Another progress report about my Portable Belle Époque Wargame rules (2)

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the significant changes I am making to THE GATLING'S JAMMED rules from THE PORTABLE COLONIAL WARGAME book are as follows:

• Machine guns a treated like artillery and have their own fire phase.
• The number of units a general can activate each turn is subject to a degree of randomness that depends upon their ability.
• A timescale has been introduced.

The section that deals with the second of these currently reads as follows:

Grading a general and activating units

• To determine a general’s grading, two D6 dice are rolled, and the combined dice score determines the general’s grading.
• Dice score = 10, 11, or 12: General is graded Good 
• Dice score = 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9: General is graded Average
• Dice score = 2 or 3: General is graded Poor
• This grading helps to determine how many units they can activate each turn.
• If used during a campaign, a general’s grading can be changed to reflect their success … or lack of it.
• Before the battle begins, each side is allocated a playing card colour (i.e. red or black).
• The number of units they command is totaled, divided by 2, and rounded up.
• This gives the median value of the playing cards that the general will be allocated.
• The median value of the playing cards is then adjusted according to the general’s competence:
• Good general: Increase the median value of the playing cards by 2.
• Average general: Increase the median value of the playing cards by 1.
• Poor general: No adjustment is made to the median value of the playing cards.
• The players extract the red and black playing cards from two packs of playing cards and place them in separate piles.
• The general who has been allocated the red playing cards removes the red playing cards that have their modified median playing card value from their pile plus the red playing cards that have their modified median playing card value plus 1 and minus 1. These form their pack of activation cards.
• The general who has been allocated the black playing cards removes the black playing cards that have their modified median playing card value from their pile plus the black playing cards that have their modified median playing card value plus 1 and minus 1. These form their pack of activation cards.
• The two piles of coloured activation cards each have a Joker added to them to form that side’s pack of activation cards.
• Each side’s pack of activation cards is then shuffled and placed face down.
• Important note regarding the activation of artillery and machine gun units
• During the turn sequence, the artillery and machine gun fire phases take place before a side activates its other units.
• Both sides can – but do not have to – activate their artillery and machine gun units each time one of their side’s activation cards is turned over.
• If they do this, these count as one of that side’s unit activations.
• Once all the units that side can activate have been activated, the playing card is discarded and placed face up next to that side’s pack of activation cards.
• This process continues until a Joker is turned over, at which point the discarded activation cards are returned to the relevant pack of activation cards and the whole pack is re-shuffled, and the process begins again.