ACW: Cedar Creek A group of us were invited to Brian Dewitt's house in early February; he had set up an ACW 15mm encounter... the battle of Cedar Creek, eighteen sixty-something. Brian is our "chip man"... his ACW and ECW battles, his chariot racing and auto racing games, use colored chips to denote certain orders to the troops. I took the part of Union General Crook, commanding the Yankee troops at the southern end of the table. This was a bad place to be, for as soon as I sat down table-side, Brian announced that the Confederates had the first move and were to open the battle by making a huge, sneaky, massive, December-7th-type attack on the southern-most Union lines... my lines! The sequence for the entire bound consisted of 8 basic phases: First half-bound 1. Confederate troops may fire or move. This was a "freebee phase" for the South in that no order chips were required... the Rebel units could do what they pleased. 2. The Confederate commanders each drew a certain number of order chips, to be used in Phase 7 3. Union commanders now played whatever chips they had in hand (selected during the previous half-bound), one for each division, and their units reacted accordingly 4. Melees were resolved. Second half-bound 5. Union troops may fire or move. This was a "freebee phase" for the North in that no order chips were required... the Yankee units could do what they pleased. 6. The Union commanders each drew a certain number of order chips, to be used in Phase 3 of the next bound. 7. Confederate commanders now played whatever chips they had in hand (selected during the previous half-bound), one for each division, and their units reacted accordingly 8. Melees were resolved. Thees, Senor, ees an extremely clever sequence. It gives each side a "freebee phase" (Phases 1 and 5) wherein troops can be ordered to do whatever the commander desires on the spur of the moment. It also gives the commanders a restricted phase (phases 3 and 7) wherein their units can only move or fire according to the chips they drew during the previous half-bound. In other words, the commanders are forced to think ahead to the next half-bound, and to anticipate their requirements. The play of a red chip permitted a unit (division) to fire, a green chip to move, a white chip to rally, and so on. A 15mm stand represented a regiment; around 6 to 10 regiments (stands) represented a division, and a corps consisted of about 4 divisions. My own General Crook had 4 divisions under his command. That is, before the Confederates struck. As the Rebels charged toward my boys (the Confederates started out about 6 inches from my lines), I got one volley in, and they were on me. Each of my regiments that fired added 10 percent to the probability-of-hit (POH), hence a 6-stand regiment, for example, had 60% chance to knock off a Rebel stand. If a stand was hit, it was removed from the field... if you're dead, you're dead, said Brian... no cockamamie rally zone here. Confederate regiments that lost a stand took an immediate morale test at a basic level of 70 percent. Most of them passed, but one regiment fell back. Brian then adjudicated the resultant melees. Each side had a number of modifiers to be added to a 10-sided die... the highest total won the combat, and the loser fell back. Brian would start off with: "+2 for the Rebels because the Union has been surprised, and +2 for the Yanks because they're cowering behind works, and +2 for the Rebels because they've committed their division general to the combat ..... I lost all the melees in this first attack, and the Union southern line fell back... very historically accurate. In the next half-bound, the one Confederate unit that hadn't made contact with my troops (because it had failed its morale test) now charged the same unit which had caused it to take the test. Again, Brian started out with: "+2 for the Rebels because the Union has been surprised..." "Wait a minute", I said. "This same unit was just charged a minute ago. How could it be surprised twice in a row?" Such logic had no attraction for Brian... by definition, the Union was to be surprised, and the Rebels were to get their "+2". So shall it be written; so shall it be done. By the third bound, General Crook's 4 divisions were no longer an effective force... my boys were all in rout. Just to the north of Crook's initial emplacements was a fortified hill, complete with protective works, which I termed Fort Zanderneuf. After walloping Crook's men, the Confederates made for the hill, on which was located Brian Whitakers Union division. Whitaker's men fought bravely, but around Bound 7 or so, Fort Zanderneuf fell. By this time, I had absolutely nothing to do, General Crook's men had long since vanished, and I was going around the table offering un-needed, un-heeded, and un-necessary advice to all who would listen, and some who wouldn't. For the Union, however, despite the disasters in the southern half of the battlefield, all was not lost. Despite the loss of Whitaker's and Simon's troops, General Sheridan and a host of Yankees were making their way south to save the day. At least, that's what happened in wayback-when. We quit at this point even though the entire Union force hadn't gotten into the battle. I've noted that, many times, when historical re-enactments are set out on the table-top, the full battle is not played... either it takes too long for the reserves to come up, or several units, which had played a critical role in the real battle, never arrive on time, i.e., before the players lose patience. I try to avoid historical re-creations. As I've said in the past, I simply set out two opposing forces, and tell each commander: "Go kill the other guys!" It seems to work... WWI Airplanes The second event at Brian's house consisted of an airplane game, circa WW I. Four planes