Combat:

Combat is resolved in teh following manner:

Each character will have a combat card on which is written their strenght.

High strength wins.

In the event that two or more players attackc one player high strength wins.

In the event of a tie, the players will throw Rochambeau (or as it is also known, Jan-Ken) to determine the outcome.

The winner may

In actual practice the initial rules, written by King and Henrietta, were vastly revised during almost every run. The fact that a fatal result is impossible (though several characters were killed) in the basic system makes many of the plots in the game actively dysfunctional.

Field Combat

The Origin of Wargaming in any meaningful sense is of course Prussian. In 1824, the Prussian Lieutenant von Reisswitz modified and published a game system created by his father, which he published as Instructions for Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame.

Since the Early 19th Century, the Prussian Army has produced the most superior miniature wargames, vast improvements on their 16th century antecedents, involving exacting measurements, etc. These systems are on the whole known as Kriegspiel (not to be confused with the South African Chess variant of the same name developed by Michael Henry Temple), and fall into two categories. "Rigid Kriegspiel" is rather slow to play, and relies on a massive compendium of charts drawn from actual combat experience. "Free Kriegspiel" relies on an impartial umpire, who makes rulings as to the fate of units and is better adopted for our needs.

In our system our guide shall be the quote of Fred T. Jane ""Nothing may be done contrary to what could or would be done in actual war." [Jane is familiar to us as the father of Jane's Fighting Ships, however he would be more familiar to Bucher and King as a wargamer, and illustrator of many of the dime novels they relished - ed.]

To this end the players need not concern themselves overly much with tables or rules, but need only move their units in the manner indicated on their card, and the Kriegspiel Umpire will rule on their movement.

With the departure of Bucher, in 1914, the GMs redrew the Field Combat System almost Immediately. King planned to write a definitive 200 page system, however there is no evidence that he got past notes, still smarting from "Being Horatio King." He maintained up until the last week that he would deliver the system, but it never materialized, and the final 1916 rulebook carried this notice:

It was our initial intention to include a definitive Kriegspiel system herein, however we have been stymied by three factors:

I. The work of translating such a system would be a major effort in itself.

II. It is the adjudgement of our Wargame GM that most of our players are not sufficiently sophisticated at the art of War-Gaming to pick up such a system in an afternoon.

Therefore, with some trepidation we have agreed to settle for the popular system published by Mr. H.G. Wells, "Little Wars: A Game for Boys From Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys' Games and Books; With an Appendix on Kriegspiel.

A copy will be available for perusal in Game Central from 18:00 Friday.

However you dear player can obtain it here [Text] [ZIP file] in advance (Courtesy of Project Gutenberg). It is worth purusing "Little Wars" however we exert you not to lose too much sleep on it. The Field Combat system never ran correctly in any of the runs of Clarence, and in particular for the first version, many elements were dropped, radically altered, or run according to obscure Prussian Methodology. Bucher was known for decisions which were termed "arbitrary and capricious" even by some of his closest friends. The equipment such as can be managed for the game will be provided.

Finally, very little knowledge of actual wargame tactics will be required. We actually believe that our version of Kriegspiel/Little Wars will be fairly fun and playable, as it involves hurled objects.

It is noteworthy that Bucher certainly intended there to be restrictions on who could command troops. In practice of course that broke down, nowhere worse than in the case of Confederate General Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It is nowhere clear who is allowed to command troops, and seems to have been determined by Bucher on one hand, and King on the other, with pressure from the other GMs in some circumstances.