Lord Dram, AKA Jim Butters, was defending the bridges over the Grey River, in particular, the town of Churchton. Lord Dram had 4 divisions of 15mm figures, composed as follows: Division Commander Col Base: 2 Regiments Pike & Musket, 1 Artillery Major Krim: 3 Regiments Pike & Musket, 1 Artillery Cap't Boome: 2 Regiments Pike & Musket Cap't Bang: 2 Regiments Cavalry At the head of the attacking force was Lord Flox, whose troops were handled by Cliff Sayre, commanding 6 divisions, fairly similar in content to the above. I had initially ginned this game up for solo play, and I was curious to see how it fared in a true competitive gaming environment, i.e., real people on both sides of the table. When I tried the scenario out myself, Lord Flox overcame the defenders rather easily by concentrating his force against Churchton. Lord Dram simply couldn't move his forces up rapidly enough. The sequence and the procedures were truly "card driven", much more so than in my other games... I had a deck for movement, a deck for firing, a deck for melee, and so on. And in addition to these decks, I had to track timing requirements for the movement and firing phases. To explain all these procedures, let's look at the second turn of the scenario, when one of Lord Flox's regiments contacted one of the units of Lord Dram, defending Churchton. The basic sequence was divided into 8 parts. (1) First, Lord Flox goes to the Turn Deck, which tells us how many increments of time are being used up on this portion of the cycle. This deck has 6 cards in it, numbered 1 through 6. The sides switch initiative in alternate fashion. Each time the active side moves, this is termed a completion of a cycle, and a card is drawn. When enough cards have been drawn to total 14 increments, the turn is over. What exactly is an "increment" of time? I have no idea, except that I needed some way of marking the end of a turn, since at that time, casualties are assessed, and victory conditions are determined. By randomly drawing cards, and looking for the magic total of 14, the exact end of the turn is never known, and the players must plan accordingly. In the battle, on this second cycle of the turn, the card was a 5, and this, added to a 4 drawn on the first phase, told us that 9 of the 14 increments had passed. (2) Second, we draw a card from the Division Deck. This is composed of 10 cards, with numbers annotated from 1 to 5. This number denotes the number of divisions the active side may move. Note that with 6 divisions, Lord Flox could never command all his divisions at once. (3) Third, Lord Flox moves all his troops a distance of 10 inches. (4) Fourth, all units of the non-active side, Lord Dram, fire. Here, too, we have a deck... 8 cards, 4 annotated LOAD, and 4 for FIRE. One must draw a LOAD card before units can fire, and as the cards are drawn, the optimum sequence would be LOAD, FIRE, LOAD, FIRE, etc. Two successive LOAD's or FIRE's are simply a waste. When is the firing sequence terminated? I didn't want to go through all of the 8 cards all the time, so here, too, we had a 'time track'. Each time one of the 8 cards is drawn, we toss a 10-sided die. As cards are drawn, accumulate the sum of the dice throws... when a total of 14 is reached, the firing cycle is over. Note that with a 10-sided die, the firing side is guaranteed two card draws. If he's lucky, he may continually draw low cards... 1, 2, 3, etc., keeping his firing cycle alive. On this second cycle of the game, Lord Dram's units managed to get in one round of fire before their firing was cut off. Each target unit received a casualty marker. Some units now had several markers, since they had received other markers from the first cycle. (5) Fifth, both the active side and the non-active side, in simultaneous fire, get to have one unit fire for "free", i.e., without use of the FIRE/LOAD cards. (6) Sixth, the non-active side's cavalry moves 10 inches. (7) Seventh, melees are resolved (8) Eighth, if the sum of the Turn Deck cards is 14 [see phase (1)], the turn is over, and casualties are assessed, and all casualty markers are removed. Right now, in the battle, we're at phase (7) above, a combat in the streets of Churchton. Each side would like to bring in a supporting unit... each has an adjacent unit waiting for the orders to join in. Now we start to draw from a 10-card Pre-Melee Deck. There are cards for'defender fire', for 'attacker test morale', and, most important, for 'bring in one support unit'. There are also 2 cards annotated 'resolve the melee', and by the time this last type of card appears (cancelling further draws of the Pre-Melee Deck), the attacker has brought in a support regiment, while the defender has not. With the pre-melee functions ended, the units now strike at each other. Flox, with 2 engaged