The year is 1412, and Prince Walakonis is attacking the forces of Vlad the Usurper, in an effort to fling the Usurper out of Lithuania. Prince Walakonis has not been the most successful of army commanders in the past, but, today, under the tutelage of Jeff Wiltrout, the forces of Vlad will be set fleeing, and all the churchbells in Lithuania will ring triumphantly. Commanding Vlad's army is Ben Pecson, and since I know that both Ben and Jeff are true historical table-top realists (they play DBM), I did quite a bit of research into the makeup of their armies. I am a Senior Fellow on the staff of the Centre For Looking Up Things (CFLUT), which has its main university campus in Oxford, England. Fortunately for me, there is an ancillary campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, and I spent many hours there, thumbing through old parchments and illuminated manuscripts. I assigned Ben a Florentine-Pavian army, while Jeff was given a Lithuanian-Burgundian force. The content of their armies was quite accurate as of 5:00 PM of September 12, 1412. 1 noted that the attributes of both armies changed radically after 5:00 PM on that day... for example, the Lithuanian-Burgundian Gendarmes were no longer considered as "fast', but had this designation taken from them. And in Ben's Florentine-Pavian force, his Stradiots were upgraded to "impetuous". How did I know these things? It was my ardent research efforts at the Centre into the army lists generated by WRG and DBM and ARMATI and TACTICA that keyed me in. There was absolutely no need for me to do any original research into the area, for all had been done before me... and like all historical wargamers, I simply copied other people's data. The sequence in the battle was a simple- you-move/I-move affair, with the following complexities: (a) In the firing phase, both sides could fire. Each side had a 6-card deck: Chart 1 1 card 2 units may fire 2 cards 3 units may fire 2 cards 4 units may fire 1 card 5 units may fire The sides each selected, at random, either 2 or 3 cards from its group of 6, and I combined all the selected cards into a single deck, and added one other card, annotated "End Firing Phase". Then I began drawing cards, and when one of its cards was pulled, a side could fire as appropriate. Because of the presence of the "End" card, neither side was guaranteed to have all its cards drawn. (b) The sequence used a 'clock'. At the beginning of each half-bound, the active side tossed a 10-sided die for the "Elapsed Time' (ET). When the accumulated ET reached 12, this was defined as the time to assess casualties on the units on the field. Until that time, all units 'dragged' their losses around. Hits were denoted by a series of small beads placed on the staffs of single-figure pennant bearers assigned to the units. When assessment time arrived, the sides looked at the following table: Chart 2 01 to 33 Each bead denotes 2 Casualty Points to the unit 34 to 66 Each bead denotes 4 Casualty Points to the unit 67 to 100 Each bead denotes 6 Casualty Points to the unit (c) In melee, the opposing units each added up their combat points. The side with the higher total is called X, the other side is Y. Here, X added the differential, D, between the units, and referred to the table below. Note that only the higher side tossed the percentage dice, since the table is all-inclusive, telling of losses to both sides. In the table, T represents the sum of D plus percentage dice. Chart 3 X's Losses Y's Losses ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unit receives 1 bead Unit receives 4 beads T =100 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unit receives 2 beads Unit receives 3 beads T =60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unit receives 3 beads Unit receives 2 beads T =40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unit receives 4 beads Unit receives 1 bead --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note that X, the side with the higher total, is looking for a large percentage dice throw to add to his differential, D. During the battle, in the first couple of bounds, I noted that Ben's missile troops fired miserably... they couldn't seem to hit any target unit. Ben drew just as many fire cards as did Jeff when the fire phase occurred, and so, in theory, he had as many opportunities to fire as did Jeff's men. Note I said... "in theory"... for on several fire phases, the "End" card appeared before Ben's people got to fire a single shot. And when he did fire, it was pitiful. For example, one of Ben's Florentine-Pavian arquebusiers units of 5 stands calculated its Probability of Hit (POH) as follows: 40% Basic unit POH +40 +5 For every stand in the firing unit in excess of 3. Thus 5 stands give the arquebusiers a +10 (5 for each of the extra 2 stands) +10 Total POH 50 This gave Ben's arquebusiers a total POH of 50 percent, a fairly respectable number. But the arquebusiers, just like most of the missile units in the army, were miserable. At the end of several half-bounds, the accumulated Elapsed Time totaled 12, and it was time to assess casualties. Ben's units seemed to be weighed down with beads, and when he diced on Chart 11 for Casualty Points, he received more than his share. Each unit on the field had a data sheet on which 10 boxes were tracked... cross out the 10 boxes and the unit was gone. It took 8 Casualty Points to cross out a single box... 80 points to completely destroy a unit. Oh! Oh! Something wrong! Despite the myriad of Casualty Points being tossed around... no one died! No units were lost. It was obvious that the rules author had erred... he had given the units too long a life on the field. All units seemed to be immortal. Not enough boxes being crossed out... which brought immediate cat-calls from both Ben and Jeff. It was obviously time to publish the second edition of the rules, papering over this hitherto unforeseen problem. And so the battle continued. All units had suffered, but not as much as I had predicted. In the fire phase, since a side may have as many as three separate volleys (three of its fire cards could be drawn on one phase), I had thought that the casualty rates would be quite high. Remember that the POH's, when a unit fired, were quite 'respectable', around 50 percent. Ben had a large bombard situated in mid-field, in a small compound. Jeff's LithuanianBurgundian troops charged the cannon. In the Simon scheme of medieval warfare, gunners don't fight. They'll fire if needed, and since the fire phase follows right after the movement phase, the bombard crewmen managed to get off a couple of volleys, at a POH of 40 percent, into the charging unit. But the combination of Lithuanian and Burgundian blood was too rich... the unit took a morale test... several morale tests... and each time, passed. Now came the melee phase, and the gunners simply stood by... no hand-to-hand combat for them... they wanted one of the nearby Florentine-Pavian units to help out. A quick and successful morale test (percentage dice under 80) and to the rescue raced one of Ben's halberdiers units. Both sides added up their melee points... Jeff had more points than did Ben, and so Jeff added the differential in points to his percentage dice throw, referring to Chart III. The result was that Jeff's men tossed the Florentine-Burgundians out of the compound and captured the gun. Prince Walakonis was ecstatic! But the Usurper was not to be denied... a counter-attack. Here, each side called on a support unit to assist. The supports took a morale test, passed, and so we had four units in the combat. I set out the lead units against each other, and the supports against each other... essentially two separate combats. In each melee, we compared combat points, and the higher side referred to Chart III. During the melees, there was quite a bit of discussion concerning how I had evaluated the combat values of each type of troop. For example, do halberdiers get a 'plus' against pike? And how much, if any, do sword-and-buckler get against pike? And do two-handed swordsmen get a 'plus' against everyone? And so on. But we came through successfully, and, thanks to my finely weighted determination of combat factors, Ben's Florentine-Burgundians recaptured the cannon and the compound. Now it was time to assess casualties again. We made two significant changes to the data sheets: (a) We reduced the number of boxes for each unit to 5 or 6 (b) And now, only 6 Casualty Points were necessary to cross out a box. This time, from Ben's side of the table, came moans and groans. His dicing on Chart 2 was miserable, and almost half of Vlad the Usurper's army fled the field. Prince Walakonis was quite pleased, and declared a Lithuanian national holiday. 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