Ambush on the Forest Road

This game comes from my map campaign. If you want to see how I generated the terrain, scenario, and various twists to the game, read my blog post about it.

The Scenario

As indicated in the other blog post, this battle will be fought out using Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames (OHW) rules, which the basic scenario also comes from (a combination of scenario #6 Flank Attack (1) and scenario #13 Escape). As with the last two battles, I have added some twists to the game by using the Kings of War Battlefield Cards and the Warcry Battleplan Cards.

In a nutshell, the Westonians (red) will be marching on the board, starting in C1. Because the force consists of Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry all units are confined to the road if there are woods (light or dark green ovals) in the square. Their battleplan is to exploit the gaps in the woods (C1, C3, C6, and D1) to deploy troops and destroy the Eastonians.

The Eastonians have set up an ambush, however their forces consist solely of Hussars (skirmishing light cavalry). They can move through any square save the heavy woods (dark green ovals). Their battleplan is to ignore the minor victory objective (moving troops off of the board to the West) and fight as hard as possible in inflicting damage on the ambushed Westonian troops.

Scenario Special Rules

There are a number of special rules for this scenario.

Artillery, Infantry and Cavalry on roads may move through woods squares, but because they cannot deploy into that terrain, they are limited in what they can while in those squares.

• Infantry may only fire from squares that are clear of woods terrain (light or heavy).
• Cavalry may only charge from squares clear of terrain if the target of the charge is also in clear terrain, and all squares moved through are clear terrain.
• Artillery may fire from clear terrain to any other square as long as they have line of sight from the center of their square to the center of the target square. Artillery may always fire on an adjacent square that they are facing, even if they are on a road going through the woods.

The Westonians drew a useful Stratagem to use called Sudden Faith. It allows them to modify a die roll by 1 for an activation test (see Rules Changes below) for one unit, once. The Westonian player does not need to state before the die roll whether they will be using the stratagem, they simply declare when it will be used.

The twist to this scenario is that because the Westonians are largely trapped on a road moving through the woods, save for occasional clear areas, they will fight with Battle Frenzy, which in turn cause the Eastonians to fight with the same vigor and effectiveness. The effects of Battle Frenzy are as follows:

• Cavalry charging units in the open do so using the procedure indicated in the main rules.
• Infantry may charge the enemy in the open or light woods, but do so inflicting 1D6-2 hits. If the enemy unit are Skirmishers or Hussars, they will retreat one square to their rear, otherwise the attacking Infantry must retreat if they did not destroy the enemy unit. If the enemy retreats or is destroyed, the Infantry take the square.
• Cavalry may not charge the enemy in light or heavy woods.
• Skirmishers may charge the enemy in any terrain other than impassable terrain. Hussars may charge the enemy in any terrain other than impassable or heavy woods terrain. Both unit types inflict 1D6-2 hits, but must retreat if they did not destroy the enemy unit.
• Skirmishers and Hussars do not get half casualties in close combat, although Cavalry continues to get that benefit.

One-Hour Wargames Rule Changes

Generally speaking I don't like changing rules, but frequently do it, as it makes battle reports harder to understand by people that know the rules but do not know your changes, so I will list them out here, largely because I am doing some experimentation with these changes.

• As with all of my OHW games I play on a board marked out with a 6" square grid (six rows by six columns). Each unit is contained within a  single square and each square contains only one unit. One day I will publish my grid rules, but for now just know that all measurements in OHW are converted to squares.
• Skirmishers fire at 1D6-2, as normal, but their fire negates any cover bonus (half casualties).
• Skirmishers receive half casualties, regardless of terrain, when fired upon by Infantry and Artillery.
• Skirmishers receive double casualties in close combat with Cavalry.
• Hussars are a new unit type that move 15", fire 1D6-2 out to 12", can interpenetrate and be interpenetrated by friendly units, receive half casualties from Infantry and Artillery fire, and can enter close combat with Skirmishers, Artillery, and Hussar inflicting 1D6-2 hits. Like Cavalry in close combat, unless they eliminate the unit they must retreat from close combat each turn.
• OHW uses the concept of a standardized unit that is eliminated after having received 15 hits. I have reversed this concept in assigning a number of 'health' to a unit, indicating the number of hits it can take. Rather than adding hits to a unit from shooting or close combat, the hits are removed. This allows me to have non-standard units with more or less health than the standard 15, while still maintaining 15 as the standard for other rules, such as casualty recovery.
• In OHW all units automatically act with full effectiveness, right up until the point they are eliminated. I am going to experiment with an activation roll of 1D10 each turn for each unit. If they roll less than or equal to their remaining health they can act as normal; if they roll greater they may not act at all that turn. This effectively allows a standard unit to act fully as long as they have not lost more than ⅓ effectiveness; after that they may falter in their actions.
• When units are on a road in terrain they cannot normally move in, e.g. Infantry and Cavalry in woods, they are considered in 'march column'. Units firing or in close combat against units in march column get a bonus in combat: 1D6-2 becomes 1D6; 1D6 becomes 1D6+2; and 1D6+2 becomes 1D6x2.

The Battle

The battle will start with the Westonians (red) entering the board in C1. They will move 9" (1 ½ squares) down the road each turn until they move off the board via the road exit.

Turn 1

The first turn is rather uneventful, as you might imagine. As a note, when a unit moves in other than increments of 6" (the size of our squares) I usually mark them to show that they have additional movement that can carry over to the next turn. For example, the Red Infantry moving down the road has 9" or 1 ½ squares of movement. On the first turn they move 6" (one square) and gain a movement marker (green circle in the front-left corner) indicating that if they have 9" of movement next turn, they will me able to move 12" (9" + the previous 3") or two squares the next turn, at which time the marker will be removed.

The Blue Hussars, because they have a 15" movement, also receive a movement marker.

Turn 2

Red troops continue to pile on while the Blue Hussars fires at the enemy, inflicting a heavy blow to their morale.

At this point it might be helpful to calculate the Average Turns to Eliminate or ATE of each side. I use this score to help me understand which action is the best to take. It helps me remove bias from my game play decisions.

At this point the Red Infantry is in a clear terrain square so it is deployed into line formation and can fire fully (1D6). However, the Blue Hussars are in cover, so casualties are halved. That allows Red to inflict about 2 hits per turn, so their ATE for the Blue Hussars is 9 (turns). If they charge into close combat they switch to 1D6-2 (ATE 18), so there is less reason to charge if the goal is to inflict maximum damage. However, Infantry force Hussars to retreat if charged, so this is a viable option.

When the Blue Hussars are firing 1D6-2, they inflict about 1.67 hits per turn so the ATE for the Red Infantry is also 9 turns. If the blue Hussars charge into close combat their dice is still 1D6-2, so there is no change. Unlike the charge of the Red Infantry, however, the Blue Hussars do not force back their enemy.

Turn 3

The Red Infantry has a choice: 1) stand and fire at the Blue Hussars (ATE 9), who also have an ATE of 9; or 2)  charges the Blue Hussars in order to drive them back, while inflicting minor damage (ATE 18). Applying a 50% chance to each option Red chooses to drive Blue down the road.

The Red Infantry scores no hits, but pushed the Blue Hussars down the road (to C5). This must have been a planned feigned retreat because when the Red Infantry hits the woods (C4), the Blue Hussars counter-attacked. With the Red Infantry unable to deploy effectively (they count as in march column), the Blue Hussars inflict a heavy hit on the bunched up enemy.

Solo Gamer's Notes: I actually played this out twice. The first time I had the Red Infantry stand and fire in C3 and they were eventually eliminated. At some point (turn 7?) I struck upon the option of charging to push the Blue Hussars off of the board and wondered if I should have tried that option. As I had forgotten to apply the Activation Rule, and that was the whole point of playing these experimental games, I decided to rewind back to this turn and dice to see which way Red would go.

