1 In browsing through the MAGWEB offerings on the internet, I came across a magazine called the INQUISITOR, catering to WARHAMMER 40,000. There was only one INQUISITOR listed on the MAGWEB (issue #14), but the issue had an article called Frequently Asked Questions, and typical of the questions was: Can an Exarch with fast shot power who is mounted on a bike armed with a shuriken cannon, use the fast shot power to fire the bike cannon twice? Now, isn't that a silly question? Even Scotty Bowden and Phil Barker (neither of whom is known as being a WARHAMMER 40,000 enthusiast) would instantly reply "No!", as did the Games Workshop Answer-Man. 2. I think that in the last issue, I mentioned that I'm now in my 'clock mode', wherein each turn in a wargame is divided into cycles, and the players have no prior knowledge of when the turn will end. Casualties pile up, and it's only at the end of the turn, when the sides get to assess damage, will they discover what the casualties they've been dragging around really mean. The cycles are alternate, i.e., first one side, then the other, is active. At the start of each cycle, a 10-sided die is tossed by the active side, and the accumulative total, called the Elapsed Time (ET) of the turn, is tracked. When the ET total reaches 15 or more, this denotes the last cycle in the turn, the active side carries out its movement and firing, and at the end of the cycle, damage assessment is calculated. I've tried several ET totals, and 15 seems to work best if you're tossing a 10-sided die... it gives rise to a turn that's not too short, not too long, in terms of the cycles within the turn. My recent experience with PIQUET got me interested in a clocking cycle. The PIQUET method uses a 'clock', but it's not the same as the one described here... the PIQUET clock monitors the actions of the players, and not the time span of the turn. I believe the first game 'clocking mechanisms' were derived by the boardgaming designers, probably introduced in one of Richard Berg's games. I think the clock was used to define the passage of seasons... one never knew exactly when spring would come along, and one could collect one's logistics points (the summer harvest). With each turn composed of a different number of cycles... what exactly does a 'turn' mean? To me, the time span of the turn itself becomes unimportant... it's predominantly a method of randomly determining when to assess casualties. Within the turn, the cycles still 'keep time' for the game, for within each cycle, for example, infantry still move 10 inches, cavalry 15, etc. Which means that the time scale of the game is still defined by the cycle-to-cycle relationship. Back to PW Review March 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