The Published Portable Wargame: Part 1 of 4

My first in-person encounter with hex based miniature wargames came in the mid-70's when I visited a little wargame shop in Hamilton, Ontario while travelling on leave. Sadly I have forgotten the names of both the shop and the owner but he not only opened up the shop on his day off when he happened by and saw me with my nose pressed against the glass but we spent a good while chatting about wargaming and he showed me the handmade 3d hexes his  group used for their 25mm ancient wargames and talked about the advantages of a gridded game.

Fast forward to the early 21st C and I found myself playing hexed bases miniature games with my friend Ron, occasionally ones designed for it but usually just a conversion of our usual conventional rules to fit his geohex clad table, then a Hexed Hotz Matt and finally Hexon. For most of this past decade all of our games have been hex based. I was slow to convert my own table but by 2010 I was sometimes using a Hexed Hotz Matt (thanks Ron) for solo games at home and was experimenting more and more with cardtable sized games.

This was the setting into which Bob Cordery introduced his Portable Wargame. I had been following Bob's blog before I began to blog myself but something about the Portable Wargame caught me at an opportune moment when I was ripe for a small yet interesting miniature wargame played on a gridded playing field. As a long time rules tinkerer and writer I have gone on to work on my own style of gridded games, both large and small, but I have continued to follow and draw inspiration from the development of the Portable Wargame and occasionally bombard Bob with questions and comments even while I go my own way. When Bob announced the publication of The Portable Wargame I was not only excited for him but  excited to get a copy.

Even before I received my copy, I had decided that the buzz and the known qualities of the game justified my registering to give gamers who attend Huzzah! in Maine a chance to walk up and try their hand at it.  This may help explain my eagerness to actually try the published version and see what I had gotten myself into! So, this post will give a quick report on my first game, the second will review the book, the third will hopefully be a more  thorough game report and the last will be a go at the sudden death option.  

The Boer plan was to use their mobility to seize the town while sending fleet Commandos around the enemy flanks. The British plan was to mass most of the infantry against the town while using their sole mounted unit backed by an MG to block Boer flanking moves one one side while the artillery with infantry support held the other flank. 

Since my social day had been cancelled I decided to break out my old, rarely used, downstairs card table board that I made in 2011 and let some of the younger hounds out so they could play and keep me company. To ease storage issues I had removed the frame which was warping anyway and now one troublesome corner is on a permanent "high".  Luckily I was able to lay out a scenario that kept   the errand corner out of the way.

My initial instinct had been to break out my 1/72nd RCW troops but the 1/72 Boers got to me first. I haven't gotten around to painting up the remaining Esci British yet (give me a break, they've only been waiting 35 years...) but there were enough guardsmen to fill the gaps. I decided to go with all average troops and an even number of units since I had no idea of the relative balance between the mobility of the Boers and the resilience of the British infantry or the hitting power of the MG and artillery.

I decided that the game would be a simple meeting engagement with both sides trying to seize a small town. The initial idea was that a Boer Commando during the guerrilla phase of the 2nd war was out to capture some much needed supplies while the British were out to deny them. Then I realised that the Red coats indicated the 1st Boer War so I took away the Boer's artillery and decided to just to get on with the game without worrying about why the Boers wanted the town.

The Boers had 8 cavalry units plus a commander, the British had a field gun, an MG (looks like a Maxim but doubtless a Gatling), a cavalry unit and 5 infantry units and a commander. Each side had to deploy on the centre 4 squares of the 1st and 2nd rows of their side of the board. The rules were the basic Colonial rules without any of the options that are presented.

The second turn. At first the Boer plan seemed to be working but the British infantry  proved quite stubborn while the building walls seemed to be made of cardboard rather than something more bulletproof. (Maybe I should have left the roofs on?)

Everything went fine until the fighting broke out at which point I realised that there were a few minor points that I was unclear about and that, as simple as the rules were, I needed to keep checking on details such as ranges and kept forgetting modifiers. Obviously, until I have played a number of games, a quick reference sheet would be handy and will be essential for the convention  games.

I was also unable to find answers to some of my questions about details, such as whether or not artillery on a hill could fire over  friends. Luckily these sorts of things are generally no more than a slight check to seasoned gamers so while I have been periodically firing off questions to Bob who always answers quite promptly, the game did not have to stop for such minor details. Since I had deployed the only artillery on a hill I decided to allow overhead fire, not that it mattered when the gun crew was busy trying to break the record for rolling 1's and 2's.

Sometime later...no units have been lost yet but the British have taken one of the houses and the Boers, with smaller units, are losing more men. At last they remembered their horses and started backing out of combat and unequal firefights in order to try and leverage their mobility to gang up on vulnerable British units. 