Turn 4

With the Red Infantry at 5 hits they now have to roll to see if they activate. They roll a '10', so they do not! The Blue Hussars continue to fire away at the Red Infantry, whittling them down further. Meanwhile the column of Red forces have come to a halt.

Turn 5

That was a disastrous turn for Red and unless the vanguard is exceedingly lucky, the unit is going to fall. The second Red Infantry should have enough elan to push the Blue Hussars back a turn or two, but then what? Until the Blue Hussars are whittled down below 10 health remaining, they will likely continue to act each turn. Although this is an experiment, I don't want it to be at the expense of the entire Westonian Southern Army. (Or do I secretly have an Eastonian bias…)

The vanguard of the Red Infantry continues to wallow in confusion and the Blue Hussars sees to their destruction. The Red Artillery moves off of the road to make way for more Red Infantry, should they be needed to carry the position the Blue Hussars are defending.

Solo Gamer's Notes: The Blue Hussars had a choice of either standing and firing or charging into close combat. The number of hits inflicted is the same in both instances, but close combat would have resulted in taking position C4. Had they charged, the Red Infantry in C3, which is in clear terrain and thus deployed, would have been able to fire with 1D6x½. As they stood and fired, Red Infantry must advance next turn, giving the Blue Hussars first fire.

Turn 6 and 7

Continuing with their strategy, Red is pushing forward with the point of the bayonet. The carnage in the woods is horrendous, however, as the Blue Hussars continue to exact a toll on the confused and densely-pack Infantry.

The Red Infantry continue to roll low – not having scored a single hit on the Blue Hussars all game – but they continue to push them back, but at great cost.

Solo Gamer's Notes: At this point I need to make a decision. Do I allow the Red Infantry to push the Blue Hussars off of the board and end the game or do I allow them to stand? This was one of the 'gotchas' that came up with this rule in my AWI variant of OHW, which has this same 'defender retreats' mechanic. Another possibility is to extend the battlefield by creating column 7. This is one of the possibilities you can do with solo gaming, especially if you have the space. As the first two options are not especially realistic – there is no magic line in the ground that instantly stops combat or gives a unit the courage to stop retreating – so I decide to extend the battlefield, rolling for terrain. If the terrain generation is generous enough – like it was in E3, E4, and F4 – it might open up at the road allowing Red to overwhelm Blue.

Turn 8

After generating more terrain – and the results were not kind to Red – I continue with the combat.

The Red Infantry again push the Blue Hussars back, but still inflicting no hits. (How many '1's and '2's are they going to roll?) Because they hit an open area, the Red Infantry can deploy into Line, so they do not get hit with 1D6 by the Blue Hussars.

Solo Gamer's Notes: At this point I feel a twinge of "Are you sure this is the right tactic for Red?" When Red deploys, the casualty rate against it goes down and the casualty rate against Blue goes up. Given that pushing Blue 'off board' does not result in a victory, only in the board being extended, pushing no longer seems like an effective tactic. So, either Red takes a stand here or … if Red can push Blue back one more square to C8, this would allow Red Infantry to move to C7 and eventually B7, while the next Red Infantry would move up to either C6 (to let Blue move back to C7 to be caught in a crossfire) or to C7 (to switch out to a fresh Red Infantry unit). I decide to keep the current 'push' tactic on a 1-2, with push to B7 on a 3-4, and stand and fight on a 5-6. Apparently the lead unit is tired of taking hits, so they want to stand and fight.

Turns 9 Through 15

A cheer goes up from the Red Infantry as they finally score some damage against the Blue Hussars, but it is quickly quelled as the return fire is devastating (1 hit versus 4 in return). The Red Infantry courageously continues to stand and deliver. Unfortunately, it was not enough. Red Infantry's morale collapsed and they could not longer effectively muster the courage to charge or to fire. The Blue Hussars whittled them down but failed to eliminate them when darkness feel. Both sides retreated to regroup.

Wow, was that battle different! Again, the goal of my campaign is to generate scenarios with context to the both the last and next game, create scenarios that are not plastic, even point battles, and create situations that you might not normally play with a face-to-face opponent (such as a 7 units versus 1 unit full-on ambush). So far I feel like I have succeeded, in only for blowing dust off of products that I purchased and have never used (I am looking at you The Solo Wargaming Guide, Kings of War Battlefield Cards, and Warcry Battleplan Cards.)

For those of you who are fans of OHW, I would like to hear from you about what you think of these modifications. Half casualties for Hussars (and Skirmishers) did not have a huge effect because so many attacks were close combat and 1D6-2. When they finally turned to firing, they kept rolling a '1' and then they failed activation.

What did have an impact were the activation rules. Once a unit gets below a certain number of hits it is doomed, save for the occasional bit of luck. The reason why this rule had such an impact though is due to the nature of the terrain and unit characteristics. If there had been room to maneuver, or the unit could have been interpenetrated, their inability to activate would have been much less of a consequence.

For those here for the solo mechanics talk, I know I have moved away from programmed A.I. type rules and towards using chance to determine a course of action amongst two or three (or more) logical choices. From a gaming viewpoint, this method is more flexible than programming, but it allows more player bias to creep in. Then again, sometimes the path that you think is the 'best' turns out not to be, or allows you to explore other concepts like an expanding tabletop. I would like to hear what you think about these concepts also.

The Second Battle for Firnskuppe

Introduction

This is the tactical battle for my second engagement in my solo campaign, the First Elopean War. I am again using Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames (OHW) to fight out the tactical battles. The only difference from the normal rules in that I used a 6" square grid for regulating distance. For the campaign, I am using The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG).

In the first battle the Westonian Advanced Guard, consisting of a Line Infantry Regiment and a Line Cavalry Regiment, attacking the barely mustered Firnskuppe Hussars, an understrength Light Cavalry Regiment. The Eastonians were driven from the town, leaving the Westonians in possession, waiting for the main forces to arrive.

The second engagement sees more Eastonian forces arriving, attempting to retake the town.

Pre-Battle

I have decided to try another system for determining what the battle's setup, victory conditions, and "game twists"; this time Games Workshops' Warcry. Why Warcry? It is a currently available game and thus its components are readily available. I am not suggesting you buy the rules or a boxed set, but you can buy the Warcry Battleplan Cards (WBC) separately. Like the Kings of War: Battlefield Cards, they use cards to provide you variations in your games. The WBC contains four sets of cards: the Terrain Deck; the Deployment Deck; the Victory Deck; and the Twist Deck.

The Terrain Deck dictates the terrain that will appear on the board. As Warcry is a skirmish game, this terrain is not really suited for the tactical level of game we are playing. Besides, we will be reusing the terrain from the first battle as this battle is also centered around the same area.

The Deployment Deck covers the deployment diagrams that are in TSWG (see image below), but offers far more variations.

The Victory Deck will serve as a replacement for the Objectives Deck from Kings of War. Again, as WBC is centered around game system, there may be a bit of interpretation to make it work.

Finally, the Twists Deck is akin to the Conditions Deck from Kings of War. It is to add a twist to the battle, hopefully without too much interpretation.

Deployment

I drew the card "Deadly Gambit" (see image below). The two sides are shown as red and blue and each force is separated into three battle groups: Hammer, Dagger, and Shield. Each battle group must contain at least one unit (if possible) and no more than one-half of the units. The Shield group must contain at least one-third of the units, rounded up.

This is a complicated deployment as red force has their Dagger battle group in the SW corner, but the remaining groups are coming on from the N and the NE. The blue force has their Dagger battle group in the NE corner, and the remaining groups coming on from the S and SW. So the Dagger forces are positioned near where the enemy will come on (hence a deadly gambit).

Given the locations of the forces on this card and their locations on the map I can envision the Westonian infantry patrolling close around the town of Firnskuppe, thus it makes sense that the are red Dagger. Because the red Shield must contain at least one-third of the forces (in this case, one unit), the cavalry is red Shield. It appears they were patrolling the woods outside of Firnskuppe and are coming back due to the town coming under attack.

