In England, one of the games played by Robin Peck and me involved a very simple ECW contest. The sequence was 'card driven', each side had 6 units of 5 stands each, and the units were graded as "Excellent" or "Average" or "Poor." Each side had a deck of 4 cards and each card indicated which type of unit could move or fire. The deck for one side looked like: Type Of Unit Card No. ExceIlent Average Poor 1 move/fire move/fire - 2 move/fire - move/fire 3 - move/fire move/fire 4 move/fire - - The cards of each side were mixed into a common deck and drawn at random. Note that there's not too much distinction between Average and Poor units... their capabiIites are equal. But I noted that once a unit was graded as Poor, there was a definite tendency to look down on it, and not expect too much of it. Such is in a name. Musket units that fired and bore unloaded weapons were given a marker. When a firing unit was called upon it could perform one of the functions listed below, and then had 70 percent chance to perform a second function on the list: Move 8 inches Load muskets Fire Change formation/facing Thus a musket unit with loaded weapons could move up 8 inches, dice to see (at 70 percent) if it could fire... and if it was successful, would now have un1oaded muskets and have to wait until it was called upon again to reload. As I remember, I didn't make efficient use of my Excellent units and their relatively increased mobility. Robin's forces quickly occupied the village of Little Pucksey, situated on a hill in the center of field. As each of my units surged up the hill (70 percent chance to trudge up the rough terrain)' Robin's units surged forward just as quick1y and threw my boys down. I did manage to get a cannon (Average) unit up the hill and unlimbered. It fired once but that only angered Robin's men, and they charged and tossed the whole gun assembly, carriage and barrel and crew and all, off the hill. Little Pucksey was Robin's and I gave up the fight. I should note that artillerists didn't really fight their own fight. When charged, they looked around for a supporting unit within 6 inches which would fight for them. The support took a morale test and if successful, would move over to protect the gun and crew. In our battle, the nearest units were some 8 inches away; the gun was iso1ated, and suffered the consequences. Brigading What I should have learned from the encounter was to brigade units of like type, so that if a sequence card was drawn for, say, Average, units, they could all act in concert' and focus on a single target. But no... about a week later at Tom Elsworth's house, we fought an ECW battle for possession of the Abbey Puy, on the eastern edge of the field, using the same rules. Again, I split up most of my units, thus preventing proper coordination. But I had two heavy cavalry units, in effect, armored lobsters, both of which were termed (via a dice throw) as Excellent... and these, I kept together. My most Excellent cavalry rode rapidly around the eastem side of the Abbey and smashed into Elsworth's advancing conglomeration of Poor and Average infantry, most of them in march column. Elsworth's units barely had time to deploy, when WHAMMO!... on came the lobsters. In melee, each unit had a base Combat Value (CV) of 40 points. To this we added points for each stand, for advantages, for pike fighting cavalry, for a support unit, for differences in status level, and so on. Each side totaled its points, and referred to the following chart: Over Total Points: No Effect Between 1/2 Total Pts and Total Pts: 1 opposing stand to the Rally Zone Under 1/2 Total Pts: 2 opposing stands to the Rally Zone After stands were removed, the winner was the higher of the product, P: P = 10-sided die roll X (Own surviving stands + Enemy casualties) The result of the melee was that the entire losing unit was deemed so disorganized, it went to the off board Rally zone, while the winner was declared to have lost at least one stand to the zone. Which brought up the question... when can disorganized units in the Rally Zone recover and return to the battlefield? Rallies At Robin's house, we had rallied units only after all 8 of the sequence cards had been played. This proved unsatisfactory... units were not being 'recycled' rapidly enough. Robin suggested that the sequence deck itself be used to rally. Good idea. I added two 'Rally' cards to the deck, making 10 cards in all. When the Rally card appeared, the sides attempted to rally their troops. Each stand in the Rally Zone was diced for... there was a 50 percent chance it reappeared on the field; if it failed, it was gone forever. After Simon's armored heavy cavalry made short work of two of Elsworth's less efficient infantry units, the lobsters came to a bad end. First, all the lobster stands sent to the Rally Zone failed to rally, permanently weakening the units. Second, on the draw of a sequence Rally card, each side may 'pick on' an enemy unit, challenging it and forcing it to undergo a morale test. Fail the test, and the unit bolts the field. Elsworth took advantage of the fact that my most Excellent heavy cavalry, in riding east around the Abbey, were rather far from their commanding offcer. The morale level (ML) of a unit was defined to be: ML (percent) = 80% less distance to commanding offcer. My heavies were some 25 inches from their general, hence the units had an ML of 80-25, or 55 percent. When challenged, both units failed the test and off they went. This left me - not only with no cavalry - but with only Average and Poor infantry. I must admit that one of my Average musket and pike units (2 stands of muskets, 3 of pike) did itself proud. Having advanced to, and stationed itself itself within, the Abbey, it held off 3 consecutive attacks by Elsworth's Excellent units, no mean feat. But statistics won out... the Excellent units gradually wore down my Average unit, and the Abbey Puy fell into Elsworth's hands. In both the Peck and Elsworth battles, 25mm troops were used. And, I must admit, the results were pretty much the same. Robin used the same ploy as Elsworth... having seen my cavalry advance to a position far from the commanding general, Robin promptly challenged them, and my horsemen failed the morale test and fled the field. Back to PW Review May 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