Shako and Bayonet The second set of oldie Barker rules that we tried was titled SHAKO & BAYONET WARGAME RULES (S&B). Barker had copyrighted these in 1991. This was an early attempt to adapt the DBA rules to Napoleonic warfare. I had tried this set when it was first given to me, and I thought the results were very unsatisfactory. It had nothing to do with Napoleonic warfare... it proved to be sort of a skirmish game. As with all Barker rules, there was an army list, and Jeff and I selected a British and French army, respectively. The troop types were: Type French British Muskets 11 stands 13 stands Skirmish 1 - Cuirassiers 1 - Dragoon 2 3 Light Cavalry 1 - Heavy Artillery 2 2 Field Artillery 2 4 We played a "corps level" game... an infantry stand was defined to be a 'half-battalion', and with 11 infantry stands, this gave my French force a little over 5 battalions, which I divided into two brigades. Each brigade had an officer, and I also had one Big Guy, a division officer. Jeff's army was similarly set up. The scale for the corps level game was 1 inch to 100 yards... grand tactical. Musket fire ranged out to 3 inches, and the heavy artillery reached out to 24 inches. This was a simple 'pip' game... I discovered, after all these years, that 'pip' stands for 'Player Initiative Points'. Each of our two brigade officers tossed a 6-sided die, and the Commanding General tossed his own die. He could distribute his pips to either brigade, but it cost him double to transfer his points to his subordinates. Our gaming table measured about 3-feet by 3-feet. Infantry moved 6 inches per turn, and cavalry moved 12 inches. Initially, both of us had set up our armies in what might be termed "Napoleonic fashion'. Jeff was defending two small villages... he assigned one brigade to each, and had his cavalry in the rear, ready to support. My task was to attack, and so, up the field (around 30 inches) advanced the Simon forces. When we got to within heavy artillery range (24 inches), the slaughter began. The heavy artillery had a combat value of 3, while all infantry normally had a combat value of 4. We noted that the original set of rules used the good ol' DBA system of hurting the other guy. As in all DBA games. if your modified die throw was more than your opponent's, he'd recoil, and if it doubled that of your opponent's, you killed him. But included in the rules set was a much revamped combat chart. Combat results now depended upon how much one side's modified die roll exceeded the opposition's. We decided to use the revamped chart... we thought (and evidently, someone else thought) that the simple DBA system was not quite adequate for Napoleonic warfare, and that there had to be degrees of damage. I mention this because the artillery's combat value of 3, versus the infantry's normal value of 4, would permit a long range artillery shot to destroy a stand only 3 percent of the time. Destruction of a stand required that the artillery exceed its target's die roll by 4... and this would happen only 3 percent of the time. However, said the revamped combat chart: "... any troops under artillery fire and not firing themselves", would have a combat value of 2. Oh! Oh! This meant that my French infantry, advancing across the field toward the British lines, instead of adding their usual 4 to their die, now only added 2 when the big guns boomed. So here we had the artillery modifying its die by adding 3, and my infantry adding only 2... the 'kill rate' with these modifiers was now up to around 19 percent... one fifth of the time, the artillery's modified roll would exceed mine by 4 and would destroy one of my stands. Help! Needless to say, my troops never made it... I lost about 8 stands of my 20-stand army. The battle turned out to be the normal, silly pip game. Despite the definition of a single stand as a half-battalion, there were no rules concerning unit integrity, and all stands... or 'elements', as we are wont to say... fought and fired completely independent of one another. If a stand happened to find itself next to a friendly stand, it could aid in the fire and combat procedures, but this was temporary, and the stands could immediately each go their own way. You'll note in the listed order of battle, I had one Cuirassier element, 2 dragoon elements and one light cavalry element. Call this a small cavalry brigade if you will. But the brigade formation lasted for only two bounds. Thereafter, my Cuirassier stand went that-a-way, one of my dragoons went this-a-way, my light cavalry went over there, and my other dragoon stand went some place else. Due to the lack of a given command structure, there was no coordination requirement on the field. You tossed your dice, obtained your pips, and simply moved your stands around, seeking to fill in whatever gaps you had in your line. It seemed to me that because of all this helter skelter movement, and the fact that every stand on the field was a completely independent entity from every other stand, we were playing a skirmish game... you can call it Napoleonics, but you could also have called it a wild, wild west game... and you would have been correct. Barker evidently dropped this attempt to fit his DBA system into the Napoleonic era... and rightly so. This, of course, hasn't stopped other gamers from doing it... in a recent REVIEW, I reported on one such effort as published in WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED. Yuch! Oldies But Not Goodies: WWII Back to PW Review December 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. 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