No, it wasn't my hex game. I had been invited to participate in an all-day affair using 15mm ancients on a gridded hex field. It sounded both unusual and fascinating, well along the lines of the games I generate, and I gladly signed up.
The hexes were 2-inches across, and the field measured some 3 feet by 6 feet, providing lots of hexes. One stand was permitted per hex, and my army of 17 stands spread itself out on the eastern side of the map.
My force was defined as a 'Classical Greek' army, composed of a couple of stands of cavalry, quite a few archers, slingers and javalineers, and four powerful phalanx-type stands of Spartans and Corinthians... in fact, these last were so powerful that their stands didn't even fit in the hexes, but slopped over a wee bit. All the better, I thought.
There were 8 armies in the game, 4 per side, and I discovered that this wasn't really an 'ancients' game... the armies were composed of such troop types as Samurai, Spanish, Landesknechts, English (100 Years War), Romans, Normans... the forces covered the centuries from the early ancient period to the early Renaissance.
The armies all had some 17 to 20 stands, and when they were all placed on the field, it was fairly crowded. It was made so by the attacking 4 armies dicing to see on which side of the map they would show up. It turned out that 5 of the 8 armies were all skrunched in the north-western corner of the table, creating a huge traffic jam for both sides.
In my sector, in the east, my lone Greek army faced two enemy forces... Bob Liebl's Landesknechts, and Cleo Liebl's Englishmen. No contest. Not only was I outnumbered, but I was outclassed in weaponry.
For example, I noted that my Spartan phalanx had 40 combat points. This looked pretty good until they met up with a Landesknecht pike unit, i.e. a phalanx, which sported 60 combat points. Evidently, between the years that my Spartans were in vogue, to the years that the Landesknechts formed their own pike blocks, the Landesknechts had all taken "Phalanx 101", and passed the course with flying colors.
The troops were distributed, we were all set to play, and the host said something about taking a 'few minutes' out to explain the rules. "Oh! Oh!"... right away, I suspected trouble. And I was right. For a full hour, a solid hour, our host spoke and spoke and spoke... and then spoke some more.
A week before. he had sent out on the internet, a 10-page set of the rules to the participants, and we had downloaded it and now he was explaining it all in great detail. I've mentioned in the past, that I rarely, prior to game that I host, give more than 3 or 4 minutes to a pre-game talk on my rules.
I tell my participants that when their troops move, they'll advance 10 inches, and when they want to fire on the enemy, contact me for further information. And so, off the gamers go to a rapid start.
Alas! Not so here. After the hour-long lecture finished, I discovered that I retained absolutely nothing of what the man said... and from the way most of the other gamers kept asking questions during the game, they didn't retain too much either.
After the lecture on rules ended, the side met for a 'strategy session'... which was sorta silly, since the dice were going to decide just where the different armies were going to appear. How can you plan your strategy when you have no idea of who's to appear where? I already mentioned that 5 of the 8 armies eventually showed up in the same area of the map.
We got through the first couple of moves rather rapidly, and it was around Bound 3, when the forces approached each other close enough to fire, that I discovered that this was a Class A Abomination game. In fact, it was a Class AAA Abomination. Class A Abominations are those games which employ the use of those beautifully textured casualty caps, plopped on the stand, to indicate injuries. And an AAA Abomination is even worse, as you shall see.
- (a) First, when a stand was hit, we placed a white casualty cap on the head of one of the figures. This denoted a 'temporary' casualty, and, if you could run an officer up to the stand, and rally it, the white cap could be removed. A second hit on the stand, however, and the casualty cap was turned to black... a permanent casualty.
(2) Second, when the firing phase occurred, little strips of paper, little chitties, were placed on the target stand to indicate the firing points acting on the unit.
(3) Third, when the stands moved from hex to hex, they had a finite number of movement points (MP), and if they didn't have enough MP to climb a slope, you could note the stand's remaining MP on a little chitty, in effect "storing up the MP" for the next turn.
(4) Fourth, stands which had a skirmish capability had 2 figures on them, and you could "break off" one figure to indicate that the stand was in a skirmish formation. And how do you so indicate? By placing a huge pink eraser head on one of the men on the stand... this indicated that one of the men had broken off, and so another pink eraser head was used to indicate where the second skirmisher was placed.
The result of all this environmental beautification was that the field, which should have contained nothing but stands of troops, was continually cluttered with casualty caps and chitty markers, and pencil eraser heads. Nothing but "Yuch!"
The sequence of the half-bound consisted of the active side moving, followed by simultaneous fire, and then resolution of melee.
My Greek army had stands of slingers, and Cretan archers, and light javelineers, and Greek Peltasts... all of whom looked alike to me. What was evident was that as Bob Liebl's Landesknecht army approached, and Cleo Liebl's English army came forward, my missile troops were definitely outclassed. The combination of the Landesknecht arquebussiers and the English longbows made short work of all of my light troops.
For some reason, it took me a long time to catch on to the firing procedures, and I'm still not sure I've got it right.
If memory serves me right, when my 2 stands of Cretan archers fired, for example, each stand had 10 Fire Points, giving me a total of 20 Fire Points.
Then we looked to the defensive factor of the target, which could be, say, 7 points.
Divide the Fire Points by the defensive factor, and get a number... in this case, the answer is 20/7, or 2 6/7.
The "2" in the answer indicated that a toss of 1 or 2 on a 6-sided die produced a hit on the target. The "6/7" in the answer, since it was over one-half, permitted another toss of the 6-sided die, and if a "1" appeared, that was another hit.
When Bob's Landesknecht arquebussiers fired at my troops, by massing his stands, he accumulated a total of around 60 Fire Points, against my light troops' defensive factor of around 7.
Divide 60 by 7, and you get 8 4/7. The "8" is an automatic hit, and the "4/7" are wasted, being less than one-half.
And so whenever my opponents fired, my valiant men dropped like flies... or perhaps, like casualty caps. We ancient, classical, nekkid Greek missilemen quickly learned that Landesknechts and English archers were much to be feared.
And the same turned out to be the case in melee.
My light cavalry was charged by Bob's mounted armored knights, and since the firing phase occurred before melee resolution, I discovered that the mounted knights carried pistols and were only too happy to use them! My light cavalry were so outnumbered by the mounted knights' combat and defensive points that my horsemen didn't even rate a die roll... POOF! and they were gone!
I knew times were tough, when I saw three people at table-side each using a calculator to compute their fire and melee points:
- (a) In melee, for example, first, you calculate the ratio of offensive to defensive factors.
(b) Then, you've got to multiply by a factor, a decimal, for cover.
(c) Then, another decimal multiplication for such things as hillside slopes.
(d) And if a stand comes in on the flank of the target, another multiplication, this one of 1.5 to augment the combat power.
I thought the calculations were a wee bit too much.
Due to the sequence, this was a "Gotcha!" game... the active side could move around the defending stands (there were no ZOCs), and the defense was permitted no reaction.
We broke for dinner, and the rumor was circulated that this particular set of rules was used at West Point to assist in teaching the cadets strategy. "No way!" thought I. And I was right. the host stated that while the rules were played at West Point, it was only "for fun". I'm not sure that "fun" aptly describes the rules... but they were interesting.
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© Copyright 1999 Wally Simon
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