Darryl Hannah is, I think, her name, a tall, leggy blonde actress, and she's probably about 6 feet 5 inches, and she's starred in some real stinkers, such as THE ATTACK OF THE 40 FOOT WOMAN, but I love her. Some three weeks ago, I saw the young lady In THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEARS, a movie which takes place about 3 million years ago, and in which the dialogue consists of the entire cast emitting grunts and groans and other caveman-type noises. Darryl grunted and groaned with the best of them, answering to the name of Ayla whenever grunted at by the other tribe members. For reasons beyond my ken, the name "Ayla" took my fancy and I created a territorial game of sorts... which has nothing to do with Darryl Hannah and even less to do with a tribe of cavemen but which, for sentimental reasons of unrequited love, at least, I called AYLA. The AYLA map fills the ping pong table; it is composed of 18 separate kingdoms, which, in turn, are each composed of areas, or provinces... a section of the map resembles the following: Note that between each province is a band approximately 2 inches in width. When a unit attempts to go from one province to another, it is placed in the band bordering the two; there's a 70 percent chance that the journey is successfully completed. If not, the unit is held up on the border and can try again next turn. If a unit doesn't complete the trip, and is attacked when sitting on the border, the attacker gets a bonus or so... the unit is deemed to have been caught in march column, unprepared... trapped in the defile... ambushed in the pass... I have to give credit for this idea to Bob O'Brien of the Worthing Wargames Club in England. Bob had gunned up a very entertaining boardgame which took place in Asia, and in which the competing Khans each sought to accumulate wealth and territory. One's troops were not permitted to move from area to area without the possibility of getting hung up on the border. One of the kingdoms in AYLA is Ayla itself. In our last game, Tony Figlia acted as the King of Ayla, and I was the Emperor of Ito. Base countries are given out by means of a card deck on each of which is written one of the 18 kingdoms' names; we simply deal the cards, and you are assigned whatever pops up. Each of the kingdoms is composed of from one to four provinces. Ito is one of the poorer, since revenue income, each bound, is a function of the number of provinces in the kingdom, and Ito has only a single province. To make up for poor Ito's geographical disadvantage, the rules decree that all Ito units receive bonuses in combat. My thought was that the fierce Itoites would be able to conquer their neighboring provinces that much more easily, thus augmenting their income faster than the larger kingdoms. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case. As Emperor of Ito, I just couldn't get my armies started properly. And the vicious King of Ayla didn't help. The capital of Ayla is separated from the capital of Ito by only one province, and for the first half of the game, both the Aylanians and the Itoites maintained a large force in their capital provinces... "just in case". These forces did nothing but stare at each other. The drain on Ayla was much less than the drain on Ito, for Ito's very existence depends upon its ability to send out troops to the adjacent provinces, thereby accumulating the revenue which Ito itself cannot provide. Eventually, I attacked Ayla, attempting to wipe the smile from the face of King Tony, and got wiped myself. An inglorious end to the dreams of empire of the Itoites! The game is played in 15mm and employs several types of ancients troops. Each type tosses a bunch of Hit Dice (10-sided dice) in combat, scoring on tosses of 1,2,3... Heavy cavalry Gets 3 HD per stand in combat. When hit, the heavy cavalry suffer a "step reduction" i.e., a stand of heavies becomes a stand of medium cavalry. Medium cavalry 2 HD per stand in combat. When hit, a medium cavalry stand becomes a medium infantry stand. Heavy infantry 3 HD per stand in combat. When hit, a stand of heavies becomes a stand of medium infantry. Medium infantry Only 1 HD per stand . When hit, the stand dies, i.e., no step reduction. Pikes Receive 4 HD per stand. But they're no bargain, since they have no step reduction and are fairly expensive. Pikes are used solely as garrison troops, they cannot move from province to province. The step reduction idea was borrowed from one of Brian Dewitt's boardgames, published by a firm named Xeno. It turns out to be a clever one, in that, due to the gradual reduction in strength of each token, instead of the instantaneous destruction of a token in combat, the existing units hang around for a longer period of time, i.e., fewer forces are required on the field. Which means that the provinces on the board are not