Bob Hurst and I each had a force of four battles, four contingents of troops. Initially, each battle was assigned one stand of each of the following: Mounted knights 10 points per stand Foot knights 8 points Men@arms 6 points Trained archers 4 points Untrained foot 2 points Then we diced for each contingent to see if it received additional stands: 01 to 33 2 additional stands 34 to 66 1 additional stand 67 to 100 No additional stands The above table was used for each of the above 5 types of troops, hence if low tosses continually appeared, there could be a maximum of 15 stands per baffle. On average, however, the battles each held a mix of some 9 or ten stands. After dicing for initiative, I was the side that won the initial move. (a) The very first thing I did was to select a single mounted knight stand and order it (70 percent chance that it received the order) to challenge the opposition, to charge one of the oncoming enemy contingents. Out dashed my knights, and to counter my advancing knights, Bob diced to see if one of his own knight stands would come out and counter- charge. (b) Bob failed his throw (70 percent chance to react), and his own knights within the baffle, refused to budge. This meant that my knights plowed into his contingent. (c) With his own mounted knights out of the picture, Bob now tested to see which stand in the contingent had guts enough to take the charge of my knightly knights. After dicing, he discovered that a stand of untrained foot took it upon itself to protect the contingent... and out ran the untrained foot, determined to stop the charge of my knights. (d) This meant that we had a melee between my knights and his foot. Note on the table of the troop types, that mounted knights are 4 levels above untrained foot. Each level gave me a '+10' to add to my percentage dice throw. (e) My knights started out with a base percentage of 50 percent. Add to this my total bonus of +40, and my probability of hit (POH) was up to 90 percent. In melee, whatever points one side were given were subtracted from the other side as a 'minus'... thus the untrained foot's base percentage of 50 was now down to 10. (f) We each tossed percentage dice... a throw below the percentage placed one hit on the opposition, while a very low toss, below half the percentage, placed 2 hits on the opposition. With my 90 percent, I easily tossed low, scoring 2 hits. The untrained foot didn't score at all. (g) Now each side calculated a product, P, where the side with the highest product wins the melee. The parameters of interest are: S Number of your own stands in melee H Number of hits scored on opposition (his casualties) For the knights, Stands = 1 Casualities 0 For the foot, Stands = 1 Casualties 2 For the knights, P = 10-sided die x (S = 1 + Enemy hits = 2), P = Die x (11 +2) For the foot, P = 1 0-sided die x (S = 1 + Enemy hits = 0), P = Die x (1 +0) (h) My knights won the melee, and returned to their battle line, smug with the thought that they had whupped a poor unit of untrained foot. The reason that I outlined the above is that the basic melee rules followed along the guidelines given. Of greater importance are the Casualty Points (CP) collected by the contingents to which the engaged stands belonged. For example, my contingent collected a single CP, from being engaged in a melee. In contrast, the opposing, losing, contingent collected CP from the following: 1 CP From engaging in melee 2 CP From the hits scored by the knights 2 CP From the fact that they had lost the melee Bob's contingent, therefore, before I even moved my troops, had already accumulated a total of 5 CP. The actual sequence was: (a) Active side sees if a stand of mounted knights will dash out and challenge the opposition. (b) Non-active side sees if his own knights accept the challenge, and if not, which stand will fight (c) Active side moves his troops (d) Non-active side fires his missile troops (e) Resolve melees between contingents (f) Any contingent that has accumulated 10 CP or more, will lose stands Note that stands didn't 'die' from missile fire or melee. The contingents accumulated their CP unit, at the end of the half-bound, all those contingents with 10 or more CP, removed stands. To remove stands, we referred to the table and the point system given at the beginning of this article. The stands removed were at the discretion of, and selected by, the owning player. For example, if one of my contingents had accumulated 12 CID, I could remove one stand of foot knights (8 points) plus one stand of trained archers (4 points). Or 2 stands of men@arms at 6 points each. And so on. This produced a fairly rapid game. When one baffle of troops contacted an enemy battle, the resulting melee was defined to include all stands in the entire contingent. Since everyone participated, there were lots of CP scored, and at the end of the half-bound, each baffle was sure to lose a couple of stands. In melee, the stands in a battle were grouped in '3's', and each group was randomly paired off with an opposing enemy group. After totaling its combat points, and scoring CP on the opposition, the scores tallied by all the groups were totaled, and each side counted its stands, along with the total enemy casualties, and referred to its product, P, to see which side won. Note that on occasion, one contingent of troops,down in size, didn't have sufficient stands to form a group to oppose an enemy group. In that case, the unopposed group got a 'free hack', racking up even more casualty points. I must sorrowfully note that I lost the engagement. After some 5 bounds, Bob's four battles were stronger than mine. Too many challenges lost, too many CP's scored. Back to PW Review July 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