The Eastonian forces are approaching Firnskuppe from the East and South. It makes sense (to me) that the light infantry from the East are in the blue Dagger group. They are skirmishers and they appear to have infiltrated onto the board before the alarm was raised. The light cavalry from the East have swung around the town and are attacking from the SW (Shield group). Finally, the light infantry from the South are entering as the blue Hammer group.

Note the markers RND2 on the card. This indicates that these forces will come on at the beginning of Round 2.

Victory Conditions

As always, the primary objective of each side is the destruction of the enemy forces, but as I indicated last time, I wanted to determine a 'victor' for the purposes of determining which side would have a higher casualty rate. (The loser would have that higher rate.)

As shown in the image above, the victory conditions indicate that the map is to be divided into quarters. Each quarter generates a victory point at the end of each round. The battle ends after three rounds.

The first interpretation is 'what is a round'? Warcry generally lasts four rounds, so this indicates it is a shorter game. OHW typically lasts 15 games turns, so it looks like a round is roughly equivalent to four OHW turns. So this battle will last no more than 12 turns.

Further, the Hammer and Shield groups are to enter on round 2, so they will come on at the start of turn 5.

Finally, because the Eastonian force coming from the South (blue Hammer group) marches two hexes to get to the battle (the East force only marches one hex), I am imposing an additional delay. Blue Hammer will enter on round 3, or the start of turn 9.

The Twist

As shown in the image below, I drew "Sinister Bargain". This needs a lot of interpretation, given that it talks about chaos and a beast.

It is relatively simple though. The town of Firnskuppe is being fought over. Although it is a very small town (class E) with no inherent militia, I am going to treat this as a band of armed citizenry. If the Eastonians win the roll-off, they are patriots; it the Westonians win, they are collaborators who have been waiting to switch sides. The band will count as an understrength (one company) Skirmisher unit.

Rather than using a simple roll-off, I will use each side's Commander Competency Rating (CCR), which happens to be a '3' for both sides. Westonia rolls a '4'; Eastonia rolls a '3'. The Skirmisher unit goes to the Westonians.

Deployment

As a reminder, here are the effects of the terrain found on this board.

Road - (light yellow-brown line) Units moving by road increase their movement distance by 3" if their entire move is spent on the road. This bonus may not be received if charging.

Lt Woods - (light green oval) Only Skirmishers may enter. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Hvy Woods - (dark green oval) Only infantry Skirmishers may enter. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Lake - (blue-gray oval) Impassable to all units.

Firnskuppe - (four gray rectangles) As this is a Village (class E) and not a Town (class D or better), movement is not affected for any unit. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Farm - (two dark red rectangles) Skirmishers receive ½ casualties from firing.

Fields - (large brown square) Cavalry movement is halved. (In terms of a square grid that means Cavalry may enter the Fields on its second square of movement, but only receives one square of movement when exiting the Fields square.)

Hill - (light brown rounded rectangle) Units in close combat defending a hill from an attacker not on a hill receives ½ casualties.

As you can see in the map above, B5 contains the Blue Dagger and D3 contains the Red Dagger. (Normally, Red Dagger would be at E2, but as that is a lake square, and thus impassable, I decided to roll a D10 for the location of the unit. 1, 2, and 3 would be D1, D2, and D3. 4 and 5 would be E1 while 6 and 7 would be E3. 8, 9, and 0 would be F1, F2, and F3. With the roll of a '3', the unit ended up in the village.)

Units with green backgrounds are Skirmisher units, while those with black backgrounds are either Infantry or Cavalry. The numbers in the center represent the number of remaining hits.

Battle Plan

One of the things ideas in TSWG is to make three battle plans and to simply roll a D6 to determine which one to run.

Blue

The first battle plan (roll of 1-2) is for the Blue Dagger to get to cover in the NW corner to take that objective, then hold off the enemy for as long as possible. Hammer and Shield will both enter the SW quadrant to contest that quarter.

Battle plan 2 (roll of 3-4) is for the Blue Dagger to get cover in the SE corner to take that objective, while staying out of line of sight. When Shield enters the board (on turn 5), both will simultaneously attack Firnskuppe.

The final battle plan (roll of 5-6) is for Blue Dagger to immediately attack Firnskuppe in order to whittle it down so Blue Shield can take it as soon as possible.

Red

Battle plan 1 is to defend Firnskuppe with all units, as they arrive.

Battle plan 2 is to defend Firnskuppe with the Red Infantry, attack with the Red Cavalry (the closest unit), and hold the NW corner with the Red Skirmisher.

Battle plan 3 is to defend Firnskuppe with the Red Infantry, hold the NE corner with the Red Cavalry, and hold the NW corner with the Red Skirmisher.

Result

Blue will use battle plan 3 while red uses battle plan 2.

The Battle

Turn 1

Blue

Blue Skirmishers move from B5 to C5. Although the unit could have moved into range and line of sight by moving to C4, this would have put the Skirmisher at a severe disadvantage (it takes full damage, while the attacker takes ½ damage).

Let's stop for a second and go over which square the unit should move to. First, you need to understand my concept of Average Turns to Eliminate (ATE). If you look at the possible number of hits a unit can inflict, the number of hits remaining in the unit being fired upon, you get the average number of turns to eliminate that unit. Quickly calculating this value can help you determine which target you should attack (your ATE against the enemy unit) and where you should move (the enemy's ATE against your unit).

The average hits by Skirmishers and Infantry are:

Die Roll	Skirmisher	Infantry
1	0	1
2	0	2
3	1	3
4	2	4
5	3	5
6	4	6
Average	1.67	3.5

So the ATE of Infantry being shot by the Skirmisher is 15 hits / 1.67 or 9 turns (rounded up). The ATE of Skirmishers being shot by Infantry is 12 hits / 3.5 or 4 turns. Note that shooting at units in cover changes the ATE.

Die Roll	Skirmisher vs Cover	Infantry vs Cover
1	0	1
2	0	1
3	1	2
4	1	2
5	2	3
6	2	3
Average	1	2

The ATE of Infantry in cover being shot by the Skirmisher is 15 hits / 1 or 15 turns, while the ATE of Skirmishers in cover being shot by Infantry is 12 hits / 2 or 6 turns. Because the Infantry will (likely) remain in Firnskuppe it will always be in cover, so it will have an ATE of 15. If the Skirmishers fight it out of cover its ATE will be 4, but will jump to 6 if it moves to cover first.

With the target in D3 you have to be in the following squares to be in cover while also being in line of sight of Firnskuppe: B3, D1, D4, and F2.

Now let's think about the Red Cavalry that will enter on turn 5. With close combat you can also calculate ATE.

Die Roll	Cavalry x ½	Cavalry	Cavalry x 2
1	2	3	6
2	2	4	8
3	3	5	10
4	3	6	12
5	4	7	14
6	4	8	15
Average	3.5	5.5	10.83

Given these stats, the Skirmisher simply cannot afford to get caught out by the Cavalry. Thus the only safe squares for the Skirmishers are: D1, D4, and F2. This is why the Blue Skirmisher moved from B5 to C5. It is heading for the heavy woods in D4. Had it moved to C4 the Red Infantry would shoot it in the open, inflicting 3.5 hits. By moving to C5 it can still reach D4 next turn, but without being shot upon in the open.

Red

With the Blue Skirmisher hiding and the Red Infantry with orders to hold Firnskuppe, it has no action this turn other than to face towards the East.

Turn 2

The Blue Skirmisher moves from C5 to D4. Now it is safe from the Red Cavalry that will come on and has cover against the Red Infantry. It will still be outshot by the enemy, but its mission is to wear down the enemy for other units to take out. Meanwhile the Red Infantry fires, scoring a measly one hit.

Turn 3 and 4

At this point neither unit is moving and both are firing, so I will play out two turns. After that reinforcements will come on for both sides.

