In the center of the field stood Ptresk, held by the Andar Battalion, what I term an Infantry Battalion, consisting of 3 infantry stands, and one artillery stand. I defined three types of battalions for the game: Infantry Battalion 3 stands of infantry, 1 stand of artillery Reinforced Infantry Battalion 3 stands of infantry, 1 stand of artillery, 1 tank stand Armored Battalion 3 tank stands, 1 artillery This composition gave each type of battalion a long range capability (20 inches) with its inherent artillery unit. Tank weapon range was almost as great as that of artillery, being 15 inches, while infantry reached out to 10 inches. In this battle, there were no heavy tank platoons, no light tank platoons, no heavy weapons infantry platoons... there were, rather simply, infantry and tanks and artillery, all rather generic in nature. Prior to the battle, I first placed the defending battalions, seven of them. Then nine attacking battalions appeared on the field... I was playing this solo, and so I diced to see where the various battalions showed themselves. Of interest was that two armored battalions chose to immediately launch an attack on Dork, way out on the left flank of the defenders, and defended by a single infantry battalion. This battalion, Major Tza's Battalion, outpointed and outnumbered and outgunned, didn't stand a chance. It soon disappeared under the weight of the attacking forces. Each stand in a battalion was given a number of Strike Points (SP): Infantry 1 SP Tank 2 SP Artillery 3 SP Tza's unit, with its basic infantry components, had the following SP: 3 Infantry stands 3 SP 1 Artillery stand 3 SP This gave Major Tza a total of 6 SP. When in combat or when firing, the procedures were 4 in number: (a) First, multiply the SP by 10 to get a percentage reference Probability of Hit (POH). Here, Tza had a reference POH value of 60 percent. (b) Second, take the POH and refer to the following chart: --------------------------------------------------------------- Each SP counts as 1 hit on the target POH --------------------------------------------------------------- Each SP counts as 2 hits on the target 1/2 POH --------------------------------------------------------------- Each SP counts as 3 hits on the target --------------------------------------------------------------- Note that low tosses are good, high dice tosses are bad. (c) Third, toss percentage dice, and hope to get a low number. Take the total hits on the target and record them on the target's data sheet. (d) Each unit had 6 Damage Boxes. Each time the number of hit points on the target totaled 30, one Damage Box was crossed off. The excess number of hits were carried over. In this particular example, with Tza's 6 SP giving the unit a POH equaling 60 percent, assume a percentage dice toss of 19 occurred. This is less than half the POH, hence each of the 6 SP of Major Tza's counted as 3 hit points, and a total of 18 points were recorded on the target's data sheet. Since the total hit points didn't quite reach 30, no Damage Boxes were crossed out. But here's where Major Tza and his men got into trouble. One of the attacking armored battalions, for example, , with 4 tanks and 1 artillery, had the following SP total: 4 tanks at 2 SP apiece 8 SP 1 artillery at 3 SP 3 This gave the attacking armored battalion, 11 SP strong, a possible hit total, after it tossed its percentage dice, of 33 points. And since there were 2 attacking armored units, Tza and his men soon retired from the field. In fact, "soon" is not quite descriptive enough. Tza and company just ran as fast as they could, as soon as they could. 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