When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains....

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

I'm pretty sure it's the law that you have to start any post about a North West Frontier game with a quote from Kipling.  Of course for real artistry and class you don't need to look any further than Scotland's other national bard, William McGonagall...

And the battle that followed at Candahar was a complete victory,
And Lord Roberts’ march to Candahar stands unrivalled in history;
And let’s thank God that sent Lord Roberts to conquer Ayoob Khan,
For from that time there’s been no more war in Afghanistan

Hmmm...I'm not sure McGonagall got that last bit right...

Anyway, last night saw another outing for my 54mm NWF troops.  The game was kindly hosted at Eric the Shed's which meant I was able to use his fantastic collection of terrain and a table big enough to use my limbered gun.  On a normal 6' x 4' table this would look too large but Eric has a massive table...we only used a part of it giving us somewhere in the region of 8-10' x 6' to manoeuvre on.

On Eric's blog you'll find several accounts of a series of Napoleonic skirmish games that we've been playing using A Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket.  These are a really excellent set of skirmish rules and ideal for multiplayer games where you want a fairly heroic, cinematic style of game, so they seemed an obvious choice for this game.

The rules use a card deck with figures activating in sequence but certain cards give a bonus (+1 on shooting, a free reload etc).  The rules are simple enough that it was possible to have the key points along with info on each character on an A4 sheet.  Each player had 5 characters which feels about right for an evening's gaming.  In each group one of the characters had a bonus skill such as Clever or Fearless but there was also a character with a bad trait such as Cowardly or Unlucky to give a bit of variety.

The rules include scenarios from the French & Indian wars through to the ACW so I adapted some of the later period rules to reflect different weapons such as Martini Henry's, Sniders and Jezzails.

The scenario involved the British running the gun up the length of the table to safety while the Afghans ambushed from the rocky cliffs.  Originally there were due to be 6 of us so each side would have had a cavalry unit but in the event only 4 made it on the evening so the horses never arrived.

The British decided to push the gun forward as fast as they could while the infantry advanced on either side of the pass.  The Pathans on our left took up position in the rocky cliffs while mine on the right hid in some rocks and in the ruined building (the old Airfix Desert Outpost).  Eric's Highlanders quickly realised that they'd have to cross open ground under Jezzail fire to reach me and Eric's Unlucky Private began to attract a lot of rifle fire.  The plucky Highlanders decided to go for glory and striking up 'The Black Bear' advanced within rifle range.  We settled into a long range gun battle which slowly whittled down the Scots and luckily I was also able to knock out the riders on the Gun Limber bringing it to a halt.

The Gordons advance up the ravine

On the other side of the ravine Mark's Pathans opted for a much more direct approach charging into bloody melee with John's British troops who were scaling the cliffs.  This proved a very messy affair with troops charging up and down the slopes and the bodies began to pile up.  The resident vulture spent a lot of the game flapping around the cliff top with plenty of rich pickings!

The battle for the heights

A well fed vulture...

Back in the centre my Pathan leader faced off against the Gordon's Captain as we tussled for control of the gun and limber.  A pistol shot cracked out and my leader fell to the ground!

The Gordon's Captain and Sergeant bravely leapt onto the gun limber and started to ride the gun off to safety but Snider rifles from the outpost and the cliffs made quick work of them, leaving Mark's cowardly Leader to nip out from his rocks and claim the gun and the horses for himself.

The cowardly Pathan finishes  off the riders

The 2 remaining British soldiers beat a retreat back down the pass leaving the Pathans bloodied but victorious.

It was a great game which went down to the wire.  I can highly recommend the rules for fun, cinematic Skirmish games.  They're available to order online as a hard copy or a PDF which makes them a good bargain and can be found here

A write up of the game can also be found on Eric the Shed's excellent blog here

Last Stand on the North West Frontier...

At the Little Wars Revisited event a couple of weeks ago, my British and Pathans had their first outing and I tried out The Sword and The Flames as a rule set.  I wasn't overly impressed with TSATF...they worked well enough and certainly suited the type of rules we needed on the day (nice and simple and easy to pick up) but they felt quite dated and a bit clunky.

