My ECW 54mm figures are arranged in groups of '6's', each group termed a regiment. At Crutchton Manor, there were some 10 regiments per side, about half of them musketeers. Unfortunately, due to the fact that my ECW 54mm army is understaffed in cavalry, each side was assigned only a single cavalry regiment. Jim Butters commanded the attacking Parliamentary force of Sir William Brudge. Sir William's figure was fairly important... if attached to a unit, it got a 'plus' in morale, and another 'plus' in melee. In like fashion, Cliff Sayre ran the defending Royalist force of Lord Flamm. Flamm was, initially, better set up than was Sir William, for Flamm occupied the grounds of Crutchton Manor... he had two musket units and one halberdier unit sheltered there. Brudge quickly brought up his own halberdiers, pikemen, and sword&buckler men to drive Flamm's units off the Manor grounds. Combat was adjudicated in a somewhat unique manner... in fact, everything was adjudicated in a somewhat unique manner. Let's talk about melee, first. (a) The two lead units made contact, and each unit started out with 50 percentage points. (b) Each side then had a 70 percent chance to bring in one supporting unit. (c) Then the modifiers were taken into account. If, for example, supported pike attacked unsupported musketeers, the pike would get a +20 for fighting crummy musketeers, and another +10 for its supporting unit, a total of +30. (d) This gave the pike a total of 50+30, or 80 percentage points. In contrast, whatever the pike added as a positive modifier was taken away from the musketeers, hence the musketeers initial 50 percent was reduced by 30 points to 20. Note that what this meant was that the sum of the two percentages always totaled 100 points. (e) Both sides tossed dice... a very low throw, below half the percentage, placed two casualty figures on the opposition. A not-so-low throw placed one casualty figure, and if you missed your percentage completely, the opposing unit received no casualty figures. (f) Now both sides looked at N, the total number of men in their units (for the pike unit above, it would be 12, since a supporting unit had come in, while the poor musketeers had an N of 6), then looked at the casualties, C, on the other side, then multiplied N+C by a 1 0-sided die roll, and the higher product was the winner. The above was the way in which Sir William rapidly cleared the Royalist units out of Crutchton Manor, and for a while, it looked like the forces of Parliament were certain winners. The all-important parameter in the rules was the number of casualty figures on each side at the end of each half-bound. These figures resulted from the firing and the combat phases. Dice were tossed to assess the value of these casualties. Chart 1 01 to 33 Each cas figure yields the opposition 1 Destruction Point (DP) 34 to 66 Each cas figure yields the opposition 2 DP 67 to 100 Each cas figure yields the opposition 3 DP Half-bound by half-bound, the sides accumulated IDP until they were ready to strike. At the end of each half-bound, the sides got an opportunity to point to an enemy unit and force it to take a destructive morale test. Fail the test, and the unit "blows up". The basic Morale Level of a unit was 80 percent, and every DP assigned the unit reduced the ML by one point. By Bound 3, Brudge had accumulated around 30 DP, and he assigned them all to a pike unit of Flamm's. The pike unit's ML thus dropped to 50 percent, and Flamm had to toss 50 or lower on percentage dice to preserve his unit... he did, and the 30 points assigned by Brudge were wiped out, useless... hard cheese! But on the next bound, disaster struck for Brudge's Parliamentarians. The Royalist leader, Flamm, accumulated 20 DP, and he was impatient... he refused to wait another bound or so to increase his total. He assigned 10 of his 20 IDP to a Parliamentarian halberdier regiment occupying Crutchton Manor, bringing its ML down to 70 percent. There were catcalls from those present... "Why don't you wait until you have more points?" But he was adamant. And so Brudge tossed his dice, seeking to get 70 or below... a 91 appeared!... and off the field fled the halberdiers. And now Flamm pointed to another enemy regiment, this one a sword&buckler, in Crutchton Manor, again assigning 10 DID to it... its ML was now 70 percent. Brudge tossed his dice... a 78 appeared!... and the sword&buckler people ran off-board right after their halberdiers. Flamm