I had created a Saddam Hussein type game, and tried it out. I didn't call it a Saddam Hussein game, lest the wrath of the Iraqi secret police fall upon me... I disguised it as Abbu Babbu, President-For-Life of the Republic of Freedom. Abbu wants to overrun the neighboring oil fields to collect oil revenues, and the Coalition Force (CF), rather slow starting, attempts to prevent him from conquering all. The CF had two airbases, and in the first game, I also gave Abbu two airbases, which gave him as much airpower as the CF. Not good. Each airbase could give rise to a maximum of 4 aircraft taking off. Thus both Abbu and the CF could each have 8 planes (squadrons) in the air. In the sequence, when planes were about to take off from an airbase, dice were thrown: Chart 1 01 to 33 All aircraft take off 34 to 66 All aircraft but 1 takes off 67 to 100 All aircraft but 2 takes off I used a huge, table-size map... this was an area game, wherein ground troops moved from area to area across the field. Aircraft didn't "fly"... they simply took off and were set out at their designated targets. Abbu starts out with several army corps in his own country. I used my 15mm collection for the game. One stand - of infantry, armor, or artillery - represents a division, and 4 divisions comprise a corps. The stacking limit per area was 4 divisions (4 stands). In combat, each type of unit tossed 10-sided dice... armor tossed 3 dice, infantry 2, and so on. Hits were scored as follows, with tosses of 4, and up, producing no hits: Chart 2 Toss of 1 1 hit on target Toss of 2 2 hits on target Toss of 3 3 hits on target When the combat phase occurred, there was lots of dice tossing... for example, an armored division of 4 tanks, tossing 3 dice each (12 dice total), could score 36 hits on the target if every die tossed turned out to be a '3'. And if you tossed in a couple of your aircraft at 3 dice each, there could be even more hits scored. These hits were used to determine the winner of the combat, and the losing force retreated several areas and received even more hits. But the hits scored were not the actual losses suffered by the engaged corps. The hits were subjected to a 'filtering process' to determine the actual damage to the corps, which could result in a couple of divisions knocked into limbo. But I abandoned this huge bucket-of-dice effort in the second game. Here, Each corps started out with a base probability-of-hit (POH) of 40 percent. Add to this 20 for each tank, 10 for each infantry and so on, and obtain a total POH, and refer to the following chart... Chart 3 . ----------------------------------------------------------- . 1 hit on target Total POH ----------------------------------------------------------- . 2 hits on target 1/2 Total POH ----------------------------------------------------------- . 4 hits on target . ----------------------------------------------------------- Note that the hits were not scored against any particular stand in the opposing corps... they represented damage to the corps in general. Again, the hits were used solely to determine which side won the combat. At the end of the bound, several corps had accumulated lots of hits, and it was at that time that the actual damage was assessed. Each hit on a corps counted for 10 percentage points, and when they were added up, we referred to. Chart 4 . ----------------------------------------------------------- . Corps escapes scott free Total Points ----------------------------------------------------------- . 1 division destroyed 1/2 Total Points ----------------------------------------------------------- . 2 divisions destroyed . ----------------------------------------------------------- Note that in a combat, 2 was the maximum number of divisions, stands, that could be destroyed. One other concept I used in the game was that of the supply route. In most board games, which are, in effect, area games, a unit has to trace its supply route back to its base or it suffers in combat. In this game, as Abbu advanced into neighboring territories, he could build a "freebee" supply route, i.e., a "bridge", across the border into the area he was entering. But these "bridges" were subject to air attack by the CF. In the above description of combat, I stated that all corps started with a base POH of 40 percent, and added points for the units in the corps, which were then used in Chart 3. If a corps was out of supply, i.e., its bridges destroyed, the base POH dropped to 10 percent, and its combat capability also dropped. This type of supply system meant that Abbu's aircraft had to be assigned to protect his bridges, and couldn't indiscriminately be sent off to attack the CF forces. In all, there were lots of targets for the aircraft of both sides... the planes could attack other aircraft, airbases, ground troops, bridges, and transports. More Awash Introduction Greek Naval Warfare Modern Gulf War Napoleonic Skirmishing World War II The English Civil War Back to PW Review June 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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