Recently, I played in a Napoleonic skirmish game authored by Terry Sirk. 'Twas me, a French commander, versus Fred Haub, in charge of a gaggle of Austrians. As I remember, my boys numbered 30 or so, while Fred had only 15. But Fred had The Fort. My goal was to take The Fort from Fred. Why was The Fort so important? I still don't know. I never questioned my orders... Terry issued them at the beginning of the game, and I, as a good soldier, tried to carry them out. I had 6 squads of Frenchmen, ranging in number from 6 through 10. These good people were to batter they way into the Austrian position. Alas... they never got a chance to batter... All men were single mounted, '30mm FUSILIERS, which, several years ago, I and my partners had produced for sale. What was interesting to me was that, at the beginning of the game, not recognizing the figures, I asked Terry who manufactured them. "They're your figures." he replied. A second look... and he was right! Terry had a huge data tracking chart on which all entries had to be registered every three bounds. A typical set of entries looked like: Sgt Laplace Pvt Pierre Pvt Descartes PvtLundi Morale: Movement (a): (b): (c): 7 2 8 6 6 6 10 9 6 9 6 1 5 10 3 7 Note that I've given the data only for 4 of my men.... I had 30 of them, and the data sheet was enormous. When the French turn for movement occurred, I could choose one of the three movement numbers on rows (a), (b), or (c). Thus for Sgt Laplace on Turn #1, I could select 2 inches, or 8 inches or 6 inches. If I chose 6 inches, I crossed out that number, moved Laplace his 6 inches, and on Turn #2, selected another of the remaining two numbers. After Turn #3, another 3 numbers were listed for Laplace and his 29 friends, for the next 3 turns. All of these numbers were diced for at random... talk about dicing!! Fred and I were all diced out after a couple of turns. But wargamers to the core, we went on. There was no stopping us. If Laplace and Descartes were at the ends of a scaling ladder, running across the terrain to erect it at the walls of The Fort, the two men had to maintain the same speed, hence selecting a "6" for Laplace and a "10" for Descartes, would waste Descartes "10", who was slowed down to the "6". This was all very scientific, but a huge pain in the @#$!&%! After French movement, there was an Austrian fire phase. More science, as Terry took out his "error" stick, sketched at right. The head of the error stick was placed at the firing figure, while the tail was placed on the target. Dice were then thrown to determine the actual azimuth angle traveled by the musket ball. In effect, we were using a "windage" gauge for the Austrian muskets. Musket range was about 30 inches. Although, due to their azimuth errors, Fred's Austrians hit few of the men at which they aimed, other Frenchmen found they were in the path of the musket balls, which seemed to whiz everywhere, but where they were aimed. I quickly learned not to mass my troops as they advanced, but the musket balls still took their toll. If a man was hit, he'd take a morale test, and if he failed, he turned tail and ran. Note on the data sheet given on the first page, the first row indicates the morale level of each man. Laplace, for example, needed to toss a 7 or less on a 10-sided die to pass. To make a long story short, there was way too much dice throwing and calculating going on. Each time one of Fred's Austrians fired, he had to figure out, on his own data sheet, how many numbers the man needed to fire, how many to reload, etc. We were dicing for movement numbers, for musket dispersion, and for morale tests. Too much! Fred's defending Austrians couldn't fire every turn, spending some time to reload, and this prevented a complete wipeout of my troops as they ran toward The Fort. Even so, only two of my men made it to the walls with their ladder. I was ready to give the order to set up the ladder, when Terry intervened: "Forget about the ladder! One of your men, Sgt Laplace, has a grenade. Let's test the grenade rules!" And so Sgt Laplace, obedient to the end, tossed his grenade... a 10-sided die roll told us the distance traveled by the grenade. He need a 2 or more to thwack an Austrian on the head. Laplace tossed a "1" ... Which meant that he had cut the fuse too short, and the @#%^&! grenade exploded in his hand! Laplace was hoist (hoisted?) with his own petard! Then I diced to see into how many parts (shrapnel) the grenade exploded. Another "1' on the die, indicating there was only one piece zipping off.... and to where did it zip?? To smack Laplace's ladder-buddy, wounding him. This was too much. Terry now asked: "do you want to finish the game?" A turn or so before, I had dozed off, immune to the exciting actions depicted on the field before me. When I opened my eyes, I noted both Terry and Fred looking at me expectantly... "He's alive!!", they shouted in unison. But alive or not, both Fred and I agreed that we'd had enough. Back to PW Review April 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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