Bob and Cleo Liebl had 19 units, they commanded the British, and their goal was to take my two bridges away from me. Defending the bridges were my 13 French units, and after a single massed volley on the very first action of the game, I was down to 12 units. We used a 'card-driven' sequence, basically divided into three major phases: (a) First, the non-active side moved all his troops 10 inches. (b) Second, cards from the Action Deck were drawn, indicating what the units of both sides could do. This second phase ended when one the cards that appeared was annotated "End of Action Phase". (c) When the "End" card showed up, both sides selected one unit, and the units fired simultaneously. Digression Digression. In many of my card-driven games, I've relied entirely on the draw of cards to determine which units moved, and ended the drawing of cards, i.e., the action phase, when an "End" card was drawn. And in many games, the very first card was the "End" card, and I'd look across the table, and say "The first bound is over. Let's try it again." And we'd try it a second time, and again, the very first card that showed up was an "End" card. Which meant that again, nothing happened. Very embarrassing. And so, in this game, I added the two phases described in (a) and (c) above, which guaranteed that in every cycle of the cards, (i) the active side moved at least 10 inches, and (ii) when the action phase was over, that at least a couple of units would fire. End of digression. In our game, the Liebl's British units moved on to the field with their initial 10-inch allotment, and then drew a card: This gave all their units 3 actions. Most of the British units fired, and their 3 actions permitted them to fire and reload. Each unit had a data sheet, and was tracked as to whether or not its weapons were ready to fire: F L L F L L F L L F L L F L L F It took 2 actions to reload, and when the 3-action card appeared, the entire British line went BANG!, just about eliminating a unit I had placed too far forward. When units fired, they scored either 1, 2 or 4 hits on a target ( a low toss produced 4 hits), and the Brits, in their first fire, tossed nothing but 'low'. Thus far in this article, I've used the generic term 'units', and in this game, the unit was defined as a squad of three figures. We were using my FLINTLOQ figures, very nicely sculptured little guys, about 30mm tall, and very, very expensive. FLINTLOQ doesn't produce 'true' Napoleonic figures... they have a fantasy line, in which the French are elven creatures, and the Brits are orcs and bears and froggie-like beings and other beasties. Each of the 3-man squads on the field had a data sheet. In addition to the 'fire/load' tracking I've previously mentioned, each squad had 18 boxes to be crossed out before all the squad members were removed from the field. In most Simon-derived games with unit data sheets, no individual men ever 'dies' until all of the unit boxes are crossed out, at which time, the whole unit disappears. And so was it here. When a squad was targeted and hit, one man was placed in the off-board 'rally zone'. He could be rallied later in the game. If a man failed to rally, he remained in the zone, and could attempt to rally again, but each failed attempt produced victory points for the opposing side. Victory points were also obtained when a side won a melee (2 points), or a squad took, and failed, a morale test (1 point). At battle's end, the British forces had accumulated 24 victory points to my French 14... this, in addition to the fact that the Brits had just about annihilated the squads I had placed to defend the bridges, told me that the battle was lost. But what really killed the French chances were the rallying phases, or, rather, the lack of them. The Action Deck, telling of who does what to whom, contains 8 cards. Examples are: "Side A has 2 actions", or "Side B has 3 actions". One of the 8 cards is annotated "Both sides rally", and when this card appears, the sides attempt to rally the men previously placed in their rally zones. Game But what happened in our game, was that as we drew the cards during the sequence, up popped the "End of phase" card before the 'Rally card turned up. Immediately upon the showing of an "End" card, the Action Deck is reshuffled, and at this point, the next bound begins. Twice, the "End" was drawn, and twice, both sides were 'short-changed' in their ability to rally. their troops. This hurt my French forces much more than it did the British, for two reasons... first, I was taking many more casualties than the Brits, and second, having fewer units to start with, the ability to recover men from off the field was much more critical to me than to them. When a squad fired, each man generated 25 Fire Points (FP) if the target was in the open. If the target was in cover, the 25 FP were reduced to 20 FP. Thus the 3 men in the squad would total 60 FP, and the firing chart would look like: . ------------------------------------------------------------ . 1 hit on target unit Total FP ------------------------------------------------------------ . 2 hits on target, morale test required 1/2 Total FP ------------------------------------------------------------ . 4 hits on target, morale test required, 1 man placed in the rally zone . ------------------------------------------------------------ A couple of low dice tosses, and not only would a number of boxes be crossed out, but the squad itself would suffer attrition by having its men removed to the rally zone, there to remain until rallied later in the sequence. When I finally tossed in the towel, I had 27 Frenchmen (or French-elf-persons) in the zone. Considering I started with 13 squads, 39 men in all, 27 men in the off-table zone put a crimp on my force's ability to hold off the oncoming British. The lack of a 'rally' card proved significant. Back to PW Review January 1999 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