How a battle is played

1.1. A battle is a series of periods. A period is thirty seconds of combat, resolved one second at a time.

1.2. Each period has three phases. Orders: the lieutenant transmits to any or all of his commanders. Execute: thirty seconds pass for everyone at once. Report: commanders send what they have to send, and the lieutenant sees what tank one saw.

1.3. A commander not addressed this period carries on with his last order. Orders are standing until completed, replaced, or made impossible.

1.4. Nothing on the map is the truth. The map shows what tank one has seen, plotted where tank one’s crew believe it to be, and what other commanders have reported, plotted where they said it was. Both can be wrong. The truth is recorded and revealed after the battle.

1.5. All chance is dice. No man is ever forced to break, and no shot is ever guaranteed. Anything that can happen has a probability, and that probability is in this manual.

1.6. Before the first orders phase the lieutenant is issued a field order: the situation, what intelligence believes of the enemy, the mission, his platoon, the objective, and 13.1’s conditions in words. The enemy estimate is what he was told, not what is there, and may be wrong. He may reread the order at any time during the battle.

1.7. Chapter two. A campaign may continue into the next; the men carry, the tanks do not; the year between is applied at the muster by 14.9.