per side, each mounted on an auto antenna which could be adjusted for elevation. Each player had to pre-program 3 turns... in terms of altitude, maneuvers, and rounds fired. This game was very entertaining, but it reminded me of a board game called ROBO-RALLY, which is a sort of CHUTES & LADDERS, both of which I can do without. In these games, you try to anticipate your, and your opponent's reactions, but everything turns into absolute chaos, because no one does what you expect him to... after all, he's trying to anticipate your moves, and your own programmed actions, as you play out the turn, prove to be the reverse of what you actually want. The only time anyone could predict what an opponent was going to do occurred when Bob Hurst's aircraft took a critical hit, and the Critical Hit Table mandated that his plane go into a spin, or stall. Planes moved on a hex field (each hex about 6-inches in size), and a plane, if stalled, had to remain in the same hex until it pulled out and resumed normal flight. Knowing that Bob's plane would remain in the same hex, 2 enterprising opponents locked in on him, and down he went in flames. In our first air battle, it turned out - through no fault of my own - that my 3 fellow British pilots got shot down, and I faced the entire Luftwaffe on my own. But not for long. With 4 enemy aircraft in the air, in pre-programming my 3 turns in advance, I noted that I wanted to fire 2 bursts (the maximum allowed) on each turn. However, in doing so, i.e., firing continuous bursts, there was a 50 percent chance my gun would jam... and jam it did. As I indicated before, absolute-chaos games are not my forte. WWII Combat Team Let's turn to a more orderly game for our third battle, a WW II set of rules offered by Don Bailey called COMBAT TEAM (CT). Don described his rules in the December REVIEW, outlining the moving and firing procedures; his battle employed microarmor. Just to familiarize ourselves with the CT system, we set up a small encounter using 15mm armor. A small battle, indeed, for all we had were 3 German units (each of 4 stands, i.e., models), versus 2 Russian units (each of 6 stands). A single bound of CT may vary in length. Cards are drawn from a sequence deck... although the deck contains 25 cards, one of them is labeled "End of Turn", and it indicates the deck should be reshuffled, and a new turn begun. The sequence deck contains several types of cards: a. Each side has 7 "Move or Fire" cards. On a couple of these cards is the annotation "Hit Check". If this appears, all stands with hits from previous encounters take a Combat Efficiency (CE) test. Failure sends the stand to the Rally Zone, where it later attempts to rejoin its unit. After all units test, hit markers are removed. b. There are a couple of "Defilade" cards. These permit a unit to attempt to take cover. c. "Morale Test" cards require all units whose CE level is below 100% to test. Failure lowers the unit's CE and may cause stands to move to the Rally Zone. d. "Cohesion Test" cards require that stands separated from their mother unit test. Here, too, failure causes stands to enter the Rally Zone. When the "End of Turn" card appears, all stands in the Rally Zone attempt to get back on the field. The chance of doing so is around 70 percent. If not successful, the stand is gone from the game. In our battle, my three German units of 4 tanks each, quickly moved up whenever I drew a movement card (8 inches per card). Each tank model represents somewhere around 5 vehicles; the unit itself is a tank platoon. At around 22 inches range, I opened fire. I should note that the Russians really didn't move at all... they stayed near their baseline, firing fairly ineffectively. I don't have the charts in front of me, but assume my tanks had an offensive anti-tank firing factor of 50. From this, two parameters were subtracted: a. The range over 10 inches. Here, firing at 22 inches, 12 was subtracted. b. The target's armor value. The Russian tanks' armor was 17. The resultant calculation gives my unit's total Firing Factor: 50 - 12 - 17, or 21. I tossed percentage dice, added the result to my total of 21, and we then referred to the following Hit Chart: Dice plus              Attack Fire Factor            Result                     ----------------------------------------------------------                           1 hit for each firing tank, plus 1 kill 100              ----------------------------------------------------------                           1 hit for each firing tank 90                ----------------------------------------------------------                           1/2 hit for each firing tank 50                ----------------------------------------------------------                           No effect                     ---------------------------------------------------------- Note that the firing procedure is by unit, and not individual tank. If, for example, my dice throw was 75, and I added my unit's Fire Factor of 21 to it, my total was 96, and on the chart, the target unit took one hit for each of my 4 firing tanks, 4 in all. These hits were distributed on the targeted 6-tank Russian unit, and its CE level was reduced by 5 percent for every hit. When mandatory "Hit Checks" or "Morale" tests were called for (as described above) , the Russian unit took its obligatory tests. I like the unit firing procedure, especially for armor battles. Most WW II rules require that every token on the field get a chance to fire, a time consuming process. And some rules have more than one firing phase per bound, an even more time consuming process. I should note that even though I like the firing procedure, I lost the battle, as the emplaced Russians wiped out my advancing force. More later on COMBAT TEAM. 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