With the end of the 'round', Red scores 1 VP for holding the SW quadrant while Blue scores 1 VP for holding the SE quadrant.

Turn 5

Time to bring on the reinforcements! Remember that the Blue Hammer (Skirmisher) does not come on until turn 9, as it has farther to march to get to the battle. But the Blue Shield (mounted Skirmisher) can come on, as can both the Red Hammer and Red Shield.

So, let me explain the logic behind the moves. Blue Mounted Skirmisher is not Cavalry, so it cannot charge. It is essentially a fast moving Skirmisher unit that cannot enter heavy woods. So, like the Blue Skirmisher it needs to attack by firing and it wants to stay in cover. It has two basic missions: eliminate the Red Infantry in Firnskuppe and contest the SW quadrant. It can do this from either D1 or F2. Although the Red Cavalry cannot attack it in either square (Cavalry cannot enter light or heavy woods), the Red Skirmisher coming on can. So by choosing to move to F2, Blue can continue to attack Firnskuppe, but it makes it much harder for Red to disrupt that attack.

The Red Skirmisher is heading for the farm (B3) as it is cover and it allows it to control the NW quadrant, but it wants to ensure it gets there safely. Although no one is likely to attack it, moving behind the hill in B4 ensures that.

Red Cavalry is to attack any Blue unit brave enough to come out in the open, or to move into Firnskuppe if it becomes undefended. It cannot attack either Skirmisher unit as it cannot enter the woods squares, so it really has no target. At this point you have to ask yourself whether you feel it is legitimate to change plans or not, i.e. switch to contesting either the SE quadrant or holding the NE quadrant, rather than hunting for units to charge.

You might think it is rather disadvantageous for Red with all this woods, but remember that Firnskuppe is actually in a woods terrain hex on the main map. So if anything, this table is rather clear considering its surroundings.

Turn 6

The Blue forces continue to pound the Red Infantry in Firnskuppe, who in turn continues firing at the Blue Skirmishers in the heavy woods.

The Red Cavalry moves to the hill in order to secure the NE quadrant while the Red Skirmishers occupy the cover of the farm to secure the NW quadrant.

Turn 7

This turn was a bit of jockeying about for Red. As the Red Skirmishers are a temporary force (they will go away after this battle), losing them is not a great loss. They move from the farm to the open ground in C3. Next turn they will be able to fire upon the Blue Skirmishers in the woods, hoping to support Firnskuppe. Because they now occupy the NE quadrant the Red Cavalry move from the hill to A3, occupying the NW quadrant. Blue forces continue to blaze away at Firnskuppe.

Turn 8

This turn was significant in that it saw the destruction of the Blue Skirmishers (to musket fire) and the Red Infantry barely holding on. Meanwhile the Red Cavalry slipped to the West, ready to enter Firnskuppe should the Red Infantry fall.

With the end of round 2 the score stands at 3 VP for Red and only 1 VP for Blue.

Turn 9

If you read my discussion on casualty recovery you will remember that there is a significant difference between a unit alive at the end of the battle and one that was eliminated. Infantry with 1-5 hits remaining loses 5 hits permanently on a '1' or '2' (on a D6), yet if it is eliminated by musketry it loses 10 hits on a '1' and 5 hits on a '2' or '3'. Because of this the Red Infantry cannot afford to take the risk of two more turns of fire, especially with another Blue Skirmisher unit coming on this turn. For that reason I decide to retreat out of Firnskuppe with the Red Infantry, replacing it with the Red Skirmishers. (Skirmishers can move through Infantry and vice versa.) But not before one more shot from the Blue Mounted Skirmishers…

Turn 10

The Blue force can clearly see that the Red Infantry have escaped their destruction, and really have no way of capturing Firnskuppe, so they decide to cut their losses and retreat South. The Second Battle of Firnskuppe is over with yet another Eastonian loss.

Aftermath

The Eastonians have lost one Skirmish unit to musketry, so they lose 10 hits on a '1' (or less) and 5 hits on a '2' (out of the unit's 12 hits). Because they were on the losing side they subtract 1 from their die roll. They rolled a '4', so they will all return to battle once they have regrouped.

The Westonian Infantry lost 14 hits so with 1-5 hits remaining, they lose 5 hit on a '1' or '2'. They roll a '3' so they too have no permanent losses after regrouping.

Summary

I always think that, because Skirmishers are so weak in OHW, these battles where one side is all Skirmishers, it is going to be a drag. This time was closer than the last.

In the first battle, the Eastonians had the village as defense and fog to ensure that the attacking Westonians had no cover to use. In this battle, had the local rabble not sided with the Westonians, I think they might well have lost their Infantry and lost the battle on victory points.

I have long groused about using event charts and random tables in solo games. I still contend that using those elements to affect the core game mechanics is not a good idea, but I am liking it for modifying the scenario and battle environment.

Using the Warcry Battleplan Cards was also very easy to interpret to the Horse and Musket period. Sometimes it takes a bit of narrative to figure out how the units end up split to match the deployment card, but it is nothing significantly difficult.

I still have to question the casualty recovery. I am going to stick with the current recovery process just to see how it continues to play out. I don't want the forces to deplete too quickly, but there needs to be some consequence to battles, won or lost, doesn't there? As it stands, the original goal of the campaign was to provide interesting, linked battles and this has definitely filled the bill so far.

What do you think? Is this sort of battle report useful (for your own ideas on solo gaming)? Is it interesting? Do diagrams showing movement and firing convey more data than pictures of a game with miniatures? Do you look for battle reports with miniatures or do you view it as "eye candy"? My goal is to make posts that are both informative – in terms of how to game solo – as well as entertaining.

The Battle of Firnskuppe

 This is the tactical battle for my first engagement in my solo campaign, The First Elopean War. I have decided to use the rules One-Hour Wargames (OHW) by Neil Thomas to fight out the tactical battles. The only difference from the normal rules in that I used a 6" square grid for regulating distance. For the campaign, I am using The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG).

In a recent blog post (on my other blog) I went over the process that I am using to convert campaign units to OHW units and back again. Let's talk about the complete process for taking a contact on the map from the campaign to a battle on the tabletop.

1. Define the forces that will be engaged.
2. Define the terrain on the tabletop.
3. Determine which side has the tactical advantage.
4. Determine each force's baseline.
5. Determine each force's objectives.
6. Determine battlefield conditions.
7. Determine each force's available stratagems.
8. Deploy each side's forces.
9. Start the battle.

Pre-Battle Sequence

Determine the Engaged Forces

Although this might be a relatively straightforward step, as indicated in the blog post above, there are some options and a little bit of bookkeeping. Because OHW normally has 15 hits per unit, any understrength units need to be indicated. Further Light Infantry companies and Light Cavalry squadrons can be deployed as either Infantry and Cavalry units, respectively, or as Skirmisher units. How these troops are deployed would be determined at this step.

The Westonians have five Light Infantry companies and five Light Cavalry squadrons at their disposal while the Eastonians have two Light Cavalry squadrons to call upon. As the Westonians are at the strategic command of my gaming buddy Justo, and he consolidated all of his companies into Regiments, I will treat all of his Light Infantry as Infantry units and his Light Cavalry as Cavalry units. I guess that is just their culture.

As the Eastonian commander I have a choice of making a very weak (6 hits) Cavalry unit with my two Light Cavalry squadrons, or making a weakened (12 hits) Skirmisher unit. As I did not define a 'tradition' for consolidating companies, as Justo did, I will allow the local commander to randomly determine it. Because I think the Skirmisher unit is more survivable, I will use the following table to make the decision, rolling enough D6 until all the companies and squadrons are accounted for.

Die Roll	Result
1-4	Use 2 ½ companies/squadrons to form a Skirmisher unit
5-6	Use 5 companies/squadrons to form a Infantry/Cavalry unit

Using that table I roll a 4, meaning the two squadrons will form a Skirmisher unit. As it is only a partial unit (2 instead of 2 ½ squadrons), the unit has 12 hits.