I knew from past experience that there was no way that I would record each turn properly with unit by unit results so planned to at least take a picture each turn so that I could remind myself of what had happened. Yeah, right.  Its bad enough that the family or Wreck room is the only one with less light than my wargames room making it hard to get usable ones but I kept getting so wrapped in the game that I often forgot to stop and pay attention to the younglings let alone take pictures each turn. Well.....I suppose that sort of forgetfulness is not such a bad thing, right Mr Kinch?

Several unusable photos later, the sun has set and when the Boer leader goes down the remaining Commandos decided that the game wasn't worth the candle. (In other words the Boer Army was exhausted and the British held the objective.)

Apart from the game having kept me rapt for about an hour and a half, it was a very useful exercise in exploring the rules. Several of the rules approach things from a different angle from what I am used to and it would have been easy to dismiss these instances as "wrong" but a few turns often showed that the design was having the right effect regardless of the approach chosen.

For example, all units have the same chance to inflict a "hit" in combat in a given situation regardless of whether the unit is composed of angry villagers armed with rocks or veteran regular infantry with magazine rifles. However, since some units can absorb more hits than others and some units are more likely to be able to choose to withdraw rather than taking a hit,  a tussle between those villagers and the veteran infantry is unlikely to end with a victory by the villagers especially if the infantry choose options that allow them to make the most of their ability to shoot from a safe distance.

Even with this simple test game, it was obvious that although the British tended to have luckier die rolls, the real problem was that the Boers initially made a battle plan that played into the enemy's hand. The cover bonus was insufficient to offset the ability of the British to concentrate fire on the smaller Boer units and drive them back or destroy them. Without a numerical advantage the Boers needed to be more clever than they were on the day and make a plan that either used their mobility to achieve local superiority or else drew the enemy into a trap.  Which is pretty much how the real wars worked out.

That's enough for one post. Part 2 will look at the book itself and briefly comment on the rules and options that are presented. After that will come some (hopefully) more thorough playtest reports including one game using the "Sudden Death" option.

 

Portable Post Postponed

My Monday test game of the Portable Wargame was postponed due to weather so I played a solo one instead.

The Boer War proves to be Portable.

I intended to write up a report and rules book review today but the day slipped away on various non-wargaming matters. Another storm day is forecast for Wednesday, including up to 3 hours of freezing rain and ice pellets, so if we don't lose power I should have time to write a battle report and review.

The Battle of Lesser Fauntelroy

The revised Tin Army has now had its Baptism by Fire (ok by Dice then).

The scenario chosen was the first scenario in CS Grant's Scenarios for Wargames. It is a fairly straight forward scenario, an assault on a prepared position, and one of the larger ones. I have also played it often enough over the last 35 years, using a wide variety of rules in various periods, that it makes a good benchmark when testing a set of rules.

I set a 15 turn limit on the game.

The game is afoot. 

The Red Queen's army was tasked with holding a position with three vital points, a 4 area town on their right, a small farming community in the centre and a redoubt on the left flank. There are additional fortifications between the two towns but these have no strategic value.  Red's army is composed of 3 cavalry, 4 infantry, 1 light infantry and 2 artillery units. The scenario specifies that there must be a gun (ie 1/2 an artillery unit in The Wargame) in each of the three redoubts.

That stipulation gave me some grief at first since the units I planned to use consisted of a single gun and limber as a unit. At first I doubled the number of artillery units which allowed me to deploy heavy, light and field batteries  but there wasn't really room for them all and in theory put far too many batteries on the table to support a single brigade. It also put the "heavy" batteries starting out far too close to the enemy for early 20th Century artillery.  I then tried removing the limbers and fielding two guns per battery (see first picture) but I rather missed having a role for the limbers I have already done. Then I realised that doubling the guns meant that almost every scenario would require me to pool allied artillery and any of the later scenarios which call for 3 batteries would find my artillery park too small. At last I decided not to muck with the rules which were the way I wanted them and resolved the issue by replacing one normal defending battery with 2 limber-less guns, one in each of 2 redoubts each counting as a single stand unit of artillery not able to be moved during the game. I left the last battery intact  and occupied the last redoubt with a company of infantry with machine gun attached.

I then placed an infantry unit in each town, split into 2 detachments, each occupying one area. I placed the light infantry into detachments in the wood and held the cavalry and remaining infantry in reserve.

