Several conventions ago, Brian had acquired an army... two armies (Austrian and Prussian)... of 25mm Minifig Seven Years War (SYW) figures, all neatly painted and based. Minifigs are always easily distinguishable... the little guys all look like well-fed penguins, and the horses all have big behinds. None of us could figure out the particular set of rules for which the figures were based... cavalry, for example, were mounted in two rows of three on a 3-inch by 3-inch base. For his SYW battle, Brian gave each side a deck of 10 cards... the Strategic Deck. This allowed for movement from the baselines until the units were within some 12 inches of each other, at which time, the 10-card Tactical Deck was referred to. In the Strategic Deck were such cards as 'Artillery Bombardment', and 'Move Infantry', and 'Commit The Cavalry'. This last card enabled a side to violate the 12-inch-keep-away-distance and bring the cavalry up to within 6 inches of the enemy. This showed, of course, that immediately the Tactical Deck cards were to be drawn, then BANG!, there would be an instant cavalry charge. Each side's 10 Strategic Deck cards were numbered, and the side displaying the lowest number went first. It was noted that the cards in the Prussian deck had lower numbers than those on the Austrian deck... thus giving the initiative, for the most part, to the Prussians. The Tactical Deck cards were similarly annotated. Tactical Deck cards had such orders as "Rally', 'Move', and 'Fire', and 'Charge". For my part, I thought the Strategic Deck cards didn't allow for enough movement. If, indeed, they were strategic, they should have permitted large movement distances, enough to permit a unit to suddenly shift front and change from one side of the table to the other. As I remember, however, the movement distances ranged in the order of 16 inches. What was unique about the card sequence was that a side always had to keep two cards in front of it... one card to play immediately on the current bound, while the other locked in its tactics for the next bound. Immediately that a card was played, a second would be chosen. Requiring the sides to continuously lay out two cards in tandem forced the players to think one turn ahead. In the game, Brian and I, commanding the Austrians, were out-shot, out-meleed... it was just a poor day for the Austrians. Early in the game, I gathered several Austrian cavalry units on my flank, the Austrian left, and charged home. This was a unit-on-unit game, or, rather, a stand-on-stand game, since each stand represented a separate unit. I think that all of my charging cavalry units lost. In truth, that wasn't so devastating, since the actual melee losses were rather small, but to round up our fleeing units, we Austrians were forced to play a 'Rally' tactical card, which meant that the rest of our army marked time, giving the Prussians the initiative. Each stand could take 6 hits before it was removed from the field. A firing stand of muskets inflicted 1 hit on its target, and a unit losing a combat also suffered 1 hit. I think we all agreed that the hits incurred in melee ought to be several times more severe than the hits from musket fire. Another topic of discussion was whether or not the cards should be 'recycled', i.e., used again, or the cards in the deck used only once. It turned out that the Prussian commanders, Jeff and Fred, had been discarding their cards once they had been used, while we Austrians merely chucked our cards back in the deck to be used again. As the Prussian cards were used up and discarded, and their tactical deck became smaller and smaller, this gave the Prussians less and less leeway in terms of tactical options. One would think that the Austrians could have taken advantage of this... wouldn't one? Another topic of discussion was the 'pursuit capability' of the cavalry of both sides. Having won a melee, and beaten off the opposing cavalry, should the victorious cavalry be permitted to dash after the losing unit? My impression was... no... that in this era, the commanders retained tight control of their horsemen, and didn't permit them to go dashing off the field. Battle the First: Seven Years War Battle the Second: English Civil War Battle the Third: Samurai War Back to PW Review December 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