Figment - Some After Thoughts

The Battle of Figment Gap was a brisk affair, lasting just six moves in total. I had based the scenario on one of Charles S Grant's, but suspect I probably overloaded it in favour of the Egyptians. Certainly the Assyrians would have done better if they'd had something approaching parity in missile troops.

 The bite-size units worked effectively, largely because using a dice to record hits instead of removing casulaties means the number of figures in a unit is more or less irrelevant. Certainly they made for a faster game - the whole thing was over in little more than an hour.

The Army Funk Revelator - which I shall from now on refer to by the all-too-sensible name of the Victory Chart, worked pretty well, recording morale simply and easily without the need for repeated testing. The Assyrians disintegrated in a pleasing manner (well to a biased Egyptian general's eyes, anyway) though they were unlucky in suffering the loss of their general so early. Certainly it is something I feel it is worth persisting with.

One point that arises from the use of the Victory Chart:

First turn. This becomes much more important when the VC is in use. I would therefore say that first should be decided at the start of each move. Card draw is the obvious way, but I think using dice might be better, because then you could give the army with greater cohesion/discipline an advantage - Macedonians, for example, might roll a D10 while Persians rolled a D6 and so forth. Had the Assyrian Lancers had first move on the turn in which their destruction irrevocably tilted the battle in the Pharaoh's favour, then they would have created all sorts of havoc in the Egyptian lines and the battle might have ended differently.

I'm all for introducing more tension into games, and crucial dice throws are one obvious means of doing so.