Over a year ago, I first mentioned a series of articles in WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED (WI) by Roger Underwood, setting out the basics for a 'mapless' campaigning system. Underwood presented his thoughts in three articles... WI issues Numbers 10, 11, and 12 of June, July and August, 1988, respectively. Underwood focused on a medieval campaign, circa 1470, and he oriented the procedures for use with the WRG rules. In experimenting with the system, however, I discovered it was quite an easy task to adjust Underwood's outline for use with other eras and other rules sets. Recently, Don Bailey and I decided to use the Underwood system for an ancients campaign. Neither of us have any love for the current sets of published rules, and, for each battle, we each use whatever home-brew set strikes our fancy at the moment. We first set out our forces, each choosing the following listing of units. Don't ask what the word 'unit' represents on the battlefield in terms of 'real men'... all I can tell you is that, on the table-top, each 'unit' was composed of three stands. 3 Heavy Cavalry Units, 3 Heavy Infantry Units, 3 Medium Cavalry Units, 3 Medium Cavalry Units, 3 Light Cavalry Units, 3 Light Infantry Units We took the above selection of units, and divided them into three divisions: a forward van, a center division, and a rear guard. Then we made our first campaign move. The campaign starts out with each side given three tactical choices for its army, and the choices available for my force were as follows. Note that each choice is prefaced by a number. (0) Advance to the attack (3) Deploy your forces in place (6) Withdraw immediately to a better defensive position across the river. Don's choices were essentially the same, but his number system was different: (1) Advance to the attack (2) Deploy your forces in place (3) Withdraw immediately to a better defensive position I chose Number (6)... I wanted to withdraw... while Don selected Number (1), opting for an immediate attack. We then totaled our numbers, 6+1=7, and looked up the '7' result on the Underwood tables in the article, which was that Don's attack had caught me unprepared: The notes applicable to my side stated: Your army is caught in a most vulnerable position. Your rear guard... (now in the van)... has crossed the river, but the rest of the army is strung out along the road in column of march when the enemy van appears. From the choices given to us as listed above, if you examine all the possibilities that could result from the selections of both sides, you'll see there are 9 possible outcomes which result from adding the numbers selected by the sides. For each of these outcomes, Underwood has detailed the resultant situation. For example, if I had selected (6) and tried to withdraw, while Don had selected (2) to deploy in place, then the notes applicable to my side say: You have outwitted your opponent, and successfully retrreated your army to an excellent defensive position behind a river. Go to the next decision point. The reference to the 'next decision point' then takes us to another series of tactical listings, wherein we each are again given three choices. We choose our tactics, add the numbers, and for a second time, refer to Underwood's assessment of the situation. Note that in going from 'decision point' to 'decision point', there is no need to refer to a campaign map... the entire affair is conducted solely on paper. I give Underwood lots of credit because he must have spent many, many manhours of effort in generating his lists, for there are 5 decision points, and for each of these, 9 separate outcomes must be detailed, and, where appropriate, maps provided. Whenever one of his matrices leads to a battle, he supplies a map of the disposition of both forces on the field. In our case, for the first battle, the map looked like: The notes describing our situation indicated that Don's force had, indeed, caught me unprepared in his pursuit of my retreating troops, but that for the first two turns, only the van of his army would be present on the battlefield. His center division would arrive on the next bound, and his rearguard on the bound after that. I set up the battle on my table, gaming the battle in solo fashion, using my 15mm collection. And I must admit that looking at my strung-out forces marching along the road, faced by Don's already deployed van, waiting for the order to attack, things didn't look too good. I was, at first, undecided as whether to stand and deploy and fight, or just run-like-hell to safety to the other side of the bridge. I decided to run. My own rear guard, said the notes, was already across the river, and the van of my army was now to act as the rear guard, while everyone else ran for the river. Whatta way to begin a campaign! Don's van consisted of an assortment of light and medium cavalry, and light and medium infantry. It would be the objective of these units to hold up my main body until the bulk of his force, heavy infantry and heavy cavalry (the 'big guys'), arrived on subsequent bounds. First Turn On the first turn, Don's troops were defined to be the active side. I initially placed the deployed enemy van about 12 inches from my marching columns, and diced for their movement distance. Fortunately for me, although they all charged forward, their diced-for distance was not 12 inches, and they fell short of contact. After the active side moves troops, the sequence calls for (a) a reaction by the opposing cavalry, (b) and then melee resolution. Item (a) provided me with an opportunity to react, to have my mounted troops fall out of the column and deploy, facing the threat. Under the rules I was using, any action by a unit (including a formation change), other than moving straight ahead, calls for a 'control test'. And so I had each of my cavalry units in the march column take the test, trying to deploy to face the threat. Some passed, some didn't. The basic chance to pass the test was 60 percent, but this was modified by several factors. The pertinent factors here were: -5 if combat was imminent -5 if the enemy was within 5 inches -5 if the enemy was within 10 inches All these modifiers were applied cumulatively, hence the basic chance for each of my units to react was 60 - 15, or 45 percent. I managed to have two out of 5 cavalry units respond properly... there were three others that either didn't hear the orders, or misinterpreted them, or chose to ignore them, or just didn't care, depending upon how you interpret the meaning of the control test. For example, there was one heavy cavalry unit, which, throughout the battle, simply refused to deploy. It wanted to be first over the bridge. Somehow, I managed to protect my main body, despite a series of contacts, and get them and a portion... a small portion... of my van (acting as the rear guard throughout the battle) across the bridge. Don also set up the encounter on his own table (Don is located in Colorado and we correspond via e-mail) and sent me the results of his battle. He indicated that in his initial set-up, the forces in his van were close enough to make contact on the very first turn, thus holding up my troops on the road until his other units (the center and rear guard divisions) arrived. His report of the battle indicated far more disastrous results for my army than the results of the battle I had set up. In the end, we settled for annihilation of one of my heavy cavalry units, and for elimination of the half the units in my van. And so the history books state that, in the very first battle, Walterius the Bloody was severely defeated by the army of Donald the Grim. Back to PW Review October 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