterland. The test is simple enough... a die is tossed for each stand, and if the result is even, the stand will join on the third combat phase. Jejune's 2 remaining horse decided to stay and help out ... this gave Jejune 2 cavalry and 4 foot, a total of 6 dice to toss. Askew had only 2 dice. After all casualty stands are removed, Gary uses a time-tested formula to compute the winner of the melee; this takes into account: (a) your number of surviving stands, S, (b) the stands of the enemy you eliminated, E, and a 10-sided die roll, D. These are combined into the product: D x (S + E) The side with the higher product wins. Outnumbered as he was, the gallant Captain Askew lost the combat; as I remember, of his initial force of 6 horse, he had only 2 left. Askew also took a "morale marker". This meant that on his subsequent activation roles, he'd deduct 1 from the die toss, thus making him a wee bit less aggressive. Following Askew, both Fred Haub's and Tony Figlia's forces appeared. They, too, drew their cards, and placed their troops on the field. I must note that it was rather slow going for the first 8 or turns. As our forces proceeded up the field, we kept bonking into several large enemy rebel armies. We'd do battle with them, lose, and retreat. Note that the equation given on the top of Page 2 to determine whether or not rebel forces will appear contains the parameter, T, for the turn number. This means that as the game progresses, the chances increase that every time an unoccupied town is approached, a rebel force springs up. Balancing this is the fact that at the end of each turn, there is a reinforcement phase wherein we good guys dice to see if additional friendly forces arrive. The equation for this also contains the parameter, T, hence after around 8 to 10 turns, not only do the rebels show up, but so do our reinforcements. One interesting ploy concerns the rank of each commander, a parameter of great importance. If a general, for example, moves into a town where a captain is set up, the general "soaks up" all the captain's stands, absorbing them into his own army, until he has a maximum of 15 stands. Fred Haub had such a general. Unfortunately, early in the campaign, the high-ranker, General Rhodekill by name, had suffered three consecutive losses in combat. His army, therefore, had 3 "morale marker"' on it. Each time that Rhodekill diced to see what particular action he could carry out, he subtracted 3 from the die roll, and the result was that General Rhodekill's army was stagnant for almost all of the campaign. This, of course, didn't keep him from absorbing all of the troops of the lower ranking officers that passed through his headquarters. A morale marker can be removed by having the force remain stationary for one turn, but Rhodekill was needed up front, and so we kept tossing the dice, trying to get him to move ... no use. In all, we spent an interesting afternoon on the Haggerty rules ... only one or two troublespots appeared, and we ironed these out rapidly. Back to PW Review October 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