Remember Isandlwana
Singapore Mutiny
Raid on Mashama's Kraal
The Battle of Omar's
Isandlwana Again!
MacDuff in Bengal: A Close Brush
Keeping De Wet from Defeat
Mysore Wars: Nandi Droog 1791
Maori Wars: Gate Pa 1863

Remember Isandlwana!
10 September 1998
Went to the wargames convention in Milbrae last weekend with my friend Ed Allen. This is the first time I've been to any wargames event on this scale, and with good company it was a great experience. There were two colonial games, the first a Zulu War 15mm scenario involving 2-3 8 man units of British Infantry, lancers, Natal Mounted Police and artillery and lots of Zulus. The ruleset was Principles of War and made for rather fast play so two scenarios were played. The first was rather what one would call a walkover for the Zulus, the British had to relieve a concealed hilltop artillery position, while the Zulus had to stop them. We split the Zulu impi in two parties, the larger one in the donga in one corner of the table and the lesser at the other end of the table, which (lucky for us) turned out to be the rear of the British relief force. The artillery opened fire immediately, thus disclosing their position and so we headed right for it . The relief column got as far as the artillery position, but became encircled and destroyed piecemeal. All in all a rather dull affair. 
        Unfortunately I missed the first bit of the second game, but when I dropped in the Brits were in possesion of a tabletop hill quite unnassailable on two sides and hotly engaged by the Zulus, arriving from the direction of a nearby wooded hillock, and attempting a similar encircling movement as in the last game. The right horn, as it were, was sweeping around the tabletop, being first charged by the lancers, with some success, and coming under fire from the British artillery battery after getting horrible dice throws at critical moments. The Zulu attack pressed home nevertheless, and a sharp hand to hand brolly ensued. The attack had by this time been bogged down essentially, and the game ended with no clear cut victory or defeat. Presumably all parties gave up for tea.

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The Singapore Mutiny

        The other game was a very picturesque representation of the Singapore Mutiny of 1915 in 25mm using Sons of the Desert rules. The mutinous sepoys started at the barracks and fanned out to take the city. A rabble of local townsfolk (represented by Boers) and British officers armed with a Maxim gunrallied round a fortified bungalow, awaiting eagerly the British response. The British by the way were coming in randomley from all directions in extremely unreliable lorry transport. The first troops to arrive were the Malay Constabulary (converted from Ral Partha Gurkhas), and the remaining sepoys still loyal to the Crown, distinguished by yellow facings on the cuffs. The British plan, as expected was ill coordinated, their having to search all the buildings and rescue the civilians cowering inside, relieve the bungalow if possible, and stop the mutiny.
        Ed's policemen headed flat out for the besieged homesteaders but were stalled by engine trouble, while the loyal sepoys went down the main street, but were mowed down by the renagade Punjabis who managed to occupy the buildings beforehand. Then came the second group of armed civilians, naval landing party, the British infantry and an 18pdr in the rear. The townsfolk and the naval brigade began the slow process of searching the buildings for civilians, while the Imperial foot started a really smashing Balaclava-style charge for the guns. The force at the bungalow, meanwhile, while making a gallant and hard fought stand, they simply couldn't hold out forever against the savage hordes. As it happened they fell within sight of their would-be rescuers, who had to proceed on foot.
        The Imperials, in the course of their rather rash action, came under the  unexpected fire on the right flank from sepoys positioned in one of the more dominant buildings, plus that of the mountain gun. By the time they reached the wall they had ben halved and mutineers had showed up in great numbers. After inflicting some casualties they were repulsed, and fled for cover. Meanwhile the Chinese New Year's parade was proceeding right through the two belligerents as scheduled. The Mutineers, growing impatient with the slow dragon train, decided to charge the bally thing, which was full of Boxers! The gun deployed too late and by the time it was unlimbered and ready for action the only target was a unit of sepoys who had captured and were holding hostage the nuns and priest from the local Church. Even the diciplined soldiers of the Queen will shirk at some things! The naval brigade and the volunteer levy spent themselves on an assault on the marksmen firing from the loopholed buildings, and the Boxers were eventually driven off. All in all a bloody shambles for the British. And so it came to pass that the sun set on Singapore.