was now 2-for-2! Note that the only way to destroy units in the game was by using the destructive morale test. You'd wait until you'd accumulated sufficient DID, and at the end of a half-bound, plunk all your points down on a particular enemy unit, and hope that the Wrath of Ammon Rah would descend upon it, and blow it up. Is this historically surrealistic? You bet your bippy it is... but it makes for good gaming, and it requires the players to make a series of critical decisions... you might even call them "tactical decisions"... during the scenario. The battle was won by Flamm's Royalist forces around Bound 6. Flamm had accumulated 30 DID and was ready to annihilate another of Brudge's units. He pointed to a halberdier regiment and said "The Wrath of Ammon Rah upon you!" The 30 IDP brought the halberdiers' Morale Level down to 50 percent. Critical times call for critical measures, and in an effort to save the day, Sir William Brudge himself rode over to the unit, seeking to add another 10 percent to its Morale Level, one might say 'protecting the unit with his bod'. Alas! 'Twas of no use... the dice throw was a 71, and both the halberdiers, and Sir William himself done blowed up real good. End of first battle. Next day, Fred Haub appeared to command Sir William's forces. Again, Lord Flamm's men occupied the grounds of Crutchton Manor and Sir William was on the attack. Fred and I decided not to use the 'Wrath of Ammon Rah' approach... we thought the ploy, while interesting, was as gamey as, say, those used in DBM, or NAPOLEON'S BATTLES. After all, we were historical miniatures gamers... we demanded historical realism. And so, we tracked each unit on its own data sheet. If a regiment received 10 hits... BLAM! ... it was gone. Here was true and accurate realism up the gazoo. Sequence The sequence was as follows: (a) First, the Active Side (AS) checked each of its musket units (60 percent chance) to see if they loaded their weapons. (b) The AS moved all his troops. (c) The Non-Active Side (NAS) then fired all its missile units (d) The AS returned fire with those units that had loaded their muskets in Phase (a) (e) Melee was resolved (f) Evaluate casualty figures to determine if any units had 10 boxes crossed out. Note that on Phase (d), the Active Side fired with only certain units, while on Phase (c), all of the Non-Active Side's units fired. The Non-Active Side used what was termed a 'Fire Deck'. This consisted of 15 cards... 6 cards were annotated "FIRE', 6 were annotated "LOAD', and 3 were annotated 'MISFIRE'. The Non-Active Side diced to see how many cards it would draw... either 4, 5, or 6. Then it turned over its cards, looking for matchups of FIRE and LOAD cards. Each matchup permitted one volley for every missile unit. At the end of the half-bound, Phase (0, we diced for every unit that had taken casualty figures from fire and melee. Chart 2 01 to 33 Each casualty figure valued at 1 point 34 to 66 Each casualty figure valued at 2 points 67 to 100 Each casualty figure valued at 3 points Note the resemblance of Chart 1 to Chart 2. On Chart 2, every point resulted in one box crossed out. In our second battle, the Haubian army, that of Sir William Brudge, was unstoppable. With fire and sword, he smiteth the forces of Lord Flamm, outdicing Lord Flamm in terms of the casualty-producing phases. The only thing that saved me and Lord Flamm from going under quickly was that on the last phase of the sequence, when casualty figures were evaluated, I managed to toss low... and an examination of Chart 2 shows that low throws are favorable... they produce the least permanent casualties on your unit. But good things cannot last forever... statistics caught up to me... and it was around Bound 7 or so, that my units began to disintegrate... 10 boxes crossed out... fleeing the field. And so Crutchton Manor fell to Sir William Brudge. A good day's work. In retrospect, which type of casualty assessment do I prefer?... that used in the second baffle... tracking unit losses... or that used in the first battle... the Wrath of Ammon Rah? In truth, it depends upon my audience. I can go either way, but there are PW members, seeking what they define as 'historical reality', who would turn up their collective noses at the Wrath of Ammon Rah. But I'm easy to get along with... Back to PW Review August 1999 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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