Of Battles and Skirmishes

Its a beautiful HOT summer weekend and I'm Officer of the Watch and Duty Watch rolled into one while Kathy is off to dog show. This means I can't wander far and its hard to grab more than an hour at time to myself but a lot can be done with an hour here or there. It seemed like a good time to take some troops outside but scouting around for just the right spot just reminded me that the lawn needs cutting,  the gardens need weeding, that it was hot out and that I was tired. Suddenly, a cold drink and a book in the shade seemed more inviting than preparing a battlefield, dragging troops downstairs and coming up with a scenario. I retreated upstairs, turned on another fan and looked around for something easy to set up and play.

A column of Faraway troops under attack by Brethren and their Atlantican allies c 1845.

The table was still set for Picket's Charge but lately I find that fighting battles tends to feel like work. Work to set them up, work to come up with plans, in the case of historical battles work to research them, work to fight through them. Worse than that, battles tend to have consequences.  At least in life, in campaigns and in continuing imagi-nation story lines. I started to think about Petit Guerre settings and scenarios.

I'm not sure that I've ever thought about the difference between battles and skirmishes in quite this way before. It may be due to a lack of context for so many of my games over the years or that many of the various rule sets I've played tended to produce one level of game and so there was no clear  distinction even if a given scenario was more plausible as one or the other. I have tended to think of size as the difference between a battle and a skirmish but now I am thinking it is more a matter of intent and consequence. It is not that skirmishes cannot have consequences but they are usually either cumulative such as in a prolonged guerilla campaign, or else accidental  as in the death of Lord Howe shortly before the battle at Ticonderoga.

Battles are serious affairs not usually under taken lightly or without reason. Much of the writing about generalship over the centuries is about how to conduct a campaign so that you can force a decisive battle that will destroy the enemy's capability or will to continue the fight and about how to avoid having the enemy do the same to you. Once battle is joined, the aim is usually to destroy the enemy's army not to seize some minor terrain feature except as a means to an end. A skirmish on the other hand is usually between two detachments whose loss would be regrettable rather than decisive and the goal is usually some smaller, limited but specific objective such as the destruction or protection of property or capture of a strategical terrain objective such as Ruffin's night attack before Talavera. These sorts of limited engagements are typical of Grant's Tabletop scenarios and form ideal scenarios  because the gamer is assigned troops and assigned a mission much like an intermediate general without having to concern himself as much with preliminary off table manoeuvring and the campaign situation.

Having decided to do a skirmish on the existing terrain, a variation on the ambush of a convoy seemed like an easy and always good scenario, especially for solo play with programmed ambushers randomly placed. Prince Valiant has been on my mind but I've tried to avoid doing any of those without a story line. The 16th Century was also a valid choice but I'm unsure about the rules and anyway, I didn't have a  printed copy to hand. So Atlantica beckoned.

The "plan" calls for a long period of border warfare with occasional major expeditions so no explanation is needed. Due to a combination of distractions and indecision, my Atlanticans can only muster a handful of figures in "modern" dress so their ranks were filled out with 18th Century ones and reinforced with Brethren of the Coast and rebellious settlers to make up to 36 ambushers. I still need to work out the details of the backstory but the rebel settlements were founded by European hunters and boatmen who inter married with the Atlantican tribes in the 18th Century and were later reinforced by rebels fleeing the Blue River district after the failed rebellion. The convoy consisted of a single supply wagon escorted by 6 of Larsen's Lancers and 2 companies of infantry each 12 strong.

This is the sort of game that MacDuff was written for but I had never actually played Rattle of Dice as published on the blog. The sole test game before I decided to just roll it into Hearts of Tin was using some rough notes. I decided to give it a go.

It didn't take long to realize that I had made some omissions and at least one typo as well as another mistake that probably reflected a mental blip after thinking about Charge!.  Given the low numbers of figures I was severely tempted to add a MacDuff style figure to figure melee  system, and to add the after melee  test I used when I migrated the system to HofT but I decided to just go with what I had written, the only change being the addition of a 1/2 move penalty for formation changes as proposed on War Diaries of a Little Englander.

The typo was in melee where I wrote count 1/2 of the 2nd & 3rd rank instead of 1/2 the 3rd & 4th rank. The 2nd rank was already covered by including figures in contact and those in contact with them. The quasi typo was by writing count remainders of more than 1/2 when what I usually do is count remainders of 1/2 or more. The main omissions were that the shooting dice listed were for muzzle loading rifles, breech loaders rolling 1 per 2 instead, and that I hadn't included ordinary wagons, something I needed!  Anyway I have updated the original Rattle of Dice post with the corrections in red and added an evade rule for cavalry and skirmishers which I did not use today.