For their second outing Anthony and I had planned a game using The Men Who Would Be Kings from Osprey.  These are another ruleset from Dan Mersey and follow the same kind of mechanics that you'll find in Lion Rampant, The Pikeman's Lament etc. but with a few tweaks to suit the late 19th Century.  I'd played these once before but not for some time.

Probably the most striking difference is the Order system...in Lion Rampant etc. once you fail to successfully activate a unit your turn is over completely and play passes to your opponent.  In TMWWBKs a failure means you move to your next unit and you get to try and activate everything.  I guess this reflects better command and control in this era and certainly makes for a more engaging game.

Units can also be pinned by casualties, causing them to halt and requiring a 'Rally' order to get them going again. 

The rules come with a range of suggested Field Force lists but there are a lot of individual tweaks and abilities that can be given to units to personalise them and create scenario specific units.  The Field Force (the rules use this term for 'army') doesn't have an overall leader but each individual unit does: each of these has a Command rating which is determined at the start of the game.  This does mean that you need to find a way to record this for each unit (I used a dice next to each one) but I guess there is nothing to stop you simply allocating a standard command rating to all units if this seems like to much paperwork or you don't fancy having table clutter.

Each leader is also meant to roll for individual traits which can be good or bad depending on the dice roll...we opted not to bother with this as it seemed like another list of things to remember (or more likely, to forget!).  I can't see me using this for every unit but it might be entertaining to do it for one or two or perhaps in a multiplayer game it could be given to each player.

The rules also come with a range of scenarios and an interesting solo play system (Mr Babbage) which I haven't tried but looks like it would make for some fun games.  Because of the size of 54mm figures and a 6' x 4' table we decided to use one of the optional rules and fielded half-sized units...this worked out at 6 figures for Regular and Irregular infantry, 8 for Tribal Infantry and 5 for Cavalry.  This looked fine on the table...any bigger and I think we'd have been struggling for space.

So, on to the game...

The scenario we played was the 'To The Last Bullet' scenario which saw a small British force falling back towards a ruined building in the face of a full strength mob of Pathans.  As Anthony always makes a point of playing the British wherever possible, I decided a scenario where they have to spend the game retreating would prove annoying... Afghan psyops!!   This gave the British 3 Regular Infantry units versus 3 Irregular Infantry, 2 Tribal Infantry and 2 Tribal Cavalry.  This seemed a lot but it didn't stay that way for long!

The Pathan Field Force...

And the British defenders...note the vulture on the hill getting ready for some rich pickings....

The British can win by having 5 successive turns in which they received no casualties (the Pathans are assumed to have got bored at this point and wandered off home!).  The building provides hard cover but can only hold one unit so some of them will have to mix it with the Pathans.

The Pathans made a hesitant start with some units reluctant to advance but a few did advance at the double (a special order with an extra dice of movement) to try and close the range.  Not surprisingly the British outranged the Pathan rifles.  The cavalry enthusiastically charged across the table hoping to ride down one of the British units.  I'd set up the terrain rather randomly before the game with a mix of hills and a small stand of trees.  The only other feature was a dry river bed running across the table which proved a blessing and a curse!  The river counted as an obstacle so units had to halt before crossing it and this stopped the cavalry within rifle range.   Some spectacular dice throwing from Anthony quickly despatched both units and ensured that Nibbles, the local vulture would be well fed that evening.

The rest of the Pathan infantry finally made it to the river bed and decided to use it as cover rather than advancing.  One of the Bitish units had pulled back into the building by this point but the Gordons had bravely decided to stand in the face of the advancing hordes and slug it out with rifle fire

Ultimately this proved disastrous as, although they inflicted heavy casualties on several Pathan units, they were gradually whittled down and eventually the Colours fell.


The Pathans reach the river bed...

On my right I tried charging my Tribal Infantry (faster but poor shots) against the British with predictable results...one unit was wiped out and the other badly damaged and forced to retreat due to Pinning results.

The tribes charge...

With the Gordons despatched and the 2nd unit skulking in the building, the Pathan rifles turned on the 3rd British unit and casualties mounted on both sides.  The Pathans were badly damaged but eventually reduced the British to one figure.  As he wouldn't be able to inflict a casualty at long range Anthony decided to withdraw him close to the building.  At this point the Pathans decided that they'd achieved all they could...the British in the building looked pretty impregnable and there weren't many Pathans left to attack with so they withdrew.  A British victory but a costly one...