Determine the Tabletop Terrain

The method used in TSWG is to use playing cards to randomly determine the terrain. (Because part of this campaign is to convince myself that using lots of random elements for solo gaming – which both TSWG and Featherstone's solo gaming books use – is not so bad, I felt I needed to use as much of it as possible.) Because OHW on a grid has a board that is 6 squares wide by 6 squares deep, I decided to use one playing card for each square, largely because the campaign hex being fought in is a wooded village. If it had been a clear hex I would have drawn 3 cards wide by 3 cards deep, randomly rolling which of the four squares got the terrain indicated.

In the TSWG system only black cards produce terrain, here is what I drew.

Black King	Red Queen	Red 6	Red 8	Black 7	Red Ace
Red King	Red 8	Black Jack	Black Ace	Red 5	Red Jack
Red 4	Red King	Black Queen	Red 2	Red Jack	Red 2
Black Queen	Black 8	Red Joker	Black 5	Black 6	Black Ace
Red 3	Black 10	Black 8	Red 10	Black 9	Black Joker
Black 3	Black King	Black 2	Black 2	Black 7	Red Queen

This translates to the following terrain.

Fields				Lt Woods
		Farm	Hill
Road	Road	Fields	Road	Road	Road
Fields	Lt Woods	Firnskuppe	Hvy Woods	Hvy Woods	Hill
	Lake	Lt Woods	Road	Lt Woods	Hill w Lt Woods
Hill	Fields	Hill	Hill/Road	Lt Woods

By the way, this engagement was taking place on the map at the town of Firnskuppe, so the Red Joker was replaced by the town.

Because TSWG tells you to not slavishly follow the cards, I made a few adjustments to the terrain.

As I am using the Horse & Musket period of OHW rules, here are the effects of the terrain.

Road - Units moving by road increase their movement distance by 3" if their entire move is spent on the road. This bonus may not be received if charging.

Lt Woods - Only Skirmishers may enter. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Hvy Woods - Only infantry Skirmishers may enter. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Lake - Impassable to all units.

Firnskuppe - As this is a Village (class E) and not a Town (class D or better), movement is not affected for any unit. Units receive ½ casualties from firing.

Farm - Skirmishers receive ½ casualties from firing.

Fields - Cavalry movement is halved. (In terms of a square grid that means Cavalry may enter the Fields on its second square of movement, but only receives one square of movement when exiting the Fields square.)

Hill - Units in close combat defending a hill from an attacker not on a hill receives ½ casualties.

Determine Tactical Advantage

According to TSWG, each force's commander has a Commander's Competency Rating (CCR). The named commanders (Brigadier Generals) had their values rolled at the start of the campaign, with potential values from 1 through 6. All non-named commanders automatically have a CCR of '3'. As both sides are using non-named commanders, they both have a CCR of '3'.

Tactical Advantage is determined by having each side roll a D6 and adding their CCR. The higher value wins.

Westonia rolls a '3', adding 3, for a total of 6. Eastonia rolls a '6', adding 3, for a total of 9. Eastonia has the Tactical Advantage.

Determine Baselines

TSWG gives several options for baseline configurations, as shown in the image below.

I allow the side with the tactical advantage to choose the configuration. If there was a tie, there would be a die roll.

Counting the top of the map as North, the Eastonians occupy rows 4 through 6 while the Westonians must enter the board anywhere on row 1. Westonians can choose to send a flanking force, but must 'secretly' declare whether it will be their left flank (east of the town) or right (west of the town).

Determine Condition, Objectives, and Stratagems

A while ago I purchased a product called Kings of War: Battlefield Cards. Unfortunately, Mantics Games no longer sells them, but you can often find them on eBay or dusty gaming store shelves. These are very similar to the Warcry Battleplan Cards in that you get Objective, Conditions, and Strategy cards, allowing you to modify game scenario easily.

The idea is that you draw a Condition card to potentially modify the conditions on the battlefield (most of the cards say the conditions are normal, however), set your primary and secondary objectives (beyond the normal objectives of defeating your opponent's forces and being the last to occupy the battlefield), and potentially use stratagems during the game.

The strategy cards a little boosts that can be played during the battle. As they are specific to Kings of War, they may take a little interpretation to make them useful for OHW.

Each side will be allowed to draw a number of strategy cards based on the following formula:

• Draw 1 card for every three full Infantry Regiments.
• Draw 1 card for having at least one Cavalry Regiment.
• Draw 1 card for having at least one Artillery Battery.
• You may always draw at least one Strategy card.
• You may not draw more than three Strategy cards.

Conditions

For this battle I drew the Reduced Visibility condition card, reducing all line of sight to 18" and any ranged attack beyond one square being at D6-2.

Objectives

The Eastonians drew the following objectives:

Primary: Place a Bounty token on each of your opponent's three most expensive units. 2 VPs if at least one of these units is eliminated. 1 VP for each of these units eliminated in melee. (This latter clause is impossible for Skirmishers as they cannot enter close combat in OHW.)

Secondary: 2 VPs if the total points (companies/squadrons) you eliminated if higher than the total eliminated by your opponent.

The Westonian objectives are:

Primary: 3 VPs if you have more strength (companies/squadrons) within two squares of the exact center of the board than your opponent. 2 VPs if you hold or contest the Base Objective on your half of the board.

Secondary: 2 VP if you hold or contest the Base Objective on your side of the board.

Because the Base Objective is a part of the Westonian objectives, and they are repeated twice, I decided that the two base objectives were the east road (column A, row 3) and the west road (column f, row 3).

You might be wondering what value VPs hold for OHW. To my mind VPs will determine the 'winner', which in turn will determine how much of the casualties from the battle will be returned as dead, wounded, or effective. The winner will have more casualties returned as effective than the loser.

Also note the difference in potential victory points. The Eastonians have a potential of 4 VPs from Bounties, 2 VPs from melee, and 2 VPs for inflicting more damage, for a total of 8 VPs (of which 6 VPs are only feasible). The Westonians have a potential of 3 VPs for holding the center, 2 VPs for holding the east road, and 2 VPs for holding the west road. As they only have two units, they cannot hold the center and both roads, so only 5 VPs are feasible.

Stratagems

Both sides get one Strategy card. The Eastonians draw:

Sudden Faith: Subtract 1 from a nerve test made by you or your opponent. (Because OHW does not use nerve tests, but represents morale in terms of hits, this means that the first loss of hits to your unit will be one less than what is rolled, to a minimum of 0.)

The Westonians draw:

Stolen March: You may deploy your units up to one square closer to the center line than normally allowed in this scenario.

Deploy Forces

As they Eastonians won the tactical advantage, the Westonians must deploy first. Because of the Strategy card they may either play it at the start, and deploy on row 1, or choose not to play it and enter row 1 on the first turn. Further, they may choose to flank march with one of their two units. Let's determine which deployment they will use.

First Die Roll	Second Die Roll	Result
1-4	1-2	Infantry unit deploys on C1. Cavalry unit marches on turn 1.
1-4	3-6	Infantry unit deploys on C1. Cavalry unit deploys on B1.
5-6	1	Infantry unit marches on turn 1. Cavalry unit marches on right flank.
5-6	2-4	Infantry unit deploys on C1. Cavalry unit marches on right flank.
5-6	5	Cavalry unit marches on turn 1. Infantry unit marches on right flank.
5-6	6	Cavalry unit deploys on C1. Infantry unit marches on right flank.

I chose the basic plan as the Infantry attacking through the Farm and securing Firnskuppe for 3 VPs while the Cavalry would secure the west road (where the main army is coming from). However the die roll could indicate otherwise.

I rolled a 3 followed by a 5, so both the Westonian Infantry and Cavalry will start on board, in squares C1 and B1, respectively. The Eastonian Skirmisher will start in Firnskuppe.

