Wally Simon made use of the "Rally Zone" in many of his rules with the idea that a stand eliminated is not necessarily a group of troops permanently KIA'd. They run off, they come back, they help a wounded fellow off the field, they come back, and so on. He experimented a lot with the Rally Zone idea.
For example, in Volume 5: Master Secrets of Wargame Design (full disclosure: I edit the series), page 15 (ACW Rules Experiment: The Perils of Rallying), part of his ACW rules included a 'filtering process' for casualties…
Silly Walk
Now, I should note that what General Jim had focused on, when he cried "Silly!" to the world, was not the distorted weapons' ranges. No, he was lambasting the Rally Zone, wherein stands, when they took a couple of hits from enemy fire, were placed, and from which, when rally time came at the end of each half-bound, they could spring back to life and walk back onto the field.
Unca Jim thought that for a stand to be reborn was, indeed, a silly thing. If you were hit, you died, and you stayed dead, thought he.
There's nothing wrong with Jim's thinking, except that, the way I generated the rules, my definition of a 'hit' wasn't really the same as Jim's definition of a hit.
Sequence Sequentials
In the move-and-fire sequence, units, i.e. brigades, were given a number of actions, and had to devote their assigned actions to either firing or moving. When firing, if the four regiments of the 4-stand brigade formed in line, each stand was given a 10-sided Hit Die (HD). A toss of 1, 2, or 3 was a hit on the target. If more than one action was devoted to firing, additional HD were tossed.
What this means is that a brigade, tossing perhaps four to six HD, could score several hits on the target. And if other brigades added their fire to the first, the target unit could collect many, many hits per volley. Note that each time a target stand was removed from the field, an entire regiment of some 300? 400? More? men was out of the fight. This results in a helacious rate of casualties. We need some kind of filter to reduce the actual casualty rate, otherwise we have a very, very, short game.
My filtering procedure consisted of two parts. First, when a brigade took three hits, one regimental stand was removed from the field and placed in the Rally Zone. Not all the men in the regiment were deemed to be out of the fight, but the unit was so disorganized as to be ineffective for the moment.
Second, at the end of every half-bound, a rally phase took place, and both sides diced to see if they could reorganize their regiments, i.e., bring them back on the field. On the rally phase, every stand was diced for: a toss of 1, 2, or 3 meant that the regiment fully recovered, while a toss of 4, 5, or 6 meant that the unit was beyond recovery -- for all intents and purposes, they were truly dead. A toss of 7, 8, 9, or 10 meant that the regiment stayed in the Rally Zone and could try again next time.
The Rally Zone procedures are the ones in which units are destroyed. There is 30% chance of an entire regiment being wiped out (toss of 4,5,6), while there's a 40% chance (toss of 7,8,9, 10) that the unit gets a second bite at the apple.
Note that the filtering process uses a lot of sequential percentage ploys. The HD requires a 1,2,3 for a hit, then three hits removes a regiment, and finally, to recover from the Rally Zone, another 1, 2, or 3 is required. This results in a game in which the firing player tosses lots of dice, gets lots of hits, yet the actual casualty rates -- in terms of 'dead' stands -- is kept within reason. Hence the difference in definition of a hit 'twixt me and General Jim.
begins to think about terrain for Team Yankee.