The survivors take cover in the building ...

The building is the old Airfix Desert Outpost...

And a special mention to Nibbles the Vulture...

A great game and a lot closer than I thought it was going to be...especially when my cavalry were mown down in quick succession.  The rules worked really well and I think will be my 'go to' rules for this level of game.

The Little Wars Revisited 54mm Day in Woking

So yesterday saw the first Little Wars Revisited 54mm wargaming day, organised by Mike Lewis of Black Hat Miniatures. via the Little Wars Revisited forum.

As it was the first gathering numbers were a little low (including a couple of people who we'd expected but who didn't make it) but hopefully this will grow into something a bit bigger.  The idea of the day was to hold a number of games, and crucially, to make sure everyone's game got played: there's nothing worse than going to lots of effort to lay on a game only to find everyone is busy at the next table!

The venue was Christchurch in central Woking... a great venue with a really pleasant room at the top of the building and an excellent café.  The only downside for me was the extortionate parking charges in the car park down the road!

 There were 5 games staged in total:

 Mike put on his version of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame.  Mike has designed this to complement his range of 54mm soldiers and it looks great...

More about the day on Mike's blog... http://mikelewis.info/littlewars

 There was a very impressive Napoleonic game staged by Eric Kemp which featured a model of La Haye Sainte featuring 10 000 individual roof tiles!!  Eric also fielded a huge number of individually based figures...

 Here's a link to Eric's blog with more info... mywaterloologaddress.blogspot.co.uk/

Brian Carrick put on a lovely looking Lion Rampant game featuring medieval armies slugging it out...

 ...and a link to Brian's blog... http://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.co.uk

Anthony Morton put on a lovely looking ECW game which I played in the afternoon.  We used The Pikeman's Lament rules which I don't think I've played before...it was only when I got home that I realised I do actually have a copy on the bookshelf!

This was very much a game of 2 halves for me... on the right flank I successfully drove off the Parliamentarian commander and his cavalry unit and weakened the rest of his horse but sadly my infantry were shot to pieces by some well-coordinated enemy musketeers who proved very effective.

The Royalist cavalry enjoy their moment of victory, unaware that the rest of the army has run away!

 My pikemen march to their doom...

 These are 28mm scaled buildings but they work really well with 54mm figures...

Lastly my game was a North West Frontier skirmish using The Sword and the Flame rules.  It gave me a chance to finally field the figures I've been working on, with some help from Mike and Anthony lending some extra figures and Mike's terrain.  Brian was the victim...erm...willing volunteer to try the game out and as I've only played TSATF once before he was subjected to quite a bit of page flicking while I checked out particular rules.  Luckily TSATF is a pretty intuitive ruleset once you get going.

The scenario had a force of British troops attempting to relieve a unit holed up in a building at the other end of the table.  As expected the intervening ground was hoaching with hidden, angry Pathans waiting for a chance to drive off the infidel.

The Indian Cavalry advance...

It didn't take long to flush out some of the ambushers...

The British bravely charge the Pathans...

While a sneakily hidden gun surprises them...

...and after a very bloody fight one British soldier single-handedly wiped out half the Pathan unit and won the combat.  A VC for that chap I think!

 The Indian and Afghan cavalry clashed several times before the Pathans eventually gained the upper hand...

Unfortunately they then got a bit overconfident and attempted to ride down the British Artillery.  This was the result...

 The defenders of the outpost eventually sallied out to meet their rescuers and although the Afghans were able to capture the building the defenders were able to cut their way to freedom...

I'm still in 2 minds about TSATF...it's a nice simple system and quick to pick up (although I suspect I made a few errors) but it feels a bit dated and unsophisticated.  I think my choice for this kind of game would be The Men Who Would be Kings, which coincidentally (or not) Anthony and I will be playing in a couple of weeks.

So all in all a really great day and a brilliant chance to see some excellent examples of 54mm wargaming (and mine...) and to meet some really nice folk and make new friends.  Here's to the next one!

Devils in Skirts!

More progress on the 54mm Armies in Plastic troops for the North West Frontier.  These Gordon Highlanders are part of the British contingent for one of the games at The Little Wars Revisited 54mm Games Day in Woking on 10th March... link

The deadline has been really helpful for my motivation...if only work deadlines worked the same way  :)