Now let me refer to an article in the REVIEW of Aprll '97 (last month), called THE AUTOMATED ENEMY, which presented a flow chart derived from a 1985 issue of the LONE WARRIOR. Large Orr Chart (slow: 84K) The author, one Bill Orr, created the basic chart as a means of developing a continuing campaign background for fighting a series of battles. In accordance with the Orr doctrine, I drew up a simplified list of geographical goals for the attacking force as follows: a. At Location #1, the attackers must gain control of the town of Charsk. b. Having Charsk, the attackers will roll on, endeavoring to capture the bridge, Location #2, crossing the River Andros. c. With the bridge secured, the attackers will then advance on the enemy defending the Shorlap Ridge' Location #3. d. Lastly, the attackers will capture Location #4, the town of Korl. With the above in mind, I used the Orr chart as a background for a WWII campaign with the following results. First Battle a. The first battle was fought at Bob Hurst's house, attacking Germans versus defending Russians' using SPEARHEAD. The Germans got whomped. Location #1' Charsk' remained in Russian hands. Second Battle< P> b.The second game was played solo, using a set of rules rather similar to those I had shown Tony Hawkins. This time, the Germans were successful... Charsk was theirs. And this time, I relabeled the attackers and defenders... no more Germans and Russians. I have a hodge-podge of 20mm WWII armor, painted in hodge-podgy manner. I don't care if you grab a Pzkw III or Sherman or a Stug III and brigade them together... they're all, to my mind, 'heavy' tanks and fight accordingly. And so the Germans became Force Alpha, the advancing force, and the Russians became Force Delta, the defenders. Third Battle c. The third battle took place at Location #2' the Andros Bridge. This was reported in the April REVIEW. The defending DeItans couldn't be made to budge... the Alphans suffered a 'set back' under the mandates of the Orr flow chart. Which meant that the Alphan High Command told 'em to try again at the Andros Bridge in yet a fourth battle. Fourth Battle In early May, this fourth battle, fought at Location #2, had Bob Hurst commanding the Alphans' Fred Haub the defending Deltans. I must report that , once again, the Deltans beat back the attack, holding the bridge. And I also must report that the main reason for the defeat of the Alphans was not so much the rules or the generalship displayed by General Hurst, as a very poor scenario design by your favorite editor. Hurst was aided by John Shirey, both of whom started out smiling a lot since they outnumbered the Deltans. In this game, I defined an armored battalion to consist of 3 vehicles, each vehicle representing a platoon. Force Alpha had 4 armored battalions... the problem was that the way the terrain was laid out, the tanks could onIy advance in narrow column formation... they had no way to broaden their front. The Deltans, lurking in ambush, massed their firepower, and simply blew away the heads of the advancing columns. As I indicated before, in the discussion promoting "volley fire" a 3-tank Deltan battallon would have an 80 percent chance of hitting its target. In contrast, the single advancing tank of the Alphan column, was given a 40 percent POH. As each advancing Alphan tank showed itself... POW!... and several smoke puffs were pIaced on it. I mentioned before that both Hurst and Shirey started out with smlles on this faces. Some two bounds into the game, and these beautific smiles became rather strained... I'm not even sure if one could describe them as 'smiles'. The sequence is diagramed on page 4... each complete cycle, i.e, each complete bound, is defined as 6 hours of battle time. Hence, two cycles constitutes 12 hours battle time' a full day's combat. The battle started at 0600, and the first day's combat was over' 12 hours later' at 1800. Already, at this time, Hurst and Shirey could see what was in store for them. The second day's battle commenced and more Alphan armor disappeared in smoke puffs. When a "Damage Assessment" card was drawn in the sequence' all vehicles with markers on them took the test as defined in the chart shown back on page 2. Fred Haub, as a defending Deltan comander, diced for the damage on the opposing Alphan tanks... Fred was absolutely devastating. His percentage dice tosses were all amazingly low--in the 'teens' and 'twenties,'...which meant that for just about every Alphan tank for which he threw the dice... BOOM!... and it was gone. When the Alphans had lost three of their four armor battalions, your friendly editor, taking pity on both Hurst and Shirey, suggested that they take some tanks out of the 'dead' box and bring on another 3-stand armored battalion. This last unit managed to get into firing line thus giving the attackers a wee bit of firepower... but it was too little, too late. In my initial point allocation to the two opposing forces, I had given the Alphans 133 points, and the Deltans 89 points. This came from totaling the values of all stands on the field... 4 points for each tank, and 1 point for an infantry figure. Evidently the ratio of 133/89, or '1-to-1' wasn't quite enough. Fifth Battle The fifth campaign battle will consist of the third assault on the bridge at the Andros River. This time, the Alphans will have a 2:1 edge in total combat points. 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