Jeff Wiltrout and I went to Bob and Cleo Liebl's house one Friday night for a preview of the game they were going to host at the COLD WARS convention in April. Lots of 25mm figures, with a large Chinese army pitted against all sorts of foreign devils: British and French and Australians and Americans, etc. There were five Chinese commands, each about the same size. My own force, all composed of single mounted figures, was 2 cavalry units, 7 men each 1 cannon 1 fanatic unit of 6 people 1 peasant unit of 15 men armed only with Chairman Mao's Little Red Book 1 musket-bearing unit of 6 men 1 jinglegun unit of 7 men. I have to admit I never heard of a 'jinglegun' before. The initial instructions were that each Chinese command was to be placed on one of the terrain boards. After the battle started, we could move all over the place, but initially, stick to your own board. The terrain boards were some 2-feet by 2-feet square, very nicely crafted. The Liebls had laid out a table of 2-boards by 4 boards, i.e., an area of 4-feet by 8-feet. At the convention, Bob intended to expand the area and add both a board in width and one in depth for a fairly large playing area. The bad guys, the foreign devils, came on from the south, and my people were situated one board in (2 feet) from their end of the table. I thought that as soon as the enemy showed up, I'd shout "Charge!", and move all my troops forward one board, and give 'em what-for. Alas! 'Twas not to be. The foreigners zipped up and across and over and through their entering 2-foot board, whipped through a woods, and set themselves up, deployed, about 1 inch (short range) from my troops. Facing me, therefore, I was suddenly confronted with 2 units, each of 20 Foreign Legionaires, arrayed in 2 ranks (2 ranks fire). As for the sequence, it's (a) Foreigners move, zipping up the field. (b) Chinese fire. My cannon took out a couple of British people and my jingleguns (what's a 'jinglegun'?) took out a couple more. But I couldn't hit the Legionaires at all... none of my units were facing them. (c) Chinese move. Here, faced with the grim faced Legionaires, I ordered a charge with whomever was handy. (d) Europeans fire. And on this first volley, my Chinese heroes simply vanished under the weight of the Legionaires' fire power. (e) Melee. We never even reached this phase. Bob's game is what I have termed, in the past, a 'groping for dice' game. Similar to PIQUET, different units use different types of dice, and the table is strewn with 6-sided and 8-sided and 10-sided and 12-sided dice. And there's a continual series of cries from the participants: "I need three 10-sided dice, and two 12-sided dice. Who's got 'em?" The Legionaires fired by having each man toss a 10-sided die. Hits were scored, and little Chinese people fell down, on a toss of 6 or more, tosses of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, i.e., a 50 percent chance to hit for each man firing. And we had total of 40 Legionaires firing... 40 dice were tossed. And not being satisfied with this, those @#$%^!&* Legionaires fired again! So much for my fanatics... so much for my peasants. And on the next bound, so much for my valiant cavalry. The only weapon we had which was capable of matching the European rifles in range were our Chinese jingleguns (what's a 'jingle gun'?). These reached out to 30 inches, while the European rifles reached out to 24 inches. But there was a problem in firing our jingleguns... if we decided to fire twice on a fire phase, then the full unit (8 men) could fire the first time, but for the second volley, only 4 men could fire, due to the difficulty of twice loading up the jingleguns with jingles... or whatever. And the dreaded jingleguns tossed only an 8-sided die. Here, looking for tosses of 6 or more, a throw of 6, 7, or 8 would register a hit, 37.5 percent chance to hit for each man firing. I should note that we Chinese had a couple of units of bowmen, also tossing 8-sided dice, but their range was only 9 inches, making them impotent against the 24-inch range of the European rifles. Sad to say, my jinglegunners also disappeared rather rapidly. In fact, it looked like the entire Chinese force disappeared rather rapidly. After the game, we had a post mortem, and decided on a number of 'shouldas'. B<>Shoulda The first 'shoulda' was that I shoulda had my jinglegunners much further back. This would probably have given them a 2-turn life span instead of a 1-turn longevity. The second 'shoulda' concerned my cavalry. The sequence had a clever ploy in which a cavalry unit could be placed on 'overwatch', and then ordered to charge after the European fire phase, enabling them, the cavalry, to make contact. This was in contrast to charging during the regular movement phase, which was immediately followed by European fire, and the inevitable Chinese wipe-out. A third 'shoulda' concerned a lesson on 'how to charge' by Bob Liebl. What you shoulda done, he said, was to charge with a crummy unit up front, let them get annihilated, and then come in with a second and stronger unit immediately placed behind the crummy guys. All the above was not immediately obvious during the game. What did emerge, was that the troops, especially the cavalry, were too fluid, too mobile. For example, as the European troops advanced up the field, they came up against an uncrossable river. The foreign devils had to build a bridge across the wide and swiftly flowing stream. I thought that surely, here was a great defensive position... I spurred my people on... "They shall not pass", I cried in fluent Chinese. Alas! in a single move, (a) up came the engineers, (b) they whipped out a wide bridge across the river, (c) the European infantry ran lightfootedly through the woods, (d) they zipped across the bridge in column formation, (e) the European infantry deployed, and (f) were immediately ready to fire. What superbly trained troops! Not even Chairman Mao could equal this! Back to PW Review December 1998 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 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