The Blue Republic had a substantially larger force to attack with: 3 cavalry, 8 infantry, 1 light infantry and 2 batteries. Their mission was to capture at least two of the key positions. I drew up three battle plans and diced for which one to implement. The chosen plan was  to focus on an assault in the centre by 7 of the 8 infantry companies supported by both batteries. The Light Infantry would advance through the wood to probe the enemy position, occupy the defender's attention and threaten the redoubt if possible. The cavalry supported by a company of infantry were to threaten the large town if the garrison were to be weakened but to be ready to shift to the right to break through once the village in the centre was taken.  

Occasional impatience is an old problem. 

The plan quickly ran into problems. The table was too small and cluttered for the guns to deploy in a safe position and bombard the target while the infantry moved forward. With hindsight, the best option would have been to spend a few turns pounding the objective with artillery before advancing the infantry, actually I think that was the original plan.

After a very short bombardment the infantry rushed forward to launch a direct assault. Unfortunately that tactic required above average luck for them rather than the enemy and the lead company was shot to pieces while supporting companies took heavy losses from Red's artillery and supporting infantry.  Both sides were taking losses though and I rather rashly decided to push the attacking artillery forward to open a line of fire from the flank and pushed forward reserves.

That's when things really went wrong! The advancing artillery was caught limbered, suffered heavy losses and was then threatened by a cavalry charge. In the town the garrison was finally forced to retreat by heavy fire but reserves were at hand and an initiative flip allowed them to reoccupy the lead town sector. In the woods the attack by Blue's Jaegers fared no better and they were soon being chased back through the woods.

The battlelines stabilise.

At last Blue got a break. A chance card (Red Jack) let Blue stop Red's cavalry allowing the guns to retire to a safer location and recover. While the survivors of the initial infantry assault tried to rally back to be replaced by reserves, none were available to back up the artillery so it fell to a unit of lancers to quickly redeploy to the right wing and dismount to protect the guns from the advancing Red light infantry.

In the centre the attack defaulted to a lengthy firefight with numbers balanced against cover.  By the time the surviving Royals were forced to pull back the Kapelle Mounted Rifles were at hand to dismount and take their place. It seemed never ending unlike the rapidly diminishing deck of turn cards.

This would probably would have been a good time to shift the rest of  cavalry to double down on an assault up the right. Instead the Blue commander threw them forward to take out Red's battery and pin their remaining reserves. They can be seen rallying back in the next picture.

Throughout the bulk of the game, Blue's left wing battery had been alternating fire between the small town when there was a clear field of fire, and either the deadly Baluch Rifles machine gun and mountain gun in the  redoubts in the centre or the even more deadly field battery when there wasn't. The mountain gun was soon smashed but the Rifles and battery both managed to hold on.  

The growing gap between centre and right is starting to worry Red's commander and making Blue's commander wish he'd kept the Blue Guards in reserve till now.

 It was do or die time! Too late to shift reserves or rethink anything. Every one forward! The Guard Lancers once again charged forward, this time riding over the weakened battery and pursuing into town panicking the enemy infantry and seizing the Stone House. In the centre the Mounted Rifles had been forced out but again reinforcements had come up, half a unit's worth. A final desperate charge by an under strength company was held and eventually repulsed leaving a single red soldier holding the bloody ground. On the right the Lancers mounted up and did their best but fared no better at assaulting a town than the Dragoons had done.

It was over.  

The final charge of the Guard Lancers. 

So ended a very enjoyable game.  Time wise it took a bit over two hours to play the 15 turns. The end result was a decisive win for the defence but there were so many points at which the balance almost shifted that it felt close right up till near the end. Red did get lucky at times but they made far fewer tactical errors and that seems to have been the deciding factor.  Somehow Red's reserves always seemed to be in the right place at the right time while Blue's were too often blocked or out of place to exploit a success or reverse a failure. Blue also showed a remarkable impatience early on and once faced with the evidence that his plan was obviously faulty, he chose to reinforce failure rather than take the time to reorient his army and implement a new plan.  Not exactly the first General to make that sort of mistake.

Best of all however, the concept and rules were validated. The combat worked as envisaged, units were shot up but only a few units were completely destroyed rather than being rendered combat ineffective and too fragile to risk except in extreme need.  I need to do more editing, ensuring the written word accurately reflects practice and checking spelling and so on as well as adding more explanations but  they are good to go.

In conclusion, it is all lights Green for the  Great Atlantican War to proceed. I can start work on the background story, formalise character and unit names, add some more figures and equipment, especially for Oerberg, get the artillery properly fitted out, add terrain and so on but its a go for this summer and fall.

Over the winter though, there are preparations for Huzzah in May to be done. A 16thC Anglo-French scenario that I will cohost with Rob needs some preparation and testing as does my "walk up and try the Portable Wargame" event. Weather permitting, that latter will begin with a game of the printed version on Monday.