The First Battle... Prince Walakonis does it again.
On Prince Walakonis' side... me and Fred Haub; we faced John Shirey and Jeff Wiltrout, commanding the bad guys. I noted, however, that on the victory point tally blackboard, Jeff had labeled his side as "The Forces Of Everything Good", which I thought was a wee bit much.
Now I must admit that for the first five or six melees, The Forces Of Everything Good thoroughly whomped Prince Walakonis' units... whenever we contacted the enemy, they would send us flying.
I commanded the Prince's left flank. In my force I had two divisions, or 'battles, if you will, each of three units, and all were cavalry. No infantry for me! I had just completed mounting a number of cavalry units for my renaissance army, and I wanted to command all of them in their first blooding. And "blooding", it truly was!
Prior to the game, when all present were reaching into the army boxes and grabbing units, I managed to appropriate the 'horsey-guys'. In my 6-unit contingent I had a mixture of heavy and medium and light cavalry. This left few horsemen for the other people at table-side, and I heard "mumble... mumble" to the effect that "Simon had grabbed all the cavalry", but no one really challenged the makeup of my force.
On the Prince's right flank, Fred Haub also had 2 battles of 3 units each, all infantry, and he faced the only enemy heavy cavalry there was, commanded by Jeff Wiltrout. Fred's infantry units just couldn't stand up to the heavy horse.
To clear the air, I should say that the problem was not really of Prince Walakonis' making. I am the culprit. I am the one who, before the game, assigned melee values to the various types of troops, and I am the one who bolluxed it up.
What I did was to give each type of unit a base Melee Value (MV), and I thought to use this MV in combat with no modifiers, no changes, to account for the various unit-on-unit pairings that would occur.
For example, heavy cavalry had an MV of 7, while a pike unit was given an MV of 5. Here, the heavy cavalry, exceeding the pike by "2", would add the +2 to a 10-sided die roll, while the pike would add nothing. The higher modified total (dice plus modifier) was declared the winner. This left the pike disadvantaged against the cavalry, which, in truth, doesn't make sense.
In our post-game discussion, Jeff pointed out that one simple MV won't due for the renaissance. There should be a series of pairing-off modifiers... different modifiers, for example, for pike-versus-cavalry. for arquebus-versus-halbadiers, for sword and buckler-versus-pike, etc., etc.
What is really needed, and it pains me to say this, is a huge matrix, WRG style, listing all the units and their possible opponents. My original thought had been to bypass this chart, and use the single-value MV number. Alas! It just couldn't be done, and Prince Walakonis suffered for my error. Throughout the game, as Jeff's cavalry repeatedly beat back Fred's pike units on our right flank, Fred took it like a man. Not one cry of pain did I hear, although there were several "I'll get you for this!" glances cast in my direction.
Each unit was composed of from 3 to 5 stands, and in melee, the stands were paired off and a die tossed for each one. The losing stand, the one with the lower modified die roll, was forced out of combat, while the winner fought on. The melee ended when the stands of only one side were left, and all the stands of the other side had been forced back.
I have a number of single-figure pennant bearers for the renaissance army; I soldered an extended staff to each bearer, about an inch long. When a melee ends, each unit is given a bearer, and the bearer is given a number of markers. The markers I use are small beads, and these are slipped onto the staffs. One marker is assigned for every stand forced out of combat. Three markers on a bearer, and one stand is placed in the Rally Zone, to be brought back on the field later (there's only a 50 percent chance of recovery from the Rally Zone).
At the end of each half-bound, there's a phase during which a player can transfer his unit markers to his division leaders, trying to keep the number of markers-per-unit below the dreaded 3. . And immediately following this, there's a "risk to the leader" phase. Here, the chance the leader dies is the square of the number of markers he has accumulated in helping out his units. If a leader has helped out to the extent that he has accepted transfer of 7 markers, then the square of 7 is 49... he has 49 percent chance of being killed.
Losing a leader is bad business, since all units under his command now suffer a -20 during their morale test.
In all, the rules worked, and the only complaints I heard were about the screwy system of melee values I had assigned the units.
The Second Battle... An Amphibious Landing
In the mid-Pacific is Wallio Island, which is about 1-foot wide and 3-feet long. In the middle, running along the longer dimension, is Wallio Ridge, a wooded region. I cut Wallio Island out of some brown wrapping paper, and Jeff Wiltrout and I were ready to go.
But to go with what? One needs some sort of rules system if one is going to launch an amphibious invasion... no? Not to worry... if there's anything Simon is not lacking, it's rules systems. Especially so, with Jeff Wiltrout, Wargamer Extraordinaire, to stand by my side and prod me in the right direction.
The invading forces... my command... constituted of a corps, composed of 5 divisions, with each division of 5 or 6 battalions. My 15mm troops are all mounted on 1-inch squares... a stand of infantry was defined as a battalion, as was a single tank model. Note, therefore, that although I speak in grandiose terms of "corps" and "battalions" and "divisions", all I had for my invasion force was some 25 tokens.
Opposing me were the defenders of Wallio Island... Jeff had a slightly smaller corps than I did, one of 3 divisions. Jeff drew a map of the island, noted where his units were, and the invasion began.
When Jeff and I discussed movement distances, we decided that each unit should move "a little bit"... "a couple of inches"... we didn't really want to define the exact distance... and so units were, indeed, moved "a little bit"... sometimes 1, sometimes 2 inches.
The fairly large scale (1 stand a battalion) precluded rifle fire... this. to me, was absorbed in the close combat phase. But we had three types of "long range" weapons: tanks, anti-tank guns, and heavy machine guns.
How far did these weapons fire?... obviously "a little bit"..."a couple of inches".
In essence, if you haven't recognized it by now, this was a board-game... one without hexes. In fact, it was a 'kriegspiel' boardgame.
On Turn #1, I landed 2 divisions (10 stands) on the western end of the island. This was the wrong place to land, since it turned out that in his defensive layout, Jeff had concentrated most of his force in the western sector.
On the eastern end of the island, I had only one division land.
The sequence for the half-bound was the simple boardgaming sequence: Side A move/Side A fire/Close combat
Note there was no defensive fire phase. In the next edition of these rules, we'll make it: Side A move/Side B fire/ Close combat
On Jeff's fire phase, his "long range weapons", tanks and guns, were devastating... each weapon had a 40% chance to destroy the target, and he seldom missed. By the third bound, of the 10 stands on the western end of the island, I had about 5 left... I could make no headway there. Obviously time for reinforcements, and a third division, 5 stands poured onto the beach. This left me with one division in reserve.
The attack on the western end of the island got nowhere. Too many defensive guns and tanks.
On the eastern end, I discovered that Jeff had located only a couple of battalions of infantry in a redoubt to defend that sector. The defenders beat back my first wave, i.e., the first 5 battalions, and so I committed my remaining divisional reserve of 5 stands to assist.
A couple of bloody melees, and the redoubt was mine. I now had about 7 battalions left to commence a westward sweep to help out on the other side of the island.
Melees were adjucated in 'semi-DBM' style. Stands were lined up, and if a stand had a friendly overlapping stand to its side, it got a "+1" on a 10-sided die throw. It also got a "+1" if it was uphill, or defending a redoubt.
Each side tossed its die, and the higher modified total won... if one side doubled the other, the lower-valued stand was destroyed, otherwise, it fell back a couple of inches.
Around Bound 5 or 6, I tossed in the towel... I had lost about 2/3 of my total force. It didn't look as if Wallio Island was going to be taken that day.
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