Tomorrow, we'll see how it went.

Unstable bridge infrastructure.

4 Heroes of the Revolution hold in town as the bridge blows behind them. 

On Thursday I visited Ron for another East Front Memoir game. Reserve Demolition from Scenarios for Wargames. There are 2 options for blowing bridges in memoir, one where it is automatic and one requiring a die roll. We went for the latter but had trouble duplicating the proposed system where messengers arrive with orders, first, to delay blowing the bridge and then, finally, to blow it. We ended up shuffling 2 airpower cards into the deck to signify that the bridge could be blown. Any player pulling one of these had to place it face up but could draw another card. We weren't actually using aircraft rules.

I can't remember when I had such good cards and dice, at least early on. I stormed on the table, destroyed a counter attack without blinking and pressed in to town with tanks and infantry. Then I stalled  and was blown apart by artillery and a counter attack by infantry. By the time I got more troops up the order had been received to blow the bridge. It took a couple of turns but I'd run out of cards and while I was able to  infiltrate an infantry unit across the bridge, they weren't able to stop the demolition. However, the scenario required Ron to save 60% or more of his army. My early push had taken out 5 out of 9 units leaving him with just under 60%. A draw! Urrah!

A Real Man of Steele or Forty Years in Canada

Colonel Flint of the Queen's Lancers, 1866

I haven't made a lot of book recommendations but I enjoyed this one so much I can't help myself. It is the autobiography of Sam Steele and by default an account largely of the formation and development of the North West Mounted Police. My copy was published as part of the Prospero Canadian Collection but is available as a free ebook. http://archive.org/details/fortyyearsincana00steeiala 

He began a military career by volunteering for the militia during the Fenian Raids, served in the Red River expedition, was a member of Canada's first regular artillery battery where he served along side not only a veteran of the Crimean War but also an 88 year old officer who had fought in Bull's troop RHA at Waterloo!  He joined the NWP when it was formed and rose to high rank as he served through the settlement of the west and the Riel Rebellion, the construction of the railway through the Rockies and the Yukon Gold Rush. When the Boer War broke out he raised the Strathcona Horse and led it in the field before being asked to form a South African Mounted Police. Finally he served as Major General in the Canadian Army during the First World War. 

Among the things that make the book so interesting are the many descriptions of his encounters with a long list of people, some famous including numerous British and American officers to Indians such as Sitting Bull, others less well known such as the scout Jerry Potts and others completely unknown. Some of the incidents he either witnesses or took part in or reports as hearsay are worthy of any adventure moves.  More than that are the descriptions of every day life and service, all the nitty gritty of how many miles ridden on patrol in how much time, provisioning details, how various crimes were solved and on and on. It is also a description of the rapid change from wild prairie peopled by warring Indian tribes and whiskey traders  to "civilized" farmland with modern cities of up to 200,000 people by the turn of the century 30 years later.  

Of particular interest to me, despite being brief, is of course his part in the South African war. Oddly enough, his accounts of a few skirmishes, like the accounts of several Boers that I have read, are reminiscent of those lithographs and illustrated news after all. It is possible that I will have to relent and forego the big battles and fight the little war instead. The problem still remains of scale, something on the order of 1,000 yards to the foot with a line of 12 figures well spaced out representing a battalion and patrols of 1 or 2 figures having a role. There will definitely have to be some sleight of mind and some theatrical magic employed to get the right effect.

The Queen's Red Lancers from Faraway's Household Brigade.

The uniforms are copied from those of the English 16th Lancers between the adoption of the tunic in 1856 and the switch to black plumes in 1880. The figures are Zinnbrigade 1900 Prussian Uhlans right out of the mold apart from the officer and the addition of rolled cloaks. He was made from one of the lancers. I cut off the lance, straightened his right arm, removed his left arm and cut him at the waist.  I added a left arm from wire and putty and used an ACW horse from Merten. I kind of wish I'd gone for a more authentically toy soldier single yellow stripe on the pants and a single bold red stripe on the girdle rather without the more accurate "light" that separates them but I'm not redoing them. Final basing finish for all of the Atlantican armies is under discussion.