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Raid on Mashama's Kraal

        This is a 25mm 1879 scenario using The Sword and the Flame I've been putting together gradually for awhile. It was useful in getting to know the rules and test the scenario. Unfortunately for the Zulus they were up against my good 'ole dad. The forces consisted on the home team six mixed units of Zulus and on the forces of Democracy and (debatable) Civilization were a unit of Thin Red Linesmen and one of Dragoons. The initial Zulu plan was to wait till the redcoats had blundered into the valley and envelop them from all sides. But this was not to be! The Zulus were the ones outflanked as the insolent Englishmen split their forces and advanced through the neighbouring valleys on either side. The cavalry made a dash for the kraal only to literally stumble upon the bulk of the Zulu horde hiding in the donga. After taking one casualty (wounded) from thrown assagais the gallant twelve decided to leg it. Seeing Zulu reinforcements threatening to outflank them, the troopers made their way towards the other friendly unit, two valleys away.
        Meanwhile the redcoats, catching the other horn eagerly anticipating another Isandlwana in the other direction, commenced a murderous volley fire. The startled warriors retreated behind kwaYehoodi, the residence of a local Indian trader. Here they were again caught offguard, this time from the rear by the highly manoeverable British riders. After recieving another volley, this time from the newcomers, the thought they'd had enough and promtly bolted. Then, with the oncoming impi at their heels, the noble twelve dragoons scaled Mt. Dingiswayo to get a good view of them and support the infantry. Another fusilade occurred and the crack unit of Zulu rifles (actually Pathan jezailachis in disguise) fled, seeing the Zulu chief dead. With the whole army frozen in shock the horsemen, fearing a Zulu flanking march in progress, dashed again, this time for the right flank of the infantry.
        Next move the Zulus tried to ascend the conical koppie, but the British picked off the foremost warriors one by one as they appeared on the skyline. The other wing of the Zulu army continued its flanking movement, in the direction of the burnt farmer Jed's house, presumably to take him and his wife Fanny hostage. The game was ended with the British general, though in a fairly secure position and only outnumbered 2:3, a trifle uneasy in his boots about the possible bad publicity if he let Fanny become a hostage. Presumably, at this juncture all parties decided to stop for tea.

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The Battle of Omar's

        This was a 25mm Soldier's Companion British-with-native-allies-vs-Germans-and-Boers-with
-native-allies game run by Ed Allen  at the Art of War in Oakland. The basis of the game is that when the Boers asked for European support in the South African War they actually got it, in the form of the Germans attacking accross the Orange from Sudweft Afrika. The conquering Huns proceed to a point in beautiful Cape Colony populated by a mixed Indian-African community. Confused by the ethnicity factor, the Germans stop long enough to be intercepted by the British army sent to remedy the situation.
        Because of the large number of troops involved this was a pretty straightforward sort of engagement, the objective being Omar's Camel Palace, situated in the centre of the table. Both forces were arrayed in a lines along the long baselines of the table to meet in a head-on collision. On the end nearest the wall, the German right and the British left, were amassed the local native forces employed temporaraly as mercenaries by both sides amoungst the Bushy Hills found in that quadrant. In the middle, which was fairly flat, were the European troops; infantry, cavalry, and artillery of both sides, ready to duke it out to the last. On the side furthest the wall, the British right and the German left, was a conical hill, the approach to which on the German side was in a thicket of scrub. On this side were the Australian contingent, and on the German side a unit of white clad askaris.
        As it happened the general plan of both sides was the same -- to employ a semicircular formation and engulf the enemy in fire. It was later discovered that the British had a numerical advantage-- twice as many natives, two more guns, and more cavalry. On the other hand the Germans had that most feared of all military innovations: the Maxim gun! Something had to give.
        Initially, the natives made a breif fight on the side nearest the wall which was inconclusive, before going home for tea. The German askaris on the side furthest the wall were bogged down in bush while the Anzacs raced to sieze the heights. The Boer irregulars in the centre meanwhile were making a dash of their own for Omar's camel lot. The British guns opened up a lethal barrage on the Germans, obliterating one Maxim crew right off.
        Then, just as the Teutonic askaris fired a shattering volley at the Aussies, just appearing on the summit, the Boers came under the fire of fully half the British force, forcing them to retire after a gallant stand in the lot.
        By this time, it was getting late, and the players became grumpy with the effect of what the general concencis of opinion that night maintained was a tedious and outright slow set of rules. In the future, it was decided, we would try With Macduff to the Frontier.

