Several years ago, I reviewed a set of medieval rules by Chris Parker, evidently the precursor to DAY OF BATTLE (DOB), his current publication. I was very impressed by the earlier set, and in March of this year, at the COLD WARS convention, I sat in on a game of DOB which Chris hosted. I didn't follow all the nitty gritty, but with Chris at the helm, the game went smoothly. In mid-June, I sat down with my copy of the rules book and set up a battle to see exactly how DOB worked. I noted on the internet, on MAGWEB, that Mr. MAGWEB himself, Russ Lockwood, had written a review of DOB in which he stated that when he set up a game, it took only five minutes or so to become familiar with the mechanics of movement, firing, and melee. "Horse puckey!" says I. Fred Haub and I inched and clawed and puzzled and pieced our way through the rules book, and we're still not fully sure of how all the systems work. In truth, each of the procedures, when finally captured and isolated and tied down and exposed to the light of day, seems fairly simple. But I must admit, our first time through was no laughing matter. We started out by going through all the procedures necessary to determine our leaders' capabilities. Chris has included some 'canned' leader listings, in which attributes such as social rank, esteem, motivation, morale, combat bonus, initiative, and a couple of other parameters are given, but we wanted to work it ourselves from the ground up. Fred and I each had two leaders... using a 52-card deck, we drew and discovered we each had a 'Great King' in command of one of our battle groups, while Fred's other commander was a Duke, and my other commander was an Earl. The rank of each of these leaders is important, because the number of units they can command each turn is directly related to their social rank. The DOB book, some 28 pages, contains, in theory, all you ever need to know about DOB... the trouble is that information is spread out all over the place. I must mention that the booklet itself is superb... an 8½ by 11 glossy publication with slick pages and lots of illustrations. Chris evidently got Ral Partha to help in financing the venture... the book is full of Ral Partha advertisements. As you go through the book, you note that several things are happening at once. First, there's a 6-inch-wide column on each page. This column contains a melange of charts and definitions and basic rules and advanced rules and a story line. Story line? Second, in addition to the 6-inch-wide column, there's another 2-inch-wide column along the outer edge of each page. Here, too, there are rules and definitions and examples, and, of course, more of the dreaded story line. Throughout the book, in the story line, Chris relates the adventures of Duke William and Sir Sean and Count Jardin, etc., in an attempt to portray the personal aspects of the battle... "This would be ...(Sir Sean's)... first opportunity to lead his own lance, and he wanted it to be the finest in the land." After going through two pages of Duke William and Sir Sean, I gave up on them and tried not to pay attention to them and their adventures. But it was hard to ignore them... they were all over the place. During our battle, we constantly went back and forth to ferret out the information contained in both the 6-inch-wide columns and the 2-inch-wide columns. The examples in the narrow columns are invaluable, unfortunately, one can get cross-eyed correlating the data of both sources. For example, on page 20, in the 2-inch-wide column, there's an example in which a unit breaks due to failing a morale test after being beaten in melee by a group of mounted knights. After going through the numbers, the example states... "Mathews and his sergeants break 3 normal moves to the rear (30 inches)". On the same page, in the wider column, there's a general table in which all events pertaining to failing a morale test are listed... this is titled the 'Morale Check Event Table'. Here, the penalty for getting beaten by knights is noted as "break if meleeing knights in the open". Page 20 has a definition of 'break'... stating the unit will retreat, "moving a full charge move to the rear." Nowhere, except in the example, does the book state that such a rout move, i.e., a 'full charge move', is defined as 3 normal moves to the rear. In short, I found the rules booklet laid out in rather a piecemeal fashion. Everything is there, but putting it together for a first time walk-through is an experience to be missed. The Game After lambasting the rules book, now let me address the game, which provided a nicely fluid encounter. The game itself was fine. Fred Haub and I each 'bought' an army for our leaders. At the back of the book, there are several army lists, but we decided to use a 'basic listing' found on page 8. There's a minimum requirement for each type of troop... for example, in the listing we used, one must have a minimum of 5 mounted knight stands, and 2 archer stands, and 3 spearmen stands, etc., in an army... but after costing out the minimum, you're on your own. This meant that our forces were quite different and made the encounter that much more interesting. In our first battle, something didn't look right to us. It was only after I got whomped by the Haubian forces that we discovered what we had done wrong. When Fred organized his two divisions, he discovered he had enough 'army points' available to raise 15 stands of mounted knights for each force. Mounted