Lots of 25mm Renaissance figures... each side was assigned three infantry battles, or divisions, and one cavalry division. Each division had four or five units in it, and each unit was tracked on a data sheet. Right there, I ran into trouble, for a unit wasn't declared destroyed until all the boxes on its data sheet were crossed out... and in my usual way, I had assigned far too many boxes to the units. This meant that the units hung around for too long. Fred Haub and I discuss this interminably... Fred's position is that 6, perhaps 8 boxes at most are sufficient for a 'kill', and in this game, I over-reached and had assigned most of the units 12 boxes, and in some cases, 15. But, data sheets aside, the key to this game focused on the Order Beads (OB) assigned to each division. Each division commander was given a pennant bearer. I had soldered and extended the pennant bearer's staff some 2 inches, enabling a number of beads to be placed on the staff. Each bound, the commanders diced for the number of OB's for their division... a percentage dice toss above 60 and they'd receive OB's equal to the number of units in their division. A toss under 60, and they'd receive one more than the number of units. Each time a unit moved or fired, an OB had to be assigned to it. But there were never enough OB's to go 'round, as a look at the 12 phase sequence shows: Phases 1 through 6 are Side A's active half of the bound, and 7 through 12 are Side B's... they mirror each other. Note that throughout the full bound, Side B has three opportunities to fire, on Phases 1 and 4 and 8. If he had a division with 6 units, which had been assigned 6 OB's, with one unit being arquebusiers, he could assign an OB to the arquebusiers each firing phase. In fact, in a given fire phase, he could assign more than one OB to the arquebusiers, having them firing full tilt until the barrels of their weapons turned red hot. Remember, however, that OB's are required for unit movement. Side B's problem is that when Phase 9 comes, he will not have enough OB's left for all the units in his division to move... the bulk of his force will remain stationary. This is what Bob Liebl did for the first couple of turns... he poured his fire power onto Cleo's advancing troops. Lots of orders to his missile units went out, lots of OB's were used up, and the bulk of his army sat immobile. Around Bound #3, both sides caught on to use of the OB's and thereafter, didn't squander them uselessly. Just as more than a single OB could be assigned to a missile unit to have it fire more than once on a fire phase, a combat unit such as pike or sword-and-buckler could be assigned more than one OB to have it advance twice, i.e., make a double move. Over the years, I've created a number of rules requiring the distribution of a finite number of orders available to a force commander... I've used cards and order chits and check-off sheets and courier figures and pennant bearers and markers, and so on... I thought the use of the OB's would slow up the game, as each side deliberated how it would distribute its orders. Not so... and to me, as a spectator, it made the game more interesting. For example, during one of her move phases, Cleo expended 2 OB's on a deployed pike unit to advance at the double and contact one of Bob's units. Then she turned her attention to another unit which was in column, i.e., non-fighting, formation. She wanted this unit to deploy, and then to move up at the double to support the original pike unit. Again she used 2 OB's... on the first, she had the unit come out of column formation. This was a 'freebee'. On each OB, you can perform two actions... the first is 'free', and then there's a 70 percent chance to perform the second. On this first OB, having deployed, she then had a 70 percent chance to perform a second action, i.e., move up 10 inches. Which she did. Then the play of a second OB permitted her unit to advance another 10 inches to support the original pike unit. Note that this use of 4 OB's took a big bite out of her initial division allotment of 6 OB's. It only left her 2 OB's for use during the firing phases of the bound. At then end of the full bound, all unused OB's were discarded, and the division OB's diced for again. One decision which I made during the game, in retrospect, was a loser. One unit of Bob's arquebusiers occupied the grounds of a churchyard, and were firing away at all who came within their 20 inch arquebus range. He then brought up a pike unit to support the arquebusiers, who were the lowest of the low in combat. When Cleo attacked the units in the churchyard, I permitted Bob's pike unit to be defined as the prime defending unit, instead of the arquebusiers. Which means that Cleo had to fight entrenched pike instead of wimpy arquebusiers. A poor decision on the part of the umpire. A quick note on the combat procedures. a. First, each stand in each type of unit was assigned a Combat Value (CV). For example, pike had a CV of 20, heavy cavalry a CV of 30 and missile troops had a CV of 10. Note that the more powerful the unit, the larger its CV. b. Second, we add the CV for the entire unit to a percentage dice throw to get a total, T. c. Now we divide the total, T, by the unit's Combat Divisor (CD) to get the hits inflicted on the opposition. Here, pike had a CD of 20, heavy cavalry of 10, and missile troops a CD of 30. Note that the weaker the unit, the greater the CD. d. Now we go to a 'filter table': 1 to 5 hits Cross out 1 box on target's data sheet 6 to 10 hits Cross out 3 boxes. 11 or over hits Cross out 5 boxes. As an example, compare a missile unit with a heavy cavalry unit, assuming they toss the same numbers. a. Four heavy cavalry stands add their CV of 30 each to get 120 points. Four missile troop stands get a total CV of 40 points. b. Assume the dice throw for both units is a 60. The heavy cavalry total 120 plus 60, or 180, while the missile unit totals 40 plus 60 or 100. c. Now divide the totals by the units' CD. For the heavy cavalry, 180 divided by 10 equals 18 hits, and for the missile unit, 100 divided by 30 equals 4 (round up). d. Now go to the filter, which says that 5 boxes are to be crossed off the missile unit's sheet, while only 1 box is to be crossed off the heavy cavalry. In all, we received favorable reviews on the Renaissance bead game Battle the Second: WWII Skirmish Back to PW Review July 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