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Isandlwana Again!

Another great debacle for the British followed in this game, despite the best intentions and great enjoyment of the men in charge. This game started with the same scenario with TSATF as Mashama's kraal; a british column, this time consisting of a troop of the 17th Lancers, a troop of Natal Native Horse, and a unit of the 24th. The action started immediately as two units of Zulus charged the Thin Red Line of (mostly) Welshmen. They sprung from the bush only a few yards from the British position, and the British commanders evidently hadn't had their tea that morning so had not thought to avoid it. To begin with the supreme Commander in Chief of the British Forces, Edward Rapier-Briggs, fell victim to a thrown Zulu spear. This could not be a good sign. The line opened with a crashing volley of .45 Boxer-Henry lead directly at the assailants, but it was not enough! The infantry soon became so deeply embroiled in such a fierce melee that the thought to remedy the bush situation and move away had failed to spark.
        Meanwhile on the left the lancers trotted at a stately pace towards the conical kop, right passed the not-so abandoned (as it turned out) mission station. The very dark Zulus in feather headdresses hiding behind the station immediately began pursuit. Luckily for the 17th their horses were given quite a start and galloped swiftly on, conveniantly taking the hights as they did so. To avoid the next hill the troop formed into column, getting their rearguard swallowed up as they did so. Soon most of the troop were either dead, wounded, or carrying wounded, thus reducing the effective fighting strength to two. Something akin to "The Route of the White Hussars" followed, and they almose made it to the end of the table by the time the game ended. So much for the Death or Glory Boys!
        Despite the valiant charge of the Basutos the repeated Zulu attacks were just too much for the infantry in the centre, and so it came to pass that they, the Thin Red Linesmen, fled right off the table like the lancers. The light horse proceeded in a dash for the kraal, supported, they thought, by the lancers on their left, who were actually running for their lives. About this time a unit of Congo-Zulus partially armed with rifles had scaled the rocky hill, and bore down on the Native Horse with the full strength of 15 improvised muskets and rifled muskets. They were surprisingly accurate, and three wounded resulted. Now even the gallant light horse reached a point where their commander was not willing to risk more lives by continuing, so they turned too.
        It looks like the British are going to have to come in with at least two battalions of redcoats to quell these damnedably good, not to mention really scary fighting men.

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MacDuff in Bengal: A Close Brush with Death in the Jungle

For this game, played at Eric Rauchner's place in Berkeley, our local gaming group was able to to test out a new period and a new set of rules: Bengal in 1757 using "With MacDuff to the Frontier," a project I had been brewing for some time. I set my scenario in the campaign which marked the beginning of a large empire in India under the British, between the Honourable East India Company forces and the French-backed Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Duala.
        A batallion of Company Europeans and two of sepoys with an artillery battery were advancing up a small river, jungle on one side and plains on the other. They were off to take the town of Chugwaddi, in preparation for the siege of the great fortress standing nearby on a precipitous cliff. The Nawab had anticipated their arrival, and set up a force defending the region of 3 20-man units of matchlocks, 1 of sword-armed peasants, 1 12-man unit of cavalry, and three guns. The guns were well entrenched behind the rampart of an old stone bridge at the town, and put up a heavy fire against the British advancing up the river. The British opted to advance through the jungle rather than their customary foray on the plains ("That'll take them by suprise, what?"). Unfortunately, there was little in the way of hard cover for the British artillery, which was left on the wrong side of the river, away from the rest of the force in the jungle. The advancing native matchlocks finally closed into melee with the honourable gunners, and a terrific row ensued. Meanwhile, the infantry were preoccupied with a costly skirmish with the Hindu peasants, who, despite being the worst unit on the table, caused the most casualties! It all turned into a horrible bloody mess for the British, as they each came under half strength and successively were shattered. So much for the impervious Thin Red Line!
        It may not have been a perfectly fair scenario, as the British had a lot to take care of, with the natives entrenched in the fort and the bridge, and huge amounts of intervening terrain making a blitzkrieg impossible. The two times I have run it since have also been total flops for the British. We generally liked the rules, but the melee system, we thought required some modification because melee becomes the predominant tactic, giving the advantage to whomever has the most troops, and making it very difficult to simulate the disparities endemic to Indian warfare. Accordingly, I have made my own rules where a unit closing into contact has to take a die roll first to see if it closes, stays put, or retreats. After a tuning period, we found these new rules seem to work well, making the game much more realistic. That said, we all had a fun time, and hope to try new scenarios soon.

