Little Big Horn - in the Sudan!

I drove a six-hour round trip for a three hour game. It was 100% worth it. The occasion was the latest of Dr Mark Smith's legendary Christmas Specials, delayed to brighten up January, because that suited everyone's calendar better. (For previous Christmas Specials, use the label search here.)

I arrived to be confronted by a spectacular 12-foot table:

Mark informed us that this represented the Wadi Alqlilkabirbwq, a tributary of the Nile. The situation was an Anglo-Egyptian expedition in the Sudan during the Mahdist War of 1881-1899. The British were trying to capture the Khalifa after the battle of Omdurman. I was 'Al Marara', one of the four players on the Mahdist side, alongside Crispin, Phil and Will. Nick, Bruce, Dave W and Dave T were the infidel British.

Nick and Bruce were Captain Benjamin Young and a German guest, Major Count Betreffnein. Their substantial cavalry columns arrived near our right flank, where my camp was. Figures are Baccus 6mm from Mark's (rapidly expanding) collection.

Dave T was Colonel Armstrong, the British C-in-C, leading another cavalry column dashing along the heights towards the other end of our extended encampment along the river.

All I had on-table initially, apart from my herds, was one contingent of dismounted cavalry, well-armed with modern breechloaders. A couple of moves later I had mustered four units.

Similar story for my neighbour on my left, Maynum Hirsar (Crispin). Our initial mission prioritised defending our camps and our cattle.

Phil and Will (Aswad Nasr and Quadeem Dub) were further along the river, out of immediate danger.

Nevertheless, Dave T made rapid progress along the heights, so Phil and Will had to react.

The central British column arrives, containing all the precious supplies, commanded by Captain Dougalson (Dave W).

As Nick's camelry approached, I moved two units of rifle-armed dismounted cavalry to lurk in the vegetation along the river.

Allahu akbar! Nick duly sprang my ambush. My warriors fired a volley and charged. We drove the infidels back with heavy losses. We mustered more cavalry and followed up.

Taking a long view ... seen from the quiet end of the table, but not for long. Will's force will shortly ascend the heights to take on Dave T.

Order, counter-order, disorder - 3 or 4 turns in, we were each given a new set of personal objectives to replace the ones we'd had at the start. Initially, our Mahdist objectives had focused on defending camps and cattle, while the British objectives were about discovering and capturing these. Now it was all change: having found how strong we were, the British orders had changed to holding the heights, while we needed to take them. This generated a lot of radical changes of manoeuvre! Here we see Nick's and Bruce's columns trying to break contact, cross the ford, and head for Hills 1 & 2 at top right of pic.

Dave W's supply column had made steady progress to mid-table, but Dave was now feeling very much left in the lurch as everyone else hightailed it for the hills, while he was being harassed by Phil and Crispin in front and had the prospect of more Mahdists appearing behind him.

Fortunately for Dave, I and Phil now largely ignored him in favour of dashing across the river to attack the hills. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the Mahdist of them all?"

Apart from Dave W's supply column in the river angle top left, all the Anglo-Egyptians are now atop the hills, while most of our Mahdists mill about trying to ford the river to get at them.

The first layer of hills is edged by an escarpment, scaleable only at the breaks marked by small brown patches. You can see two of these right of pic, in front of Hills 1 & 2 (the crests with white labels). This presented me and Phil with a ticklish tactical challenge: how to get up these breaks, which were in rifle range of the hilltop defenders, and then mount a coordinated assault.

A glimpse of the action at the other end of the pitch. Dave T's camel corps was fending off Will's Mahdists OK. However, Crispin changed axis, ignoring Dave W's supplies, to turn up behind Dave T. Not only that, but a random event gave some of Crispin's men the latest repeating rifles! It went badly for the Anglo-Egyptians here after that. 

A small victory for Will, too, as he overruns a stray baggage column ...

... capturing some splendid victuals. (It was supposed to be a Christmas game, after all.)