units, strikes twice, while the single defending unit of Lord Dram strikes only once. Each unit (regiment) has a 50 percent chance to inflict one casualty figure on the opponent. Two parameters determine which side won the combat: N The number of units engaged H The total number of casualty markers on the opposing side For the attacker, Flox N = 2 engaged units H = 6 hits on the opposition For the defender, Dram N = 1 engaged unit H = 3 hits on the opposition The reason Flox's unit has 6 hits on it, is that it was hit quite hard on the first turn, and it's still carrying its casualty ma The deciding factor in the melee, P, is defined as P 10-sided die x (N + H) For Flox P Die x (2 + 6) = Die x 8 For Dram P Die x (1 + 3) = Die x 4 With 2-to-1 odds, no surprise that Flox won. He now controlled Churchton, and the ball game seemed to be over for Lord Dram. Dram's unit retreated, and received another casualty figure. After melee, the next cycle in the turn commences... a 'time card' is drawn, the number of divisions to be moved is determined, etc. If on this cycle, a 6 was drawn for the number of time increments that had passed, we'd carry out all the functions of the cycle, and then for the very last phase, tally the effect of all the casualty markers carried around by the units on the field. The reason for terming this the 'last phase', is that the previous time increments had totaled 9, and this last value of 6 added up to 15, exceeding the value of 14 which signaled the end of the turn. Every regiment on the field which bears casualty figures tosses percentage dice and refers to the following table: 01 to 33 Each casualty marker counts as 1 Loss Point 34 to 66 Each casualty marker counts a s 2 Loss Point 67 to 100 Each casualty marker counts as 3 Loss Points Note that the retreating unit of Dram, with its 7 casualty figures, could, with a low dice toss, accumulate only 7 Loss Points. On the other hand, a high toss would convert the 7 markers to a total of 21 Loss Points. These Loss Points would then be tracked on the regiment's data sheet. In the battle, the Dram's regiment's dice, when tossed for the Loss Points, were somewhere 'in the middle'... each marker counted as 2 Loss Points, giving the unit a total of 14 Points. All casualty markers were then removed from the field, and all units started out for the next turn fully 'refreshed'. The only permanent record of the previous casualties suffered by the regiments on the field was that annotated on the data sheets. Somewhere around 20 to 25 Loss Points would eliminate a unit... it would be removed from the field. Which meant that for the regiment that was just defeated, already tagged with 14 Points, Jim Butters had to be careful not to expose it to the enemy, lest, at the end of the next turn, its accumulated Point total exceeded the key threshold value. Some notes on the rules In particular, I liked the firing procedures. If a side was lucky and its time increments of the fire phase were fairly low, keeping the total below 14, it could get off a couple of volleys. And on some occasions, no volleys were permitted, because of a series of drawing all LOAD, or all FIRE cards. Ideally, the timing sequence should apply to each firing unit separately, but here, to speed the game up, it applied to an entire side. What I think I would do is to increase the critical number of 14 to, perhaps, 20. With a 10-sided die roll averaging around 5 each toss, this would give the firing side somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 card selections, as it attempted to get the series of LOAD and FIRE cards in the correct order. Due to the emphasis on the time parameter during the fire cycle, the probability of hit (POH) was kept extremely simple. (1) Each musket and pike regiment that fired had a basic POH of 40 percent. Some pike units had one musket stand attached, others had two. (2) Each attached musket stand raised the POH by 5 percent. (3) If the target was in cover, deduct -10 from the required POH This type of 'timed' firing procedure would, I think, apply to the renaissance period. Not for bow fire, but for arquebusiers and hackbutts and so on. As the end of a turn approached, when the sum of the time increments approached the magic total of 14, signaling that all casualty markers would soon disappear, the sides would increase their efforts to impact upon an enemy unit which possessed a number of markers before the markers 'vanished', and all that was left was only a recording on the data sheet. The presence of the markers reduced a regiment's melee capability, and as shown in the above text, a regiment with a lot of markers was 'easy pickins'. I chose not to have the recorded losses affect the combat capabilities of the units. 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