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Keeping De Wet from Defeat 

At last years' Gamecon (2000) I had the pleasure of attending a The Sword and the Flame Boer War game run by my friends Bob Abra and Nick Stern. It was set around 1901 with De Wet's commando and wagons trying to break out of the ever-tightening cordon of British blockhouses and Barbed Wire surrounding the bitter-enders in the Transvaal. At one end of the table was a railway line protected by a barbed wire fence and a lonely blockhouse defended by ten British infantry. In the middle was the Boer commando with its wagons moving slowly up the road to the blockhouse. After a couple of turns trying to reduce the blockhouse with the Staatsartillerie pom-pom guns, the Boers were met with a large British force fast coming up to their rear. A rearguard action was fought for awhile, trying to stem the Imperial horde long enough for the ox wagons to advance out of harm's way.

At length the Boers decided they had better resort to more drastic measures if the commando was to be evacuated, the British cavalry moving menacingly around their flanks, and ordered every to mount up and ride hell-for-leather to the rail line, wagons be damned! The blockhouse had by this time been reduced by constant Boer fire to a negligible state, and the Boers were fast cutting through the wire, and a fair number even escaped to the green fields beyond. But just at the critical moment, with the British catching up rapidly, a British armored train arrived on the scene where the Wagons were to cross. There wasn't time to find another escape route, and with the British almost at bayonet's length, the umpires called it a game.

In retrospect it seemed to be a difficult scenario for the Boers. If they had charged for the railway line in a sort of "planned rout" from the beginning, instead of wasting time skirmishing with the British, they probably would have won. The Boers got victory points for each man safely accross the railway line as well as the wagons, so even if they had abandoned the three wagons, it still would have been enough to win the game if all the Boers escaped. This would be considerably aided by the fact that the Boers were ALL mounted. All in all a very fun game. It made me want to paint Boers!

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Mysore Wars: A Scenario Based On The Battle of Nandi Droog 1791
(Photos by Ed Allen)

I finally painted up enough Mysore regulars and 18th century British that I could actually run a Mysore Wars game. Since I had also completed my huge modular 6ft x 3ft Indian walled city, I thought it would be fun to start out in style. I had a ready-made

Mysore Wars scenario by Stuart Asquith and Charles Grant in their "Wellington in India - A Wargamer's Guide" calling for a fort - Nandi Droog. Though the real battle happened in October 1791, I set the scenario a little earlier, say 1781, to fit with my SYW British and sepoys. The fort was arranged with an outer and an inner wall, and my old "With Macduff to India" modifications were pulled out of the closet. The game was run at Ed Allen's house in Berkeley.

The British siege artillery opened up on the fortress at dawn, greating a big breach in one part of the wall, through which a series of attacks were launched. While the sepoys partook in rather ineffectual musketry fire on the Mysore irregular matchlockmen manning the walls, the British light infantry climbed the cliff to the fort with ladders, finally storming the breach. There in the clearing they met up with the Mysore regular infantry, 
and some artillery sweeping the breach. It was a fierce gun battle, and the light infantry were completely routed by the end of it. However, since the British were all concentrated around the breach, and the lights had soaked up all the hits like a screen before them, it was easy for the Brits to send in a stronger assault by the grenadiers. The Mysore troops inside the fort had gradually been worn down by the assault of the lights. The test of cold steel proved too much for the poor Mysoreans, and with the route of the two main units defending the breach, I declared a British victory.

All in all it was a pretty close fight, but I think that there were some basic problems with the scenario. The artillery made a breach in the midst of the battle, before the Mysoreans had time to concentrate their forces to meet the assault. In real life, the artillery would require days of pounding at the walls before making a proper breach, giving the defenders plenty of time to reorganize. The other problem was that since there was only one breach, the entire battle was fought only in one 
quarter of the table, which made the battle kind of a slogging match fought by only two or three units to a side, with many in reserve. A good alternative, we thought, was to have a game where there were already several breaches in the walls spread along the perimeter, and each side would have to decide what to attack and what to defend, producing a more interesting game. I have accordingly made several removable breaches in the walls with my hot-wire cutter. Still, even with the scenario as it was, we had a fun time.

