There was a table-size area map laid out on my table-top in late September. I had dubbed the game 'The Great Khan'... a three sided ancients game in which two invading forces (the Alphans and the Omegans), almost but not quite allied, were each out to capture the Khan's capital city of Ku. Each turn, the three players... the Khan, the Alphans and the Omegans... each tossed a die, and they went in order of the die toss, high to low. The active side first looked at what was termed the "Whoopee Chart"... he tossed percentage dice, and from a menu of twenty items, he read his fortune... he could recruit a stand of infantry, he could gain gold pieces, he could recruit a general, one of his own towns could revolt, one of the Khan's infantry could desert and join him... there was enough of a selection to keep the interest up. After referring to the "Whoopee Chart", the player moved his troops... heavy and medium cavalry, heavy and medium infantry, all in 15mm. The player was assigned a certain number of Movement Points (MP). Each area on the map had been annotated with an MP cost... from 1 to 4... and each time the player moved a force, he used up a number of his allotted movement points according to the areas traversed. If he so desired, he could take a single force, and zip it completely across the field, using up all of his MP to the detriment of his other forces. So far, so good... but here's where we went wrong. As the player's units moved through the mapped-out areas, termed 'provinces' (each province about 6-inches by 6-inches, and taking a maximum of 4 stands), wherever his unit stopped, he had to determine what, if anything, he had discovered in that particular area. He tossed percentage dice and referred to a table: 01 to 33 Barren 34 to 66 Town of the Great Khan 67 to 100 Fortress of the Great Khan I have learned in the past that, whenever you rely on a random dice throw to determine an outcome, the worst possible things will invariably pop up. And so was it here. In the first three turns, the players, as they explored the unknown territory around them, all tossed extremely high, and the field became dotted with fortresses, six of them, of the Great Khan. Given that a fortress existed in an area, the player then diced for the garrisons placed there by the Great Khan. And the table that I had made up gave the Khan too many stands... which resulted in a double whammy for the exploring player: a. First, the Khan's defending force was so strong that the player's own force was whupped pretty badly, cutting down his exploratory efforts, and b. Second, now that the field was inundated with the fortresses of the Great Khan, then in the last phases of the turn, when all the players collected gold pieces from their properties, the Khan turned out to have an inexhaustible treasury, which translated into an ability to recruit an overwhelming force. And so this game went awry from the very first turn. There was no possible way to invade the Khan's territory in the face of the huge number of assets, infantry and cavalry, that he possessed. The second edition of the rules is scheduled to hit the stands soon, and this edition will contain (should contain) a much more balanced series of charts. Having given up on Game #1, we set out #2, using the same area map, but translating the era from the ancients one to the modern... tanks, planes, artillery, etc. This game was based on a concept submitted by Terry Sirk, and modified by me to bring it to the table. It was, first of all, a large scale game... four stands constituted a full brigade. Terry had defined three types of brigades. The types and number of stands in each are as follows: Unit Infantry Tanks Artillery Armored brigade 1 2 1 Mixed brigade 2 1 1 Infantry brigade 3 x 1 Our scenario pitted six defending brigades against eight attacking. Four of the six defenders were hidden, while two were visible. The initial thought was that the attacking side would perform a number of reconnaissance missions with its aircraft (each side had 5 planes), to locate the hidden units. In combat, each brigade rolled a number of 10-sided dice, and a hit was registered on the opposition by a toss of 1, 2, or 3, i.e., a Probability of Hit (POH) per die of 30 percent. In essence, this table of constant hit numbers fouled up the game, since whether or not a defending force had been reconnoitered, it still had the same POH and hit numbers as the attacking force. In other words, the element of a surprise ambush was completely missing. Jeff Wiltrout, running half of the defending brigades, suggested that if an attacking force, without previous reconnoitering, bumped up against a hidden defender, the defending brigade should double its POH to 60 percent... hits registered on tosses of 1,2,3,4,5,6. This would definitely cause the attacker to reconnoiter the field before advancing. In our scenario, however, little or no reconnaissance was done... thereby nulling what I had thought was a key element in the game. I, as defender, for example, concentrated my aircraft against the opposition's supply base. Each half-bound, the supply bases furnished "Ammunition Points" (AP) according to the following table. 01 to 33 7 AP 34 to 66 5 AP 67 to 100 3 AP Over 100 1 AP Each hit on the supply base added +10 to the resupply dice throw, hence the larger the net percentage throw, the fewer the AP supplied by the base. By battle's end, my own supply base had incurred 4 hits, while the opposition's had 3. Whenever a brigade fired in combat, it expended AP. Each brigade started with 10 AP, and each AP enabled it to toss one hit die. A brigade, depending upon its type, could fire from 6 to 8 AP. There were two firing phases per bound, and ammunition was used up rapidly. At battle's end, about half the attacking force was out of ammunition, having expended their initial supply of AP and having failed to generate and deliver enough ammunition to the front-line attacking brigades. The ammunition-resupply rules added quite a bit to the game. At the scale of this game, it worked well. I'm not sure it would work equally as well in a smaller scale, i.e., a tactical set-up. Back to PW Review September 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. 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