Right after the February PW meeting, three of us met at my house to exchange great thoughts. That these were great thoughts there is no doubt, for present were: first, Jeff Wiltrout, Great Thinker and Wargamer Extraordinaire, second, Terry Sirk, Wargaming Winner of the Nebulanic Cluster for Wargaming Expertise, and then there was... uh... well... there was me. I led off by explaining to the others about the WW II campaign in which I was engaged with Don Bailey (way off in Colorado). He's using his own rules, dubbed COMBAT TEAM, while I'm using my always-changing, never-constant, shape-shifting Modern Gamery Rules (MGR). Under MGR, an armored unit (henceforth, tokens in such a unit will be referred to as a 'tank'), commences with a 40 percent probability of hit (POH). Added to this is another 10 percent for every tank firing at the same target. Thus, in a 3-tank 'battalion', the total POH becomes a maximum of 70 percent. Terry Sirk took issue with this 'incremental' method of firing. He thought that each unit should be considered as a single entity, and its impact taken as a 'whole' on the target. And on the other end of the firing line, the target itself, considered as a single entity, should take damage as a 'whole'. Individual tanks should not be considered. I didn't really disagree with the Sirk ideas... they were similar in nature to the concept of "swath fire", which I had pushed several years ago. Here, when a side fired, it couldn't zero in on a particular token... instead, it spread its fire amongst whatever targets were in the zone-of-impact. The rationale was that, the bound being some 20 minutes? or a half-hour? or even longer in a large scale game, a side wouldn't have... couldn't have... focused all of its fire on a single enemy token in that one time period, repeatedly smashing it until it was blown up. Instead, it had to spread the fire effect amongst all or, at the least, several tokens in the impact zone. Alas! "Swath fire" was poorly received. The gamers at my table didn't like spreading death and destruction across an area... they wanted to fire only at THIS particular target token, and after smashing it, fire at THAT target token, and so on. And so "swath fire" died a quick death. But now, it was revivified! Both Jeff and I worked out our own versions and decided to try 'em out the next day. Under Jeff's scheme, each unit was given an Impact Percentage (IP). A heavy tank unit (we defined a 3-model tank unit as a battalion) had an IP of 180. When the unit fired, the player could divide this percentage into as many increments as he wanted. He'd then dice for each increment: a. If he hit the target, 1 hit would be registered. b. If his percentage-dice toss was below half of the incremental percentage, he'd get a bonus... 2 hits would be registered on the target unit. c. A miss would be scored if the toss was over the percentage. In the heavy armor example, the player could go the safe way, and use increments of 100% and 80%, dicing twice. If he was adventurous, he could divide his IP into three... each of 60 points, and dice three times. Each hit reduced the target's IP by either 10 or 20 percent. Each time the target was hit, we'd place a damage marker on it. Twice each bound there was a 'damage assessment' phase, wherein all tokens on the field, both sides, that had any damage markers on them, would test to see if they blew up. Thus the hits on a target produced two effects: first, they reduced the firing IP of the target (when it fired back, its own IP were proportionately reduced), , and second, since the target unit retained damage markers, one of its units might blow up on the 'damage assessment' phase. We played a fast game with the Wiltrout rules... in truth, these weren't really "rules", since we made quite a bit up as we went along... but the procedures were quick. Each unit had a data sheet to record its IP. An infantry unit had an IP of 100. At most, therefore, taking single hits, with each hit reducing the IP by 10, it could withstand 10 hits. If it were unlucky, and took a series of 2-hit occurrences, it would last for only 5 bumps. It's evident that the 180 point heavy armored tank unit had proportionately more staying power. Now we come to the Simon implementation of the Sirk concept. Here, by definition, every unit on the board, regardless of size or type, starts out with an Impact Factor (IF) of 30 percent. If my unit fires on yours, we subtract, from a reference of 100 percent, the IF of 30%, and, in effect, the target takes a reaction test. Here, the Reaction Level (RL) would be 100-30, or 70%, and as in Jeff's system, there are three possible levels of damage: ------------------------------------------------------------------- One token in the target unit destroyed, cross out 3 boxes RL ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cross out 1 box ½RL ------------------------------------------------------------------- No effect The above reference to 'crossing out boxes' refers to the unit's data sheet. Each unit had a reaction chart that looked like: 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 If the unit received 2 hits, then 2 numbers were crossed out: X X 9 12 15 18 21 24 When next I fired on the same unit, the deductions to its Reaction Level would be: -30 The base value for the deduction -9 The unit's current reaction from its chart -39 Total deduction from the reference of 100 As the unit took hits, therefore, its Reaction Level decreased, going above the original 30 point reduction. If the above unit took to cover and I fired on it, and if my own unit had boxes crossed out, this would further change the impact on the target. If, say, my firing unit had a current Reaction Level of 12, the deductions for the target would be (pluses are good for the target, minuses are bad): -30 The base deduction value for being fired on +10 For being in cover +12 My firing unit's current reduction in impact value -9 The target unit's current reaction from its chart -17 Total deduction from the reference of 100 And so, the reaction test would take place at an RL of 100-17, or 87 percent. From the above, you can see there are modifiers to the basic 30%... these are due to the following: a. First, to the reduction in my own offensive Impact Factor b. Second, because of the target's reduction due to prior damage, its current reaction level goes down (which increases its vulnerability) c. Third, because of the effect of such other items as 'cover'. Again we played a quick game to see if the system worked. In my sequence, I didn't include a separate 'damage assessment' phase. The damage assessment took place immediately the unit was fired on, and it tested its reaction level. It turned out that the Simon procedure was a wee bit slower than that of Jeff's. The reason was that, under my system, the data sheets of both target and firing unit had to be referenced and taken into account. Under Jeff's, one looked up only the firing unit's current impact value. But somehow, even though we were using "swath fire", or "area fire", I think we both failed to comply with the Sirk mandate... which was to use, for each unit, one solo, single impact factor. In truth, I'm not sure if the Sirk mandate can be obeyed. As the battle unfolds, and units take damage, two things happen which continually affect the exchange of fire: First, a unit's own damage makes the ability of a unit to whomp the opposition less, Second, at the same time, damage to the opposing units being fired on, makes them more susceptible to the impact itself. All of which means that you can't play the game without the ever-present modifiers. The parameters of both firer and target constantly shift during the battle, and must be accounted for. 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