I was introduced to BATTLE LINE by Brian Dewitt, since he wanted to use his new ancients rules to host a game at a convention and desired to check 'em out. I noted in the convention program, however, that some other firm(?) company(?) had already taken the name for its own. Perhaps there'll be a law suit... Brian's BATTLE LINE (BBL) presentation was set up for a Roman-versus-Carthaginian scenario. He had purchased two good looking 15mm ancients armies at a previous flea market, and the seller had informed him that the figures were Romans and Carthaginians. I fully accepted the assumption that these little guys represented Romans and Carthaginians... I am not one to argue with historical fact. Except for light troops (2-stand units of slingers and javelin-persons), BBL uses 4-stand units for all of the heavier units. Both the Roman and Carthaginian armies were based for the same 4-stand formation, with 4 figures per base. The number of men per base determines the number of hits a stand can take before it's destroyed. A Roman unit - cohort(?) legion(?) - could incur (at 4-stands x 4-hits each), a total of 16 hits before it's removed from the field. The same held true for the Carthaginians. And immediately, and unfortunately, Brian's game revealed itself to be a Class A abomination. His units had no identifiers, and so we couldn't use data sheets, nor could we rip the figures off the bases, hence to mark the hits on each unit, we had to use the dreaded and offensive and odious and detestable and obnoxious 'O-rings'. Yuch! You'll note you'll get no sympathy from me when your games utilize O-rings and casualty caps and the like. But I digress. Let's talk about the good things. For one, BBL's sequence is rather clever. For example, when I became the Active Side (AS), I did the following: (a) First, my army moved up. I had 3 generals, and each general could control about 5 units. My general in the center, Bolzano the Great, was a cut above the others... he could control 6 units. Bolzano could also move the army's entire battle line forward, as long as all the units were formed in line across the field. (b) Second, my missile troops fired, tossing 10-sided dice, placing O-rings (Pfeh!) on enemy stands. (c) Then we had a "Reaction" phase. Brian's Carthaginian generals each had a Reaction Percentage (RP) of around 50%, which meant that a toss of percentage dice below this number, permitted them to advance their troops forward. My Roman generals were similarly equipped with an RP, and this phase gave the Non-Active Side (NAS) a chance to reply to the movements of the AS. (d) Melee was then fought and resolved. (e) After melee, the last phase in the half-bound was another interesting phase, termed "Momentum". Just as each general had an RP, each also had a Momentum Percentage (MP). Here, too, the range of the MP was around 50 percent. The AS could use the Momentum phase to further advance, exploiting any advantage he had picked up during melee. Thus by tossing below a given general's MP, the general could move up his controlled units even further. There was one hitch, however. After moving up, the unit then tested to see if its additional movement had disordered it. This meant that, since this was the last function performed during the Active Side's phases, he might find himself with a group of his units in disorder when the opposing side became active. During the first phases of the battle, there was much action on the flanks, as the fast moving cavalry (around 12 inches) contacted each other. It took until Bound 3 or so, when the slower and heavier infantry made contact. As all good Roman commanders had done, I had formed my force into a checkerboard pattern, as described in Professor E. Coli's "Der Romanische Armie Mit Dem Scheckers" (published by the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis, 1933). This formation did me no good, and in truth, I have no idea of why the Romans ever disposed themselves in checkerboard fashion... because, in our battle, as soon as our forces made contact, all my second-rank checkerboard units simply moved up to the first rank, formed a huge solid block, and made contact. The Carthaginians had, from the beginning, been arrayed in one huge solid block. This meant that both armies, each shoulder-to-shoulder, simply butted heads in the middle of the field. I would assume that, way back in 200 AD, the same thing would have happened. Why form checkerboard in the first place? I asked the Professor about this tantalizing historical puzzle. He referred me to his seminal article on the subject, "Vy Vas Dem Scheckers Used By Dem Romanische Armie"... to date, I still haven't looked this source up. When one of my 4-stand units met one of Brian's, the following happened: (a) My Romans received a +1 for being 'heavy', and a +1 for being in good order. This gave my unit a total of +2, to be used to modify a 6-sided die roll. (b) I tossed my 6-sided die, rolled a 4, and my +2 was added to the die roll, giving me a 6. (c) Now I multiplied the total of 6 by the number of stands, 4, and got a 24. (d) Divide the 24 by 10, get 2.4, which, when rounded down, produced 2 hits on the enemy unit. Brian's Carthaginians performed similar operations... they received a +1 for good order, but they weren't classed as 'heavy', and so didn't get the second +1. They added their +1 to their 6-sided die roll. They rolled a 3, added their +1 to it for a 4, and multiplied by the number of stands (4) for a 12, divided by 10, which, rounded down, put a single hit on my unit. My Romans took fewer hits than Brian's, hence, by definition, the Romans won. The Carthaginians retreated. Wargamers who are interested in the nitty-gritty of combat modifier manipulation, will note that Brian does not use his combat modifiers as additions to unit strength. Instead, adds the modifiers to the die toss itself, and uses the strength of the unit (the number of stands), unchanged, as a multiplier. There were several grades of unit cohesion. Four of them. First, of course, there was 'good order'. Then we had what was termed 'disorder'. Downhill from disorder, we come to 'shaken'. And below shaken, there's the dreaded 'rout'. There's nothing lower than rout, other than to put the figures back in the box. And there were three ways to destroy stands: (a) The first was to accumulate enough of those horrible markers to reach the maximum allowed for the particular type of unit. For example, light infantry, at 2 stands per unit, and a maximum of 2 markers per stand, received 4 markers and were then removed from the table. With a 4-stand unit of heavy infantry, each stand needing 4 markers, a total of 16 markers did them in. At first, Brian wanted to remove complete stands, i.e., when a heavy infantry unit received 4 markers, one stand was taken away... but shortly after the battle started he made the command decision to leave all the markers on... that's why the units were accumulating huge numbers of those pesky "O ring" things (Yuch!) before they fled the field. (b) The second method of unit destruction was for a unit to go into the 'rout' mode, and then, later on, try to rally and fail... WHOOMF!, and it was removed from the table. (c) Third, when a unit had, due to casualties, collected more than half its permitted maximum number of markers, it took a morale test. The casualties provided a negative modifier to the morale level, and here, a morale test failure indicated DOOM!... off the table went the unit. On the field, it was hard to assess which side was winning the war. I had wiped out the Carthaginians' cavalry on my left flank, but Brian had done the same on my right flank. And in the middle, it was touch-and-go, as I couldn't seem to take advantage of my +2 die roll combat modifier. But in the center, I did manage to contact the Carthaginian line when most of its units were disordered. My solid line of Romans crunched up against a not-so-solid line of Carthaginians. Here's where I hoped to take advantage of my die modifiers. Unfortunately, the way the rules were structured, you received no positive melee modifiers for the 'bad things' happening to the opposition. Your own unit's modifiers depended solely upon the disposition of your own unit, and not on the enemy's. Thus while the disorder in the Carthaginian ranks didn't give me any specific 'plusses', it did take away from the Carthaginian units their +1 for 'good order'. Which meant that, whereas I added my 'standard' +2 to my die roll, the Carthaginians added nothing. And as I said, even with this advantage, I couldn't break the Carthaginians. An interesting set of rules, and Brian returned home with handful of notes for his second edition. Back to PW Review October 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