Ben Pecson appeared... Ben is a superior painter of miniatures, and this time he wanted to get some ideas to incorporate in his set of Napoleonic, single figure, skirmish rules. He used 25mm figures, and each man had to be tracked for wounds, and so on. For some reason, even though this was a man-on-man effort, there was no need to record whether or not a man's musket was loaded... turn after turn, everyone's weapons remained loaded and ready for firing. The worst case occurred with the British Rifles... they were given a plus modifier when firing... but since they fired as frequently as the other troops on the field, they were devastating. In effect, Ben had given the Rifles a double whammy on their opponents... not only did they get their 'plus', but they fired just as often as the enemy. There were about 10 men per group, and each group tossed a 6-sided die and moved the number of pips thrown... rather slow moving, I thought. I must admit that I cheated... just a wee bit... when my troops moved, I tossed the die, and moved all my men about 8 inches instead of sticking to the die roll. Ben set up a Spanish town... this was a skirmish taking place on the Peninsula, and there were three groups of men... one of Spanish guerrillas (my group), one of British Rifles, and one of French infantry. Movement was simultaneous, but when the firing phase began, each group tossed a die to determine the order in which they would fire. Ben said he had played the FLINTLOQUE single-figure skirmish rules and that they were pretty good. Sometime ago, I had bought a copy of the rules, read them, and decided there was absolutely nothing to distinguish them from any other rules set on the market. No innovations, no clever techniques, no original tactical ploys, etc. It was simply: you move and fire, and the other guy moves and fires... and the rules didn't even state if movement and firing were alternate or simultaneous. Ben has presented other skirmish games before, and it turned out that this one was what I term a Class A Abomination game. A game achieves Class A status when, if a man is shot, you tilt his figure on its side and let him lie there. To my eyes, this was so horrible, that I offered to let Ben use a box of my Napoleonic casualty figures for the game. Sad to relate, but in one blow, Ben's game not only achieved Class A Abominational status, but also Class B. The Class B status arises when little markers are placed next to each man to indicate if he's lightly wounded, or seriously wounded, or if he's cowering and has to recover, or if his musket isn't functioning, and so on. Here, Ben used 1-inch circles to note each man's status. If I had my druthers, I would have used a data sheet for each man to record his status. As the groups of men drew together, and the firing began, the French lasted for three volleys and then the survivors (about 4 of them) took off, heading back to Paris. Initially, there was a target spotting phase in the rules, but this was dropped early in the game. Some of the ploys didn't make sense. For instance, if a man suffered a 'serious wound', he was out of the game. In effect, therefore, he was as good as dead. If Ben had wanted to use these rules as a campaign background, tracking a 'serious wound' would have made sense, for the man might eventually recover. But here, in a simple scenario, there was no reason to distinguish between a dead man and one with a serious wound. And so Ben took off with a pot-full of thoughts about changing his system. 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. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com