Turn 1

Westonian (Red)

Infantry moves from C1 to C2. Cavalry moves from B1 through A2 to A3. No fire.

Eastonian (Blue)

Skirmisher holds. No fire is allowed due to the Reduced Visibility condition. The Eastonian commander attempts to roll his CCR (or lower) and fails. They cannot retreat.

Turn 2

Red

It is pretty clear that Red will have the worst of the musketry exchange as the Infantry will fire at D6-2 from C3 to C4, but the Skirmishers will only take ½ casualties due to the cover from the Village. They, in turn, will fire back at D6-2 and the Infantry will have no cover from the Fields. Nonetheless, the Infantry needs to soften the Skirmishers up before the Cavalry is allowed to charge in.

Infantry moves from C2 to C3. Cavalry holds. There is no firing.

Blue

Skirmishers fire, but score no hits. The Eastonians succeed in rolling their CCR, so they now have the option of retreating from the battlefield.

Turn 3

Red

Cavalry holds. Infantry fires, with the Skirmishers playing their stratagem, also resulting in no hits.

Blue

Skirmishers fire, scoring 3 hits.

Turns 4, 5, and 6

Red

Cavalry holds. Infantry fires, scoring no hits.

Blue

Skirmishers fire, scoring no hits.

Turn 7

Red

Cavalry moves from A3 to B4. Infantry fires, scoring 2 hits.

Blue

Skirmishers fire, scoring 3 hits.

The Red Infantry is now down to 9 hits, having lost two companies, while the Blue Skirmishers has only lost ⅓ of a squadron. Seeing that the Red Cavalry is flanking them, but have entered the Fields where they will be slow in exiting them, it looks like a good time to retreat. The Westonians will have 5 VPs and the Eastonians 4 VPs; a very narrow victory for the Westonians.

The Firskuppen Husaren withdraw down the east road to warn the garrison in Erlenloch that the Westonians are coming, and the battle draws to a close.

I will be picking up on how to deal with casualties and convert from OHW units to campaign units back on my Dale's Wargames blog.

Please note that I have started using Amazon affiliate links for any Amazon product I feature in my blog posts. You don't have to use them, of course, but anything Amazon gives me does not affect the price you pay, so using it contributes to my caffeine-fueled blog posts' funding.

Arcadia Quest's Solo Rules

 One of the games that I have had for a long time is CMON's Arcadia Quest (AQ). AQ is an adventure board game with cool, chibi-style miniatures (i.e. big heads, smaller body, little hands and feet) playable by 2-4 players. Although it has "monster" enemies that are not played by a specific player, it is only semi-cooperative. Players compete against one another to be the first one to complete quests. When all quests are complete, the scenario is over, players upgrade their characters, and you move on to another scenario (another night). There are six scenarios played total in every campaign.

There are more than six scenarios defined, so each campaign can consist of a different mix of scenarios. Beyond that, each player uses three characters throughout that campaign and there are numerous characters to choose from, so there is quite a bit of replayability. All that said, despite the dungeon crawling, campaign aspect of the game, this is more of a player-versus-player (PvP) than player-versus-environment (PvE) game, although components of both exist.

Given that it is more PvP than PvE, how can you play this game solo? If you can convert this to a solo game, why can't you convert it to a fully co-operative game then? Let's start by looking at the regular game mechanics, how CMON changed it for solo play, then look at a game.

AQ Game Mechanics

My goal here is not to review the entire rules, but to show how AQ works as a game, how the rules make decisions for the monsters, how combat works, and how a scenario is fought.

Combat

The basic combat mechanic in AQ is that every character (hero or monster) has an attack stat indicating the number of attack (black) dice they will roll, and whether that attack is ranged or melee. In addition, heroes have a defense stat indicating the number of defense (white) dice they will roll. Each successful defense roll (block) cancels a successful attack roll (hit). If there are more hits than blocks, the defender takes wounds equal to the difference. This leads to the third stat characters have, health, which is the number of hits they take before they are removed from play.

The primary difference in combat against heroes and combat against monsters is that the former have defense dice while the latter do not. This simplifies combat in that no one has to "play" the monster when a hero attacks one. There are no decisions to be made (at that time), it is simply does the hero inflict enough wounds to kill the monster or not?

The secondary difference between heroes and monsters in combat is that when the former's wounds equals or exceeds its health the combat is over. The hero's figure is removed from the board and placed on their stat card. (More on that later). Monsters, however, have a unique stat: the overkill stat. This stat represents the number of wounds that, if taken in a single hit, has killed the monster so quickly and decisively that it cannot strike back before it is removed. Anything less and the monster will get to make a "payback reaction".

Monster reactions are the "programs" for the monsters that dictate when a monster can act. Normally, monsters do not get a "turn". They stand in place in the designated location (according to the scenario) and do nothing until their program allows them to react to a player action. One of those reactions is when they are attacked and the hero does not manage to overkill them. At that point they can move (according to their movement stat) and attack the hero that attacked them. Some monsters have ranged attacks while others have melee attacks. It is possible, for example, for a hero to attack a monster and the reacting monster cannot move enough to attack the attacker back.

Another reaction monsters have in their program is when a hero attempts to move within or out of their "zone of control". This prevents players from simply moving their heroes around the monsters with impunity. The rules for this "guard reaction" is that they immediately attack the hero each time they move within or out of their zone of control. They do not move, however.

In both reaction cases, the player to the right of the player that owns the hero the monster is reacting to will act using the reacting monster and roll its dice. (Remember that AQ is primarily a PvP game, so there is plenty of incentive for the other player to act aggressively with the monster.)

Spawning

Monsters are placed in squares initially as indicated by the scenario. The image below shows the configuration of the board, portals, tokens, player starting area, and locations of monsters and objectives. In addition, the marker indicated with the red rectangles are "spawn tokens".

When a monster is killed it is moved off of the board onto the spawn track (the mini-board in the upper-left corner of the table with five slots). When all five slots are filled the monsters on that track will re-spawn into a random location on the board.

Each of the spawn tokens have two symbols printed on it. Two attack (black) dice are rolled for each figure on the spawn track, matching the symbols on the dice to the tokens. As there are three different symbols there are six unique combinations. As you can see in the image above, there are only four different combinations showing, so if a combination is rolled that is not on the board, that monster is permanently removed from the scenario, otherwise it is placed in the square with the corresponding token combination. (As there is a stacking limit to a square, if a combination is rolled and that square is already full, that monster is also permanently removed.)

Turn Sequence

As indicated above the basic turn sequence is as follows.

1. A single Hero activates for each player in turn. Alternately, a player can Rest his Guild (which is not discussed in this post).
1. If the Hero triggers a reaction, that Monster reacts to the Hero and acts according to its program and how the player to the right wishes.
2. Once all players have acted, if the Spawn Track is full, dice are rolled for each Monster on the track to see where it respawns, or if it is permanently removed.

Note that the Monsters do not get a "turn", thus this is not a traditional IGO-UGO game. This will become significant when we look at the solo rules.

AQ Solo Game Mechanics

Again, the idea is not to fully review the solo rules, but to highlight how the core mechanics change when playing solo.

Combat Mechanics

Combat mechanics do not change materially save for the Monster's movement stat. The stat remains the same – typically one square – but it is only used for payback reactions (reacting to being attacked by a Hero). As will be discussed in the Turn Sequence section, Monsters can move in their own separate turn and when they do, they will get to move three squares.

Because the intent is to use these rules by a single player, the mechanic of having the player to the right play the monsters when reacting will not work. The solo rules needed to tighten up their program on running the monsters. Because a reaction is always to a Hero and not to a player, nothing really needs to change. Either the monster can react to the moving/attacking player or it cannot. There are no real decisions to be made.

Spawn Mechanics

The mechanics do not materially change for solo play. The spawn tokens and spawn track still exist and are used the same way.