knights are the backbone of the army... they move 9 inches a turn, and strike on a 20-sided die toss of 14 or under (70 percent chance to hit). They also have a high Morale Grade (MG)... starting out with an MG of 18. Large units in DOB are desirable because of the way the casualty procedures are structured. DOB uses what I term a 'filtering procedure' to cut down the actual casualty rate while simultaneously permitting lots of dice to be thrown. Take Fred's mounted knights, for example, tossing their 20-sided dice and requiring a toss of 14 or under to 'strike' at my own 5-stand unit of mounted knights. DOB distinguishes between "strikes" and "casualties": a. If the number of strikes you inflict are more than half the number of stands in the target unit, the target receives 2 casualties. Thus Fred had to score at least 3 hits, i.e., 3 strikes, on my 5-stand unit for it to incur 2 actual casualties, i.e., 2 figures removed. b. If the strikes number less than half the stands, the target receives a single casualty. What happened in our first battle was that in each of his armies, Fred had organized his mounted knights, all 15 of them, into one huge unit. The 'no no' here was that the rules stated that cavalry were only to be organized into 5-stand units... somehow, we missed the prohibition (which was actually printed in bold letters on page 9), and the result was that when Fred's force charged into mine, there was no way I could produce an impact on his huge knightly force. To produce 2 casualties on the knights, I had to have a number of strikes on this monstrous 15-stand behemoth of over 8, and since all my units had only 5 or 6 stands in them, giving me 6 dice at most, this proved impossible. But I must admit that both Fred and I were impressed to see these huge forces thundering forward. The filtering process, in part, worked to my advantage. For no matter how many dice Fred tossed for his knights, and no matter how many strikes he placed on my unit, the maximum number of casualties I received was 2. Although DOB doesn't specifically state it, combat appears to be unit-on-unit, if the examples are followed. It's not clear what would happen if a unit in a single rank of 5-stands contacted two separate units, one of 2 stands, and one of 3 stands. For example, it is conceivable that the 3-stand unit could win, and the 2-stand could lose. DOB states that "The unit that took the most strikes is the original loser.", thus blurring the situation if half a unit wins, while the other half loses. We were faced with this situation when one of the huge Haubian knight units simultaneously contacted two of my own units... and won against one, and lost against the other. In fact, this was the point in time when, while avidly researching the rules, we discovered the mandate about the limit on the number of stands in a mounted knight unit. DOB's sequence uses a You-go/I-go system. The active side draws cards from a 52-card deck for each of its division commanders, one card for each of the leader's social rank. Our Great Kings each drew 6 cards, while our other leaders either drew 3 or 4 cards. Command To activate a unit, a card must be assigned to it... this means that with 6 units in a division, my 3-card Earl could activate, at any one time, only 3 of his units. My army commander, the Great King, could assist a wee bit, for he could transfer one of his 6 cards, each turn, to the Earl, thus enabling the Earl to move one additional unit. Cards with numbers on them give a unit a single action (move, change formation, fire, rally, etc.), while face cards give a unit two actions. An action cannot be repeated, i.e., a unit cannot fire twice. The order in which you activate your units is important. DOB states: "Once commanded, a unit plays to completion." And so, toward the end of our first battle, Fred chose his archers as his first unit... the Haubian archers fired on my mounted knights, which resulted in 3 'strikes', i.e., 2 figure casualties. This immediately disordered my boys, and they took a morale test, and passed. Then Fred called in his own knights to attack my already disordered knights. His unit won, and disordered my unit again... another morale test, and the unit broke. This was the occasion when we frantically looked for the definition of 'break' and how far a unit would run. The firing and melee procedures require each participating stand to toss a 20-sided die. This is the only type of die used in DOB. Each stand of archers, for example, requires a toss of 10 or under (50 percent) to cause a strike, while in melee, each stand of mounted knights can strike with a toss of 14 or under. In contrast, the morale procedure is deterministic... no dice are tossed... simply add up (or subtract) an assortment of modifiers, and depending upon the total, the testing unit will carry on, fail, break, etc. DOB also incorporates what is termed 'harassing morale'. On occasion, you can point to an enemy unit and force it to take a morale test. This is similar to the procedure used in the old, old, old Napoleonics rules set, LE JEU DE LA GUERRE, wherein each side, during the course of a battle, received what was termed a series of 'preemptory morale checks' on the opposition. The DOB rulesbook leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Fred and I found this out when we set up a second battle, this time obeying the mandate to keep our mounted knight units to a maximum of 5 stands. Again, as