This is yet another look at the BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER (BAB) rules produced by H. G. Walls, and written by Ivor Janci. Why am I so fascinated with BAB? The simple truth is that I'm not... but the editor of WARGAMERS ILLUSTRATED asked me to do a review of the rules booklet for him, and in my previous experiments with the rules, I've found them sadly lacking. And so I've asked myself... what am I missing? Perhaps if I play them enough times, I'll discover the missing key and, at last, be able to say... "These are great rules!" To date, unfortunately, this hasn't been the case. In all the games I've played, well over half a dozen, either as a participant or as an umpire, BAB has not proven to be a 'great set of rules'. The best comment I've obtained from the other players concerning BAB, i.e., the most favorable comment, is that: "There's no challenge to it, it's just a simple and pleasant game." The worst is... "Why was it published?" One participant put it thusly: "The problem with this 'simple and pleasant game' is that it's so simple, it becomes complicated because of all the holes in the text." In other words, the book itself doesn't cover, by far, the situations that pop up and that one encounters on the table. As an example, one that I've harped on before because it has cropped up in every game I've played, concerns the simultaneity of movement of both sides during the turn. a. Each squad on the field (a squad consists of 10 figures) is noted on its own sequence card. The cards of both sides are combined, and each bound, two cards are drawn. The squads noted on the drawn cards can move or fire. b. Many times, the two drawn cards apply to units of opposing sides. The rules book is silent about what happens if these two units interact with one another, i.e., who goes first? In our games, we bridged the gap with the following rules: a. If both units move, it's a 50 percent chance for one or the other to move first. b. If both fire, they fire simultaneously c. If one moves, while the other fires, we deemed that the firing unit had a 70 percent chance of pressing the trigger before the other could move. Granted that the solution is extremely simple... but that begs the question. Why doesn't the author discuss the subject? Surely this question of simultaneity arose during the playtesting sessions? Especially so, since the booklet states on the cover... 'revised and expanded edition'. This means, I assume, that there were two playtesting periods involved. BAB indicates that it should be played with 25mm figures. We've played the game with 54mm and with 15mm size figures. For the latter, we actually used 15mm, multi-figure stands to make up the units. With 10-stands per unit, the game no longer looked like it belonged on the squad level... in fact, it gave a very nice visual presentation, somewhat akin to FIRE AND FURY. Unfortunately, the BAB booklet can in no way compare to that of FIRE AND FURY. Holes are holes, no matter what the scale. First Scenario The first sample scenario in BAB concerns forces of equal strength... both the Yanks and the Confederates have 10 squads of 10 men each, plus a couple of officers. This constitutes a scenario with 100 figures per side. I, personally, have an aversion to pushing 100 single-mounted figures across the table. Less is better. Less is quicker. BAB also asks that you track each individual man on the table as to whether his musket is loaded and ready to fire. It takes one action to reload, and the man must wait until his squad's card is drawn. He cannot move and reload. I had originally thought this loaded-musket-recording-requirement was something to be avoided at all costs, especially so if there were going to be 100 men on the field. But in practice, the problem solved itself. It turned out that whenever a player ordered a unit to fire, it was the entire squad that went BOOM! All the men fired a volley in unison. Only once in all our games did anyone have several men hold fire while the rest fired. That particular 'anyone' happened to be me, and, as I say, I did it only once. this meant that instead of markers for individuals, we only had to have unit markers. We laid out the map for the sample scenario... it was this game in which we used the 15mm, multi-figure stands. Instead of 10 squads per side, we used 5 per side (50 stands in all), each squad having the requisite 10 stands plus a sergeant. Each force of 5 squads was defined to be a company, and there was one commanding officer for each force. When a squad fires its muskets, each man tosses a 10-sided die and a result of either a 0, 1, 2, or 3 produces a hit... a hit is a kill. This 40 percent probability-of-hit (POH) applies only if the target is less than 20 inches away and in the open. Targets under cover have a smaller probability of being hit. Muskets reach out to 40 inches... the POH is accordingly reduced. The basic 40 percent POH for close-in musket fire can make for lots of casualties as a unit closes for melee. The saving factor, of course, is that the defending unit may not even get in a volley, since (a) their muskets must be loaded, and (b) their card must be drawn in the sequence just before the attacker closes. In our game, after some preliminary movement, both sides set themselves up behind works and continued to pot at each other... a fairly boring game. Occasionally, there was a 'super' volley delivered by one side or the other (3 or 4 hits registered on the opposition), but in the main, boring, boring. Each time a squad takes a casualty, it receives a marker... this denotes that the next time the squad's card is drawn in the sequence, then, before it can act, it must take a morale test. The BAB booklet furnishes 16 'morale cards'. One is drawn, and the unit tests accordingly. Most of the morale deck cards can result in a couple of men fleeing ("skeedaddling" is the current buzz word for the ACW). Another result is "Officer shot"... in our case, midway in the battle, the Confederate company commander was hit. A replacement appeared soon thereafter, but during the officer's absence, his entire company of 5 squads couldn't move forward... they could, however, fall back. A question concerning the absence of the officer dealt with melee. The modifiers for melee contained a huge negative (-4) to a 10-sided die roll for a squad "Out of Command". The problem arose because the rules didn't explain whether 'Out of Command' applied to the absence of the squad sergeant, or the officer, or both. This was another instance of a hole in the rules. In the rear of the BAB rules book, the author extends the basic procedures to the French and Indian War, some 100 years earlier than the ACW. Here, too, there is provision for skirmish warfare, but there are several new rules for units acting in "Company Formation". The participating squads benefit by being able to choose their movement card as any one of the component squads'... when the card appears, the squads all act in unison. It's interesting that a "Company Formation" rule isn't given for the ACW... but only for the earlier period. The book states that "Morale for a formed company is checked... when the company is activated." We took that to mean that when we wanted to form several squads up, we had to select one squad as the 'lead squad', and that this squad had to take a morale test. Most of the 16 morale deck cards contain a "skeedaddle" annotation. Toss a 10-sided die, and from the result, subtract the number of men in the squad. If the difference is zero or less, the unit passes; but if the result is positive, the number of men that "skeedaddle" is the difference. The author has chosen a rather arcane way of stating that you'd like the die toss to be below the number of men in the unit. At the battle's beginning, when the number of men in the squads are 10 or so, the die tosses usually fall below the number of men in the unit. As casualties mount (number of men decreases) , it becomes increasingly more difficult to toss below the current men in the squad. In our game, we easily formed up our companies at the start of the battle... the lead squad passed its morale test, but when the squads took about 4 casualties, it became more and more difficult to form up, i.e., to toss below the number of men in a squad. Consequently, most of the time, our squads fought independently of one another... there was no company formation to speak of. And in trying to form up, if the lead squad failed its test, not only didn't the company form, but a couple of men in the lead squad "skeedaddled". This was too much of a penalty, a double-whammy, so to speak, and so we simply avoided the forming up procedure. Incidentally, this was the first time that I had seen the term "skeedaddle" applied to the French and Indian War. The phrase apparently originated in Rich Hasenaeur's FIRE AND FURY, and took off from there. I thought the French and Indian War section of BAB worked as well as the ACW section... no more, no less. And in conclusion... Gentlemen, I just can't give any kudos to BAB. Aside from a glossy exterior and interior format, the rules booklet leaves me unexcited. Back to PW Review February 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