overloaded with troops. The stacking rules state that a maximum of 5 allied stands can exist in any one province. In several of my earlier table-size boardgame efforts, ones which didn't use the step reduction ploy, there were 10 to 12 units permitted per province, and the result was that the field became saturated with troops. Note that AYLA is a "dice tossing" game... if, for example, you have 5 stands of heavy cavalry, you get to throw 15 10-sided dice. The basic hit probability of 30 percent (tosses of 1,2,3) limits the actual number of hits scored, so, most of the time, there's not that much carnage on the battlefield. In melee, the sides toss their dice simultaneously, casualties are inflicted, and the fight ends if either side wishes to retreat into a neighboring province. There aren't too many "fights to the death" as the players tend to conserve their resources. Objective The objective in AYLA for each player is to rise from village chieftain to commander to warlord, etc., up to King, five grades in all. All start out with some gold, and a small army. You get to choose your initial forces... you're given 80 points, and can select whatever troops you desire (heavy cavalry cost 30 points per stand, etc.). To rise one level requires that you've won a certain number of victories, have accumulated a certain number of gold pieces in the treasury, and have conquered a certain number of kingdoms. One of the ways to get back at your enemies is to raise outlaws in foreign provinces. During the logistics phase, an investment of 20 gold pieces will result in a small band of marauders suddenly appearing somewhere, on the field. The card deck with the 18 kingdoms, coupled with a 20-sided die toss, is used to determine just where the outlaws appear. In one of our games, this backfired on me, as the province in which the outlaws appeared, instead of being one of the opponents', was one of my own, and I had to fight the little @#$%# to get rid of them. I was more fortunate in a second game, when the outlaws I financed appeared in King Tony ' s province, and forces of Ayla had to quell the disturbance. I've noted that not too many players are willing to gamble and devote 20 gold pieces to raise outlaw forces, preferring to use their treasuries to raise troops. There's another area in which the players prefer not to invest. During the logistics phase, the general level of unrest throughout all the 18 kingdoms is determined. There are 6 levels of unrest, and as the level increases, there is a chance that forces (one or two stands) from all kingdoms desert. The initial level is 1, and if the level reaches 3, that's when the problems develop. By devoting funds to the "international peacekeeping forces", the level can be kept down, since the total number of gold pieces donated by all the players are used to bias the dice toss deciding the level of unrest. Most of the time, the players tend to ignore this, hoping the level remains fairly low. And there's a third investment which most of the players ignore. This concerns the building of roads between provinces. I spoke of the movement between provinces, indicating that a force had a 70 percent chance to cross a border and enter an adjacent province; if it didn't succeed, it was "hung up". If a force successfully makes it into the first province, it may attempt to enter a second... this time, the probability of successfully doing so is 50 percent. In all, a force may move two provinces. A player can build a road between two adjacent provinces at a cost of 30 gold pieces. The presence of a road permits free movement between the connected provinces... no more 70 percent or.50 percent dicing. The roads enhance the defensive ability of a kingdom, as forces are free to shift back and forth, reinforcing weak points quite rapidly. But again, I noted a disinterest in road-building. Too expensive, not worth it, we'd rather build troops, were the comments. The fact that there's a lack of interest in the above three areas: raising outlaw troops, keeping the general level of unrest down, and road-building, tells me that there's a wee bit of unbalance in the game. There should be more to a player's strategy that simply to raise troops and batter the enemy's forces down. Perhaps it's the fact that I've tried to keep the monies raised during the logistics phases down to a minimum. Each player tosses percentage dice and can raise from 50 to 90 gold pieces per turn from his home kingdom, plus a certain amount of gold from captured provinces. I must admit the gold pieces go quite rapidly, and so, in future test games, we'll loosen up the money flow. What I want to avoid as far as possible, is providing too much money per bound... the game simply develops into a troop buying binge each turn. Back to PW Review September 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