My force faced that of Fred Haub... we each had an assortment of mounted knights, of foot knights, of men @ arms and of untrained riff-raff... all in 25mm. The Haubian army was commanded by Lord Ipswitch, who had two key adjutants, Duke Hewitt, and the Earl of Froth. In similar fashion, my force of Simonian loyalists also had three key knightly figures, and Sir Alan duBois was the commander in chief. A unit consisted of 2 stands. In the Simonian army, there were 11 units, a total of 22 stands. The Haubians had 10 units, or 20 stands. The reason that there was one less unit in the Haubian force was that, at the beginning of the battle, we had each 'bought' troops, and Fred had purchased slightly more expensive troops that I did... I had gone for quantity, for cannon fodder, while Fred had purchased only foot knights. Start At the start of the battle, I sent the Big Cheese, Sir Alan duBois, right up the middle with the majority of the troops, while I assigned to one of his adjutants, Sir Douglas, two units and told him to advance way up along the western side of the field and make a flanking attack on the Haubians. Then I assigned a unit to my third Knight, Sir Chat, and told him to advance up the eastern edge of the field and come in on the other Haubian flank. And then I sat back, secure in the knowledge that both Sir Douglas and Sir Chat, experienced officers, would carry out their orders. The Haubian force had no flankers... all of the units simply advanced up the center in one huge massed attack. And so the battle started. It didn't take long for my grandiose plans of victory to become undone. And the item that undid me was the sequence, my own derived sequence, one over which I had labored for long and countless hours. Each side had a movement deck of 5 cards. They were alternately drawn at random by the sides, and the contents of each deck was: 1 card All 3 Leading Knights may move 2 cards Any 2 Leading Knights may move 1 card Any 1 Leading Knight may move 1 card The Commander and 1 other Knight may move When a Knight was selected to move, he could also move all units within 10 inches of his position. Looking at the above cards, it's easy to see in hindsight what was going to happen to my flanking Knights. They'd be moving piecemeal up the field, because, for the most part, I had to focus on the center of the field, where I had assigned Sir Alan with the bulk of my forces. The Haubian force, in contrast, kept all of its units and their three Leading Knights in one tight mass... so that all units were always within 10 inches of all three of the Knights, hence could always move. Why didn't I think of this?? Sometime around Bound #4, Sir Chat's small 1-unit force, advancing up the eastern side of the table, actually made contact with a Haubian unit of untrained recruits. Sir Chat, commanding the Rockville Men @ Arms, easily whomped the untrained townsfolk and sent them running. One turn later, however, up trotted a Haubian unit of mounted knights, and the Rockville Men @ Arms thought better of the situation , and both they and Sir Chat ran back. My other flanking force, under the command of Sir Douglas, got lost somewhere in the woods, and I never saw them again. In the middle of the field, however... that's where the action was. It was Sir Alan versus the behemoth led by Lord Ipswitch, the Earl of Froth and Duke Hewitt. Sir Alan was outmanned, outnumbered and "out-supported". Concerning this last item, each Lead Knight had a data sheet and one of the parameters noted on his sheet was a 'Support Factor'. This was a block of 6 numbers, ranging from a high of 80 to a low of 60. When 2 units met in hand-to-hand, a nearby Knight's Support Factor could be called on to bring in a supporting unit to assist. If, for example, a Support Factor of 70 was used, then (a) the factor was crossed out, and (b) percentage dice were tossed and the chance that the unit in question assisted in melee was 70 percent. Sir Alan had his block of 6 Support Factors, and he soon used them up. He was up against the combined Support Factors of Lord Ipswitch, the Earl of Froth and Duke Hewitt... 18 factors in all. I tried to apportion Sir Alan's 6 puny factors wisely and discretely, but 'twas no use... soon, no supporting units were available for any of Sir Alan's units. Both the firing and melee routines were quite similar. The sides tossed lots of 10-sided dice, and hits were scored on tosses of 7, 8, 9, and 10. Each hit caused a box of the target unit to be crossed off its data sheet... 8 hits and the unit was gone forever. In melee, both Fred and I discussed the hit dice assignment, changed it several times, and eventually came up with a satisfactory assessment. A lead unit in combat always received a minimum of 3 dice. Dice were never taken away for disadvantages, but additional dice were given to the side with the advantage: (a) 2 dice for every difference in grade between the 2 lead units. For example, if mounted knights fought Men @ Arms, the knights were 2 grades above the Men @ Arms, hence the knights received 4 additional hit dice, and the Men @ Arms received nothing. (b) 1 die for having a support unit present (c) 1 die for the difference in grade between the support unit and the opposing lead unit. (d) 1 die for advantage (uphill, etc.) (e) 1 die if the Knight participated And so on. Via items (b) and (c), above, the presence of a support unit was quite important... it could add 4 or 5 dice to the combat. And that's why the troops of the unfortunate Sir Alan suffered so much when he ran out of support points... Back to PW Review November 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