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Maori Wars: The Gate - 18 April, 1863
This was one of the first Maori games Nick Stern and I have run at his place. It was a refight of the battle of Gate Pa using Nick's modifications of The Sword and The Flame, before I had written Tribe Against Tribe. In this battle a force of 150 soldiers of the 43rd Foot and 150 men of the Naval Contingent stormed the twin pa near Tauranga connected by a trench, known as "The Gate" because the breach in the palisades made by the Royal Artillery gave the appearance of an open gate. The pa was defended by about 230 Kingite Maori, but we scaled back the whole action to about 190 Brits versus 100 Maori. The chaps in Red coats are the Royal Marines -- since neither Nick nor I knew what that corps really wore, we decided to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and break out our Foundry Indian Mutiny figs. The rest of the figures were a mixture of Foundry, Rafm conversions, Old Glory, Scheltrum, Stratagem, and Lyzard's Grin. We were just trying to work out the rules and I was new to the period, so a lot of silly things happened that wouldn't have otherwise.

The Game opened with an artillery bombardment which probably wasn't necessary, since the breach had already been made, but almost no casualties were inflicted, which was true enough to life. As we hadn't thought about what to do with Nick's beautifully painted Armstrong battery afterwards, they ended up being dragged up to the trenches with the storming party like a sort of tank, very silly!

The British of course were in great numbers, and sort of advanced in a giant wave. The Maori side under their rookie rangatira Trevor tried a different deployment than in the real battle, a forward defence with concealed rifle pits ahead of the pa - a very bad idea, since the real Maori strategy of waiting until the Brits were lost among the trenches worked just fine in the actual battle, and indeed in these rules the British would move as though they were leaderss once inside the palisading. Ah well, no worries, I thought! The Kingites are supposed to win this battle aren't they?

The Brits couldn't see these advanced rifle pits until 2" away from them, and recalling reading that at several actions the Brits were surpised when charged from cover, Rangatira Trevor thought he'd try this out. He forgot that the surprise came from the concealed warriors appearing to the British rear. So, we had a lot of incidences of handfuls of Maoris jumping out from concealment instead of squatting where they were and shooting, only to confront a bristling, Waterloo-style wall of cold steel advancing in formation to their front. "Right-ho!" says Colour-Sergeant Nick, confronted with these five crazy natives dancing a haka immediately in front of him, "B Company, Charge!" And, quite predictably, the five dancing Maoris were speared and trodden underfoot.

Having wasted many brave men in these sort of affairs, the remaining Maori ran to the main ramparts. Just as in the real battle, the first British unit to enter the pa came at the corner of the larger pa and the connecting fosse, whose palisade had earlier been battered to matchwood by the British bombardment. Again, a forward defense was employed. The Maori objective was to rout three 20-man sections before the pa fell, and massed their tupara (double-barreled shotgun)-armed warriors in the outer trenches for a devastating volley. A mighty crash sounded as 60 charges of shot blasted the ranks of the 43rd. The smoke cleared, but the blue-coated regulars were almost untouched, and were leaping into an undefended section of trenches. Seeing another unit of sailors behind them, advancing in a parade ground close-order formation, the warriors reloaded and fired again. The bluejackets had been engaged earlier fighting the Maoris in the rifle pits, but this time they were not so lucky. They took another 7 or 8 casualties, and broke and fled.

Meanwhile, on the far left of the Maori position, ten or fifteen Maori were still in one of the forward rifle pits, and had been keeping 20 bluejackets and the small detatchment of ten Forest Rangers tied down. With an ungodly roll of 1s and 2s on their firing dice, they broke the elite Forest Rangers who fled to the rear. Their mana restored, and with the fighting raging in the main defenses and more reinforcements bearing down, the battered survivers beat a hasty retreat to the pa, which by now was well-infiltrated with tommies and tars.

Having taken heavy losses, with the element of surprise lost, and with fresh British units pouring in all the time, the Maori position became untenable, and a British victory was declared. The Maori rangatira had made a number of blunders early in the game, particularly the forward defence which squandered valueable lives. Still, the warriors on the flanks did surprisingly well considering, on the left actually routing the Rangers and on the right keeping two units of regulars from ever being engaged. All in all, it was an enjoyable game, and at least shows that the Brits can win this scenario. I'd like to try it again some time with Tribe Against Tribe.

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