General Bob Hurst and I faced each other in what I termed a Seven Years War (SYW) battle. In truth, it wasn't the SYW fought by Frederick the Great... instead, it was a huge, table-sized boardgame, in which each bound was defined as a 4 month period. We had a time-track, which looked like the following: Spring Turn Fall Turn Winter Turn Spring Turn Fall Turn Winter Turn Spring Turn The three bounds of Spring, Fall and Winter completed a full year... and in each game, we fought a total of 21 bounds, 7 years of battle, hence the Seven Years War designation. The game was played on an 'area' map, each area about 6 square inches in size... enough to hold about a half-dozen 15mm troop stands. At the last PW meeting, in December, Jim Butters had brought and set up a boardgame focused on the ACW. The game used hexes, and forces were moved from hex to hex. Watching the game, I noted the rules included a 'forage' feature for each hex... the parameter didn't seem to do anything, but it was there. My immediate thought was that if this high-priced boardgame could include a 'forage' factor, then so could my own area rules. Better In fact, I did the boardgame one better... two better... 1. First, each area had a Movement Factor (MF), ranging from 1 to 4 points. The active side diced for his total allowed movement points each turn... he tossed a 10-sided die, and his total points were... (5 + Die Roll), thus ranging from a minimum of 6 to a maximum of 15. As units moved across the field, they expended the allotment. If, for example, he tossed a 7, giving him total movement points of 12, he could give one unit 4 points, another 3, and another, the remaining 5. Or he could give one unit 8 points and another 4. Due to the fact that the MF's of each area differed, the units would not make the same rate of speed. 2. Second, the areas had a Defensive Factor (DF), ranging from zero to +3. I got this idea from a boardgame dealing with the D-Day invasion, wherein each hex, defended by the dug-in Germans, was given a number representing the dug-in-ness of the defender. The DF added to the strength of the defending force. 3. Third, we come to the 'forage' factor... but here, I changed the aspect... it became an Attrition Factor (AF), wherein areas had values ranging from zero to 50 percent. When the winter bound appeared, each force on the field tossed dice to see if it lost a stand. If, for example, a force was in an area with an AF of 30, there was a 30 percent chance that one poor stand froze. Another 'season oriented' procedure concerned the spring turn. Here, each side received reinforcements. Each occupied town on the field (there were 7 in the first game, and 9 in the second) provided reinforcements. In addition, a random number of reinforcements arrived depending upon a dice toss... up to 4 additional stands could be gotten in this manner. In the first game, Bob won 5 of the 7 available towns. He had 4 Generals on the map, as did I. These Generals were the only figures on the field... there were no other troops. Bob and I kept a record of the number of each General's units... a commander could have a maximum of 8. Combat Combat was fought by moving into an opposing General's area. At battle's end, the following occurred: The winning General lost 1 unit. The losing General lost 2 units. The winning side moved the losing General back 3 areas. The winner chose the areas with the highest AF's... the loser diced to see if he lost an additional stand, and the percentage chance to do so was the sum of all the AF's he had moved through. Note that, except for the figures of the Generals on the field, this first game was essentially a 'paper game'. We each had 4 Generals, we moved them around, and only when they engaged each other did we reveal their strengths. Different Procedures The second game incorporated a different set of procedures. Here, each General still could maintain a maximum of 8 units, but as he moved into a town to capture it, he could 'drop off' some... up to 4... of his units to defend the town. His force was thus temporarily depleted, and he waited until the next spring bound to receive reinforcements. We used Bob's 15mm stands to represent the units (one stand equaled one unit) that the Generals dropped off. This 'prettied' up the game, for it enabled us to actually see the figures on the map. Units stationed in town were not allowed to move out of the town... their sole function was to act as a town garrison. In this second game, one of my Generals, General Dupree, plunged deep into Hurst territory with his 8-unit command, and took Lighthouse Town. Dupree dropped off 4 stands (the maximum allowed) leaving him 4 in his own army, and remained in the town, awaiting the next spring turn, when he could receive reinforcements. During this waiting period, Dupree still had a total of 8 defending stands... the 4 that he had dropped off, plus the 4 remaining in his command. As I remember, General Hurst failed to take advantage of Dupree's isolated position, and did not attack him. When spring arrived, I bolstered Dupree's command up to his allowed maximum of 8 units. This gave him a total of 12 defending stands (8 in Dupree's army, plus the 4 garrison stands) for Lighthouse Town. If Hurst had attacked Dupree before the reinforcements arrived, Dupree would have received Combat Points as follows: +4 for the stands remaining in his command +4 for the garrison stands +1 for the town itself +1 for the DF of the area in which the town was located Hurst could have gathered three of his Generals to join forces and attack the town. He would have totaled Combat Points as follows: +8 for the lead attacking General +4 for half of the first supporting General's troops +4 for half of the second supporting General's troops As shown above, a supporting General directly added half his units to the main attack. And the third item in the listing, the assistance granted by the second supporting General, occurred only on a 50 percent basis (percentage dice toss of 50 or under). A good dice toss, therefore, would have given Hurst a total of 16 points to Dupree's 12. Combat In combat, each side tossed a 10-sided die and multiplied it by his available Combat Points. Odds of 16-to-12 would have given General Hurst a 64 percent chance to win. After Dupree's reinforcement, however, the odds of winning went down appreciably. Another item of interest in this second game was that, in addition to our 4 main Generals, we were given two 'dummy' Generals. These had no Combat Points at all... they simply went around the field trying to appear as ferocious as possible. During the battle, Hurst captured a town, and his General dropped off 4 defending stands, and then rode off to do other things. Up rode another General who I thought was one of the Hurst 'dummies'. This meant that to defend the town, since the 'dummy' had no points, there was a total of only 5 Combat Points... 4 from the defending stands, and one from the town itself. I attacked. I was wrong... the commanding General was no 'dummy'... he contributed his stands to the combat. But it seemed I could do no wrong in the second game... despite the surprise, a good die toss on my part for the combat phase, and I captured the town. At game's end, i.e., the entire 21-bound sequence for the passage of 7 years, I held 8 of the 9 towns on the field. Since, during the reinforcing spring phase, I received 1 stand for each occupied town, my army simply swamped Hurst's... he gave up the ghost. Over the past couple of years, I've ginned up a number of 'area games'. This was the first game, however, in which I assigned specific parameters to the areas. This adds another dimension to the game... not only do the troops have certain values (morale level, fire power, melee points, etc.) but now the map itself contributes to the game. In addition to the parameters I described (movement points, defensive points and attrition value), what other items of interest can be annotated on the map? Most probably, I shall go overboard in the next few games (as I first did with my card systems of years ago) and then settle back with a few tried and true parameters. Back to PW Review January 1998 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