Turn Sequence

This is where the changes occur. The solo rules essentially have to change a PvP game to a PvE game. As before, no one "plays" the monster side, so the monsters need to be fully programmed.

The modified turn sequence is as follows.

1. The player activates all of his Heroes in any order he chooses, or Rests the Guild.
1. If the Hero triggers a reaction, that Monster reacts to the Hero and acts according to its program and how the player to the right wishes.
2. If the player completes all of the quests the game instantly ends.
2. If the Spawn Track is full, dice are rolled for each Monster on the track to see where it respawns, or if it is permanently removed.
3. The player will roll twice to determine which of the monsters on the board will get to move and attack.
1. Players lose and the scenario instantly ends if the Heroes have been killed a number of times equal to the difficulty of the game (somewhere between one and four times).
4. Once both Monsters have acted, the turn ends.

With the Monsters taking an active role, and there being only one Guild (team) to counter them with, the scenarios are much harder than when playing normally.

Conclusion

The goal of any A.I. or programmed opponent is to take the following four decisions away from the player and for the program to make them:

1. Which side gets to act next?
2. Which unit gets to act next?
3. Which actions will the acting unit take?
4. How will the unit execute those actions?

Given that this follows a traditional IGO-UGO turn sequence, this question is easily answered: the side that is current active will act next.

The spawn mechanics partially answer the second question: two dice are rolled to determine which spawn point to reference. Draw a Monster card. The closest Monster of the type indicated on the card to that spawn point will act next. If more than one meets that criteria, then it goes to the player choice. The player can use a number of rules to break the tie, which is recommended.

The third question is partially answered with rules: the Monster will move towards the closest Hero and then attack them if possible. Essentially the Monster takes an Attack action with an optional Move action if needed to get them to where they can attack.

The fourth question is largely unanswered. Although there are rules governing how a Monster should choose a target Hero, in the case of ties it is silent on how to break the tie. Where most of the ambiguity comes in are in the execution details. For example, if a Monster can attack from more than one direction there are no rules governing deciding which path. Also, if a Monster has a ranged weapon, can it (or should it) advance to the closest point at which it can fire, or should it move its full move?

In short, the solo rules are something to build upon, rather than relying upon it to cover all bases. (It does not even have the generic rule to "roll a die to choose", relying upon the player to choose.)

Testing

The more this lockdown continues, the more opportunity we all have to try more solo gaming and their mechanics. Although you can always fall back on the old "play both sides to the best of your ability" method, this leaves many games feeling like a test of the game mechanics, rather than an exciting narrative playing out. In fact, if you get too invested in one side, the odds are your bias with come out in lackluster or even bad plays on the opposing side. That is why having a solid program really helps solo gameplay.

These rules are "challenging". There is no adjustment to the enemy roster and you are expected to not only defeat the same number of enemy that would face two to four times the number of player Heroes, but these enemy can move towards you at great speed. In the two test games I played, the player's party never got more than one square beyond the starting area!

Overall, however, I enjoyed them and would play them again, with a few tweaks.

Baron Babbage Beats Me

If you have been following along lately you know that I have been speculating about how to make programmed opponents work by starting with a look at the solo mechanics called Playing Against Mr Babbage which are included in the The Men Who Would Be Kings rules, making my own programmed opponent Baron Babbage for the Medieval variant of the rules One-Hour Wargames (OHW), making another programmed opponent Warlord Babbage for the Dark Ages variant of the rules One-Hour Wargames, and finally Shawn's test of Warlord Babbage. I finally took a breath and decided to try out my original Baron Babbage in order to see what refinements needed to be made. I suspected that there was a bad hole in my logic for units that were not the closest to a triggering condition, i.e. they had no orders whatsoever, and that there might be a lot of edge cases.

Let me start by saying that this will not be a typical battle report. My goal is not to report how the battle went, nor give a blow-by-blow, but to review the Red (programmed) turns specifically, state the decision that I took, and discuss what refinements need to be made.

Scenario #8: Melee (One-Hour Wargames)

Red (Defender): Programmed

Just as a reminder, here is what the scenario's terrain looks like.

The scenario has two Red units on the hill at the start of the game. All other forces on both sides come in at various turns. There are six units in each army. The army composition is random for both sides. The scenario lasts 15 turns with Red taking the first turn.

Red Turn 1

I now believe this is a bad deployment as it anticipates Blue moving around the left flank. Better that it deploy in D4 and D5 facing South (the Blue baseline) and move on Red Turn 2, based on Blue's actual move.

Also, I realize that I did not think the deployment orders through. My order of preference in units to deploy here are Men-at-Arms then Knights. It is possible to have zero, one, or two Men-at-Arms units. What if you only had one? Should it deploy on the left or the right? (It should deploy on the right as the left is the position of maneuver and a Knight is more maneuverable.)

Red Turn 2

I brought on three Knight units as my move, using one to try and flank the hill from the East. The other two units will assault the hill frontally.
So, this is where the first rule refinement comes from.
Rule #1 says once you are on the hill, you stay on the hill. So that rule does not apply.
Rule #2 states that if there is an empty position on the hill, the closest unit to that position moves to occupy that position. It needs a qualifier that states that if you are already on the hill you may ignore the rule under some circumstances. Without the qualifier, a programmed unit would simply move back and forth between two empty positions on the hill. We do not want that.
That said, if a unit on a hill could make a move to block a Blue unit from gaining the hill, without risking its current position being take by a Blue unit, shouldn't it move to block? We will consider that rule later. For now we are just going to add the qualifier that if a unit is already on the hill it is not forced to obey Rule #2, nor will it count as the "closest unit".

Red Turn 3

During Blue's turn the Knight unit flanking the hill could not yet make a charge from the road. (Charging only allows a 45º pivot at the beginning of the turn and it was adjudged that the unit would clip the woods, so it had to move farther down the road to charge.) Now that Red reinforcements are coming on that really looks like a bad move. Nonetheless, let's review Red's decisions.

The two Red Knights on the hill have no decision to make. They are defending the hill, so they solemnly wait the charge from the Blue Knights.

The first unit entering from the road is a Red Knight. It can ignore Rule #1 as it is not on the hill. Rule #2 states that, as the closest unit, it must move towards the (closest) empty position on the hill. As it stands, that is also the position that is threatened by the West-most Blue Knight, so that is a good move. Red Knight #3 moves to occupy D5.

The second unit entering from the road is a Red Archer unit. Rule #1 does not apply. Rule #2 has been applied to Red Knight #3 for square D5, but square D6 is also empty. Normally you would apply Rule #2 to another unit, but Archers are an exception. Rule #3 does not apply as Blue has not occupied the hill. This essentially leaves the Red Archer unit only with Rule #4, which says that it may not move move than 6" from the Red baseline. The rationale for this deployment was listed as: "Archers on the left flank will have more opportunity to engage in shooting as they will be away from the objective. Archers on the baseline have the potential to shoot enemy Knights attacking the left flank of the hill, or those sweeping around. If the enemy engage them, all the better, as that means they are not engaging the units on the objective." With that, it made sense that the order should have been to move 6" off of the baseline to threaten the Blue Knight preparing to charge the East end of the hill.

I need a new rule that covers the condition when a Red Archer unit is not on the hill and does not have a Blue target on the hill.

Red Turn 4

As you can see from the image above, Blue has attacked on the East end of the hill and frontally. One of the Blue Knight units has gained the heights. Before I go on with discussing Red's moves, I ran into an interesting issue with the OHW rules.

Notice the Red Archer unit on the bottom left. It is on the flank of the Blue Knight unit which is engaged in hand-to-hand combat  with the Red Knight unit on the hill. Can the Red Archer unit fire into the Blue Knight unit? I know plenty of rules that would say 'no', or have a rule like one-half of the casualties are allocated to each side, but OHW is absolutely silent on the issue. Further, OHW is incredibly permissive, which lends me to believe a unit can shoot at an enemy unit in hand-to-hand combat. The one applicable rule I thought would apply was that a unit cannot be attacked on more than one face (in hand-to-hand combat) and that aligned nicely with, say, the rule in Dux Bellorum (which allows a missile unit to fire at a unit in close combat as long as the line of fire is completely clear of the enemy unit's base), so I felt I was on solid ground. What do you think?

