All things in time

Back in the early '80's I found myself out of the navy, married, with a temporary job and flat broke. Nova Scotia is an area that people often leave to find work while military personal transfer in and out so I also found myself in between wargaming circles. I decided that I needed a new wargames project, a budget one. MPC had just re-released some Airfix kits so I picked up a stack of ACW figures, painted 48 a side (4 x 12 Yankees vs 3 x 16 Rebs, shuffled them aimlessly about the kitchen table with Featherstone in hand once or twice, and then life returned to normal. Those 1/72nd plastics were relegated to this box, then that one then dumped unceremoniously in a big bin of mostly unpainted plastic figures but I couldn't quite let go of them. (My very first sets of Airfix were a box each of Rebs and WWII Russians given to me one Christmas, I played Hungarian revolt with them!)   I doubted that I'd ever finish the 1/72nd project, not after building ACW armies in 15mm, and 54mm (I have 200 or more ACW 40mm figs from 4 manufacturers but I'm pleased to say that none have been painted as ACW). Then at Cold Wars 2 years ago I saw a marvelous  1/72nd/22mm game and it got me itching.

What do they say? "Look for patterns?"

Last week, after another enjoyable 1/72 AWI game with Jerry, we got to talking. Jerry is a 1/72 plastic fan and he had a bunch of unpainted rebs, I still had my 100 painted and another 200 or so unpainted, we both like ACW, so......... 2 days later I just flocked the bases on my 1st unit of Black hats in mid-war campaign dress (ok I painted a bunch of marching rebs in blue, I'm sort of backing into this, I'll figure out who is who as I go along), rebased and flocked the old guys, have been eying PSR and http://www.musketminiatures.com/ and "tramp tramp tramp the boys are marching".

I dunno, they may have minor issues but they still hold up to my eye, esp the marching figures. These are the 28 year old (yikes) guys with  with basic shading & highlighting completely hidden by a  new coat of gloss varnish. Ready for Black Powder or Morschauser Meets MacDuff.

MacDuff To The Rescue

Since the table was set up and with one of the original periods that With MacDuff To The Frontier was written for, and I was working on the 2010 revision, I decided to reset the scenario and try them out. Some of the units were a little small, especially the cavalry, but I decided to work with the units as is.

The game started out in similar fashion with Top Hat and his rebels sniping at long range while the convoy trudged forward. Col. MacDuff deployed B company of the Black Watch to return fire while A company pushed across the river and deployed. One of the first figures to fall was MacDuff himself, grazed by a bullet (6 to hit, 6 to hit an officer, 6 again to hit the senior office present!). By turn 3, Prince Kwannabe and the main body of Nku Khu warriors arrived and moved to the edge of the rough ground on the hill and started to work their way through the cover towards the wagons. Captain Britain of the 11th Hussars, responding to orders to advance and protect the flank of the cavalry, spotted the warriors and being too far to request clarification, decided that his duty was to engage the enemy  (i.e. he was beyond control range and rolled 6 on the control chart). The 1st troops drew their sabers and charged but the enemy was thicker in the bush than suspected and the rough ground disrupted the charge. Badly mauled, they fell back behind the 2nd troop.  

   Despite orders to hold their ground, the victorious warriors swarmed after the cavalry and were met by the 2nd troop.  Unable to work up sufficient impetus (that's their story) the Hussars were swamped by stabbing shouting warriors and broke to the rear. Without orders, both companies of Highlanders stood and fired on the elusive enemy, Captain Fraser went down then private after private until at last Sergeant Herald pulled the remnants back (were broken technically) as Top Hat urged his men to constantly close the range. Given a brief respite, the sergeant pulled the men together and then to his great relief, the stunned Colonel awoke and with his head bandaged, resumed command. (MacDuff and 2 privates rallied)

By now,  the Nkh Khu flanking force had arrived and were creeping up the hill, later than expected but welcome. Rapidly Brigadier Steele deployed first the Victoria rifles and then the New Durban volunteers to hold them off. Behind them, the remnants of the cavalry fell back covered by the fire of the Black Watch. Sensing that an opportunity was slipping away, Kwannabe ordered his warriors forward but the disciplined fire of A company broke the right hand band while the lancers, supported by the light artillery, drove back the center.

As the light started to fade, the head of the convoy neared the edge of the table. One chance remained, the flanking force surged across the ford, Black Shields leading and crashed into the Volunteers. Every shot told as the warriors closed and after a brief struggle, the Black Shields broke and fell back.  Kwannabe still had  warriors in hand but he was not one to throw their lives away lightly and the odds were now too long to offer any real hope of success. He waved them back into the brush.

