This encounter was fought at Peter Dennis' house . The wargame field, which was set out on his kitchen table, measured 18- inches by 18- inches. We used Peter's collection of 2mm ECW figures... teeny-weeny things initially manufactured by Knight Designs, and now produced by Irregular Miniatures. Many years ago, Peter had designed the original line of 2mm figures, but it never took off. In part, I could understand the non-popularity of the figures, for I found it difficult to determine which way the little buggers, were facing... my cavalry units seemed to always face the rear throughout our games.
Peter is an advocate of the George Jeffrey's 'variable bound' concept, but this time, we tried an alternate movement sequence... the usual You-Go/I-Go sequence.
As we started the game, there were no rules... we made them up on the spot. Peter would state a rule for movement or firing or melee, and I would suggest a change, and Peter would ignore me completely.
We each had fairly equal sides... a single commanding officer, 6 pike blocks, 6 cavalry blocks and a couple of artillery batteries. To illustrate the size of the units, a block of cavalry, 6 figures across by 2 figures deep, measured approximately 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch.
The sequence was the first thing discussed. Peter is a '6-sided-die-man', and all dice tosses were 6-sided. In the sequence, for example, when I was the active player, I'd toss my die, and the resulting number was the number of 'couriers' sent out by my commanding officer to give orders to his units. A 'courier moved 3 inches for every pip shown on the die. A toss of a "4", therefore, would enable the courier to move 4x3, or 12 inches, to give orders to a unit 12 inches away from the commanders stand. Using the same "12", two couriers could dash out, each going 2x3, or 6 inches, each issuing an order to a unit 6 inches from the commander.
This method of 'order issuing' prevented a side from moving all its units at once. In effect, it paralleled the 'pip movement' method of DBA/DBR. Peters thought on the sequence was that it forced the commander to cluster his force, and not have it spread out all over the field.
A cavalry unit, when it received an order, could advance 3 inches, an infantry unit could advance about an inch and a half.
On the field, as Lord Crutchton, given the task of defending Crutchton Manor, I placed 2 pike units and one battery in Crutchton, and the bulk of my forces on a hill situated to the west of the Manor. There was no scale in the game, but it appeared that the pike infantry on the hill required about 5 turns to reach Crutchton, should they be needed there. Poor planning, for when the battle began, and I began to walk the pike over to Crutchton, it seemed to take forever.
As Peter advanced his army, his pike (6 stands) made directly for Crutchton, and he deployed his 4 batteries (each teeny-weeny gun mounted on a stand measuring about 1/8 inch by 1/8-inch) in back of a bunch of green squiggles he had drawn on the map, an area about an inch-and-a-half by an inch-and-a-half.
As soon as I saw his guns set up, apparently with no support, I ordered an immediate cavalry charge against the deployed batteries.
Four of my cavalry stands (4 regiments?) surged forward, and found themselves in front of the guns, in the middle of the green squiggly area. Seeing this, Peter immediately declared my horsemen to be in the middle of a bog, a green squiggly bog, and stated that they were unable to move forward to make contact. Not good. Why hadn't Lord Crutchton been aware of the treacherous bog located in the fields near his own Manor.?... we'll never know.
The bulk of the attacking troops reached Crutchton, and commenced to combat the 2 pike units that I had placed there. I had also placed a number of dragoons in the woods to the east of Crutchton, and these were attacked by Peter's dragoons. All sorts of combats ensued... under Peter's guidelines, each stand in a unit tossed its die, looking for "6s".
Since I had 2 pike stands directly defending Crutchton, I tossed two dice, while Peter's 4 attacking stands tossed 4 dice. The side tossing the most "6"s won the round, and pushed the other back. If a side lost two rounds in a row (suffered two push-backs), it had lost the melee and the stands were removed.
With one round of combat dice tossing per half-bound, and winning two rounds necessary to win, this enabled supporting units to march up and join the melee and add their dice to the combat, providing, of course, they were given the proper orders via the command system of 'couriers'.
The firing procedures paralleled the melee procedures, but here, each "6" thrown by a firing stand caused the target unit to take a status test. It tossed a die, and a low number resulted in a fall-back, while a high number caused an impetuous move forward. A middleof-the-road result meant that the unit held position. Firing, therefore, didn't directly produce casualties... but merely affected the target unit's status.
In our first battle, Crutchton fell to the attackers... my 2 pike units were soon overrun (too many "6's" tossed against them), and with a good percentage of my cavalry lost in a green squiggly bog, and the pike I had placed on the hill too far away to help, the battle was soon over.
And so was the second battle. Again, I failed to successfully defend Crutchton Manor. This time, however, I avoided the green squiggly green bog, but even so, couldn't save the Manor.
I wasn't completely satisfied with the tossing of "6's" in combat. As a 'percentage-diceman', I thought that combat comparisons in the ECW era, because of the many types of units involved, required a matrix of the weaponry involved.
Nor was I completely happy with the sequence under which some of a side's units couldn't move during a bound because they had 'failed to receive orders', i.e., not enough pips were tossed. My thought was that, once a unit was given its orders and set out on its way on the battlefield, it wouldn't halt every bound to confirm the last thing said to it by the commander.
In part, however, the pip tossing procedure and the 'couriers' it produced, worked well for the post combat sequences. For example, if a 4-stand unit was disordered by enemy fire, then each of its component stands was declared, temporarily, to be an independent unit. This meant that, to bring the unit together as a single entity, it required 4 separate 'couriers', i.e., 4 separate orders. Only then could it act as a single unit and require only a single order.
But for a short battle (the games took less than three quarters of an hour), all went relatively smoothly.
We fought a third battle, in which several changes were instituted.
In this third encounter, when a multi-stand unit was committed to combat, one stand could be held back, about an inch to the rear of the battle line, as a 'rally point. By taking a stand out of the combat, a side lost a wee bit of 'combat power', since it tossed one less die in combat, but the rally point provided insurance if the baffle was lost. Without a rally point, if a side lost, its units would be taken off the table, whereas with the rally point, the stands of the fleeing unit would halt at the rally point, and remain on the field.
Once again, in this third battle, as in the others, my cavalry charged forward against the attacking force. Its target was the enemy cavalry. In one of the previous battles, I had had my horsemen attack the enemy pike, and after some discussion, we decided that the cavalry would suffer a certain defeat, and so this time, I avoided the enemy's pike and contacted his horse. I amassed 7 stands to the opponent's 5, giving me 7 dice tosses to his 5, and I thought that, surely, I could toss more "6's" than he could.
Alas! Not so. I tossed fewer "6s, and since I hadn't held back a stand as a rally point, all of my 7 stands were removed from the field. In the post combat test made by the victor, it turned out that 2 of his 5 stands pursued my fleeing units... these 2 stands were also removed from the field.
Crutchton Manor fell into enemy hands again. By now, of course, the staff was used to it, and only I, Lord Crutchton, felt put out.
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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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