By the way, the red and yellow die are both there because I misinterpreted the flank attack rule. It applies only to hand-to-hand combat and not to shooting. I sort of rationalized to myself that it would get double hits for flank, but one-half hits for "cover" (being in melee), so I only registered 5 hits. In this case, it worked out...

The Red Archer unit ignores Rules #1 and #2. Rule #3 would have applied if it were not for the Red Knight to the North of the hill being closer and the shot being blocked. So again, no applicable order applies to the Red Archer unit.

This is probably a separate rule from the one indicated above, which would govern firing. Given that you can only move or fire, which new rule should have precedence?

The Red Knight unit to the North of the hill matches Rule #2 and #3. It occurs to me that I may need to switch the order of these – having the unit attack the Blue unit on the hill over first moving onto the hill itself – but I am not sure. I will leave that decision until next turn. As it stands, the move to obey either rule is the same. I also need to add a clause about not exposing your flank to the enemy at the end of your move. (Note that my Red Knight to the North maintained its facing. That was not in the program.

One other note: for some reason I did not bring on Blue's reinforcements on turn 4, but rather turn 5. I did not even realize this until writing this report, in fact. That was a big mistake.

Red Turn 5

This was an interesting turn, in terms of programming. I realized that the Red Knight unit had to obey Rule #2, so rather than attacking uphill against the Blue Knight it moved to the vacant hill position and faced to charge the following turn.

That move, in turn, triggers the option for Rule #3 to apply to the Red Archer unit. Now that the Blue Knight unit is exposed, the Red Archer unit shifted right in order to shoot in future turns.

The other two Red units, being engaged in hand-to-hand combat, can do nothing but continue to fight.

Red Turn 6

The last of the reinforcements enter the board. The Red Levy units enter from the West edge, North of the hill.

As the Knights on the hill are all in hand-to-hand combat, there are no decisions. That leaves the Red Archers and the two Red Levy to consider.

I began to feel that the angle was too sharp for the Red Archers to fire into the Blue Knights that it had shifted right to attack last turn. So, with rules 1 through 3 not in play, they fired at the Blue Knights at the East end of the hill. This was the first instance of where the program went in one direction one turn, then reversed back the next. Basically, I lost one turn of fire due to that 'indecision'. I can live with that result, but it is something to watch for in future games.

The first Red Levy unit acts on Rule #3, which is to attack the Blue Knight unit on the hill. It thus moves towards a position from which it can charges its flank. The second Red Levy unit, however, has no applicable orders.

What happens to a unit when there is no unoccupied hill position and other (closer) units are already engaging enemy units on the hill? I need an order to reinforce the weak link in the line.

The original two Red Knight units on the hill are pretty beat up, so the second Red Levy unit moves left in order to fill any gap that may appear on the East end of the hill.

Red Turn 7

Blue was able to shoot down the weakened Red Knight unit on the East end of the hill, so the second Red Levy unit continues to shift left, as Rule #2 now applies to it.

The first Red Levy unit charges into contact of the flank of the Blue Knight unit on the hill.

The unengaged Red Knight cannot move from the hill and because I indicated earlier that a unit on the hill does not need to move to another unoccupied position on the hill, it simply stays put.

Finally, the Red Archer has no target and Rule #4 does not allow it to move farther off of the baseline. I allow it to do nothing, for now. But if it continues to stay out of the action, I may have to rethink its orders, especially as there is a possibility of having two such units.

Red Turn 8

The third Red Knight unit (that reinforced from the road) is gone, but the Red Levy was able to eliminate the Blue Knight unit they were both fighting before it was able to turn to flank. The Red Levy unit will gain the hill position.

The second Red Levy unit continues to shift left to occupy the East end of the hill. Once it gets there, however, I am not sure what it will do...

The Red Archer unit shoots at the advancing Blue Archer unit.

It may not have been a valid shot, considering that the Red Levy unit partially masks the line of sight. However, I generally go from unit center point-to-center point and that is not masked, so I allowed it. Would you have allowed the shot?

Red Turn 9

The first Red Levy unit has another Blue Knight unit to its flank so that means that Rule #3 now comes into play. It will simply face 90º to the right as it cannot charge.

The remaining Red Knight unit is nearly exhausted (as indicated by the arrow showing that it is four hits away from being destroyed).

The Red Archer unit continues to fire at the Blue Archer unit and the Red Levy unit finally gains the position on the East end of the hill. Its flank is exposed to the Blue Archer unit, but as it cannot turn 90º and charge it is relatively safe.

Red Turn 10

No unusual decisions. Red Archer fires. Red Levy holds firm.

Red Turn 11

The Blue Archer unit gets cut down by the Red Archer fire, relieving the last of the threats on the East flank. The Red Levy unit no longer needs to concern itself. Next turn we will look at how its orders should change, along with the Red Archer unit.

Note that the single, remaining Red Knight unit is still hanging on by a thread, with Blue having rolled terribly all of these turns.

Red Turn 12

Amazingly, Red Knight continues to hold on. One more hit and it collapses. This causes me to think about 'threats'. Red Levy cannot contribute to the melee between Red Knight and Blue Men-at-Arms because: a) it cannot come off of the hill (Rule #1); and b) it cannot move through the woods. If Red Levy were to stay facing South and the next turn Red Knight were to collapse, Blue Men-at-Arms would gain the hill (take the defeated Red Knight's position) and Red Levy would not be poised to charge as it could not turn 90º and charge.

I posit that there needs to be an order to allow a unit to change face on the hill which threatened from one side, but not threatened from the other. But I am not sure how to write the rule.

Red Levy faces right in anticipation that Red Knight will collapse next turn.

Red Archer, meeting the conditions of Rule #3, slides to the right to shoot into the flank of Blue Knight on the hill.

Red Turn 13

As expected, Red Knight is eliminated and Blue Men-at-Arms advances to take its position. This triggers Rule #3 for Red Levy, who charges into the flank of the Blue Men-at-Arms. Clearly they were reluctant to do so as they rolled a '2'!

Red Archer finds the Blue Knights closer and shoots into their flank due to Rule #3.

Red Turn 14

The Red Levy finally get their courage up and roll a hefty '6' on the die (which only counts as three hits, despite what the die shows), enough to vanquish the Blue Men-at-Arms (who had been badly mauled by the Red Knights Who Would Not Die).

The Red Archers continue to plink away at the Blue Knights. Don't ask me why the Blue Knights are facing down the hill; they should be facing the Red Levy. Don't ask me why the die says two hits, when the minimum is three. This picture clearly was messed up.

Red Turn 15

The end. The Red Levy and Red Archers pound the Blue Knights, inflicting a total of ten hits in a single round. (Ouch!) Baron Babbage clears the hill, leaving Red the victor.

Decision Review

So, here are the following additions that need to be made to the program:

1. When a unit is already on the hill, it is not required to obey Rule #2. This stops a unit from shifting back and forth between unoccupied positions.
2. When a unit is already on the hill, it may obey Rule #2 if:
1. The direction it is turning towards either allows it to attack an enemy unit on the hill, or allows it to block an enemy unit from getting on the hill.
2. The direction it is turning away from contains no possible threat to gaining a position on the hill.
3. When an Archer unit does not have a Blue target on the hill to shoot at (or move towards), it has no order.
4. When a non-Archer unit does not have an open hill position to move to (Rule #2) and no Blue unit on a hill position (or it cannot reach it), it has no order.

All in all I am very satisfied with the orders as is, and with these additions I think I am happy with it representing a cautious defender.