This was the first play test of the 2010 edition of MacDuff and so far it was just what I was looking for. The game, admittedly a small one, took about 2 hours of playing time and about 10 turns.

 The major change was separating the  movement and firing into two phases, hardly original but I had been so pleased  with not having a separate fire phase, something I had only seen suggested in a Courier article at the time, that I beat my head against the wall to keep it that way although it was the cause of innumerable headaches over how to handle reactions, limit the ability of one side to fire multiple times without reply due to the random sequencing and so forth. Of course, having now met Morschauser who also didn't have  a separate fire phase, well its nothing new!

A draft of the 2010 edition  which covers North American wars as well as Victorian Colonial warfare is available on my website. I know there are some formatting issues and it is inevitable that I will have missed some anomaly but it is ready to be read over and, if anyone is brave enough and interested, to be tried out. All and any feedback is not just welcome but actively sought.

Like an Ox on the Run

Turn 1, The rebel advance guard shows up, the British deploy and score a hit,
 while the train rumbles on.

I was planning to write this game up but frankly it wasn't worth it so I'll let the captions tell the story and concentrate on comments on the rules. The original teaser is designed for much slower moving rules so I advanced the possible arrival times, essentially counting each turn as 3.

Turn 2. The main force arrives and surges across the table while the advance guard cowers. The shooting 1 die per Zulu unit proves deadly with the 1st company of the Black Watch with its flank exposed becoming disordered as well as suffering a hit and the Lancers also being disordered. Luckily for the Brits, the 2nd company was able to come up and cover.

Turn 3, the Zulu flankers miss a chance to come on and the Main Body refuses to charge the open flank. The Brits shuffle and the wagon train charges 3 moves forward. The 4.7" gun team was able to leave the table but since it is standing in for 3 wagons in the original, I just stopped in on the edge to let the Nku Khu have a go at it. On turn 4 the Zulu main body charges in and begins a prolonged melee while the flank guard rushes madly forward and manages to snipe a wagon into disorder. On the British half, the gun moves off table, 1 wagon moves to safety while the other gets screened and 1 unit breaks out of melee while the other falls back. 

The 4.7" heading for safety.

Black Powder is aimed at a table full of troops but since they include a low level Zulu War scenario with a handful of companies, I thought I'd give it a go. This is a rare outing for these troops, they haven't seem much action since I fell for 40mm glossy toy soldiers. I still like the old Britain's style and the Call To Arms Zulus are a good fit for them but having picked who was going on table, I'll admit to still not being keen on the larger new style plastics and metals. Since I am able to base my old Britain's (inc recasts) on 1" bases, they don't actually take up much more space than 28's and I could easily have fielded 20 man British units (2 deep)  if I'd had enough Zulus to face them. However, one of my old problems cropped up, the wagon train just takes up too much space so instead of the 8 wagons that the scenario calls for, I settled for 3.

Each side had 3 brigadiers plus a general. I was hoping that this would be enough to prevent 1 or 2 command rolls dominating the game. It didn't work. Even though my table is 6 ft by 8 ft, by using inches, the wagon train surged across the table too fast for the natives to have a chance to catch it. Having variable arrival only made it worse. In the event the game moved quickly but too quickly, it lacked the suspense and the build up to a dramatic finish which I am used to in this sort of scenario and I felt fairly superfluous, the whole thing seemed to hinge on 1 or 2 command rolls.

With hind sight, a rule saying that the oxen can only move once per turn might have helped the scenario develop but I doubt it, the moves are so long that the natives are in contact in no time then its all down to some dice rolling. The stop/start feel of the command system and random feel of the combat, especially, the paralyzing disorders was only exacerbated by the small number of brigades and the small numbers of units. If I had more Zulus or decided to fudge, disregarding looks, I would double the ranks on the Brits and halve all distances but double the number of companies on each side. This would make the rifle fire feel very short and make the artillery more or less irrelevant but might make the game flow better with command decisions seeming more important and with the game not balancing on the 1st couple of command rolls for the wagons.

However, after an enjoyable run through of the Alma river scenario today at Jeff's place using 15mm Nappy's as stand ins, I've had enough Black Powder for 1 week. The table is still set up though and I've just run through the 1st two turns of an original Colonial MacDuff game. Feels good so far but then this is the sort of thing they were written for..