in the first battle, the make-up of our forces was slightly different, but we each maintained a 2-division force, with one leader in charge of each division. DOB defines a concept called a 'Battle Line' (BL) to move forces more efficiently. The BL must consist of at least 3 units, and one of them must be the "Banner Unit", i.e., fly the standard of the leader. The booklet states: During the battle, any unit in sight of the banner unit and able to trace an uninterrupted line of friendly units (regardless of their facing and within 1 MF of the faster unit) back to the banner unit is in the BL. The term "MF" essentially refers to a 2- or 3-inch distance between stands. The above seems to me to state, therefore, that if your units all form a train, each unit no more than, say, 2 inches from its neighbor, the entire line of units is in the BL. Second Battle In our second battle, I placed my units side by side, forming what I called an acceptable BL. Fred Haub, however, had other ideas. His divisions were each given a 2-unit frontage, with all units massed behind the front ones in column formation. In effect, therefore, Fred had formed, not a 'battle line' but two long 'battle columns', with each column evidently possessing the attributes of the battle line. DOB doesn't really discuss this... the illustrations look at units in line, but according to the definition quoted above, the 'battle column' is acceptable. In this second battle, after melee, one of my units lost, took a morale test, and was found to be disordered. A moment later, another test, and the unit was found to be 'double disordered'... the text says that if you're 'double disordered', make yet another morale test. OK, but how about a 'triple disorder'... yes, we actually had a unit which, if we read the rules correctly, was 'triple disordered'! DOB has both routing units and disordered units. If we read the rules correctly, rallying units in the routed mode requires a leader to move to the unit. Rallying a disordered unit appears to be simpler... simply order it to rally and POOF!, it's rallied. We were slightly confused as to what a reordered unit can do. For example, if one assigns a disordered unit a 3-action card, it apparently can (a) rally, (b) advance and (c) fire, all on the same phase. Just as we had a problem concerning the definition of a 'battle line', we found difficulty in researching the definition of 'support'. This is extremely important when testing morale... the presence of supports adds +10 to the morale factor. From the definition on page 2 and the illustrations, it appears that a couple of friendly units within a couple of inches (to the front, back or side) lend 'support'. But if the friendly units are in combat themselves, do they still maintain support? Page 2 of DOB contains a glossary of the acronyms used in the rules book. There are 22 terms listed, but what's irritating is that the book is full of other acronyms not listed in the main table. Out of curiosity, I went through the booklet, page by page, counting acronyms... there are 32--count 'em--32 of them! Chris Parker has gone acronym happy! One acronym is designated "TN"... this first appears on page 16, under the section devoted to combat. Digression. I have to give credit to Chris for his combat procedures. The systems for both firing and hand-to-hand are the same. If you understand one, you understand the other. Both firing and combat deal with producing an impact on an opposing unit, and there are too many rules books in which the author institutes two entirely different methods for both combat and melee, thus unnecessarily complicating the procedures. End of digression I was discussing the "TN" acronym. And the reason for doing so is that "TN" got away from Chris... "TN" is nowhere explained... it just pops up. To produce a strike on an opponent, states the text, toss a 20-sided die, and you must roll under, or equal to, your "TN" to hit him. A simple enough concept. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what "TN" stands for... it's easy enough to look at "CV" and see it's 'combat value', or "MG"... that's 'morale grade'... but "TN"? My copy of the 28 page rules book was subtitled "Core Rules"... indicating that there's bigger and better things awaiting us in the next edition. As an example, in the morale results table, one of the entries states "see advanced morale results". What "advanced morale results"? I couldn't find 'em. What I did find throughout the book is that Chris' editor doesn't know the difference between "its" and "it's", which, I realize, has nothing to do with the rules, but which I find exasperating. Some final thoughts on DOB, after 3 battles... one guided by Chris at the convention, and two laid out on my own table. On the plus side, the game itself is fine... once you get the hang of it, it flows, and the combat results are logical and quickly derived. Why firing and hand-to-hand require dice tossing, while the morale test is deterministic (simply add up the numbers), is beyond my ken. Chris has an article on his thoughts on this on MAGWEB, and if that's his druthers, that's OK with me. But on the negative side, to me, is the rules book. It's pretty, it looks good, but it's too 'cutesy'... what with a huge assortment of charts and tables and text and story line all contained in a 6-inch column and a 2-inch column format. Back to PW Review June 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