Phil and I had managed to negotiate the breaks in the cliffs and get our forces onto the scarp. With time running out, we mounted a massed charge on Hill 1. Note the British commander (the German, Betreffnein) who has fallen over. Random events dictated that he hit the schnapps flask hard and spent most of the battle drunk and incapable.

Our charge succeeded and swept the infidels from Hill 1!

Mark then totted up the scores. The most successful individual players were Crispin for the Mahdists (thanks to his murderous repeating rifles) and Dave W for the Brits (who kept his precious supply column largely intact). Adding up all the individual scores on each side, they came to 9 points each - a draw!

Arguably, Dave W deserved another victory point, because he was the first to tumble to the fact that this was a disguised scenario. I think he spotted it when the objectives changed and the Brits had to bail out and head for the hills. Mark had taken the situation from the Battle of the Little Big Horn and transposed it to the Sudan. If only my Arabic had been better, I'd have realised all the Mahdists' names were translations: Maynum Hirsar = Crazy Horse, Aswad Nasr = Black Eagle, Alqlilkabirbwq = Little Big Horn, etc. There were clues in all the Brits' names as well: Benjamin Young = Ben-teen, Dougalson = MacDougal, and of course Armstrong was Custer's middle name.

Reflections

Disguised Scenarios. I'm well aware of the concept but I've rarely played one. This worked really well, for me at least: I wasn't familiar enough with either the Sudan or LBH to spot the disguise, but I know enough about them to appreciate the conceit. Had we all known it was LBH from the start, of course the Brit/US players would have acted much more cautiously and been better coordinated. As it was, the disguised set-up plus the divergent personal objectives created the right historical situation. Genius.

Changing Situations Mid-Game. The abrupt change of orders/objectives partway through was not only important to create the right situation, it also helped to throw spanners into works and force major new decisions on players. This is a great ingredient in a game and something I've discussed before in one of my "Reflections on Wargaming" essays, "Changing Situations Mid-Game".

A Unique Tactical Challenge. The endgame threw up this unique tactical problem for me and Phil of how to get up the scarp under fire and then assault the heights. This exemplifies how historical scenarios can produce the most uniquely interesting challenges, at least as good as anything I might be able to invent. This is one reason why we love fighting historical battles.

Camels Galore! Exotic troops always enhance a wargames table and camelry are definitely exotic. I don't think I've ever seen so many camels in a game. It was a treat.

Roleplaying in Wargames. Even in regular BBB games, people are generally happy to metaphorically don the right headgear, slip into role and talk like their historical counterparts. In Mark's Christmas games where we all have our individual objectives, it gets really personal and the banter flows. There were plenty of remarks about the infidels' malignity and confusion, aspersions cast on fellow officers, and the like. It all adds to the occasion and the experience.

Roll on next Christmas!

PDF editions of the BBB rules and scenario books are about to be published. As PDF is not subject to the same page limitations as printed books, Mark and I are discussing the idea of publishing his Christmas Special scenarios (which are each very long because of the many individual briefs) as a collected volume. Watch this space! 

Xmas special: Sekigahara (1600)

And now for something completely different (as they say) ...

Mark continued his fine tradition of running a Christmas special for us. As always, the setting was a surprise, not unveiled until we turned up to play. And a real surprise it was this time: whereas I think all the previous ones have been 19th-century battles with 6mm figures, this time we found ourselves transported to feudal Japan and a table covered with chunky 28s.

Although Mark did not tell us the actual historical battle until afterwards, the game was based on a famous one for a change: Sekigahara (1600), an epic battle involving >150,000 men, which ushered in two and a half centuries of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This worked out perfectly for Mark to script it for seven of us players.

There were three of us in the Eastern Alliance. I was its leader, Tokugawa Ieyasu, commanding our right wing. On my left was the stolid but dependable Fukushima Masanori (Dave W). Guarding our line of communications and supporting us was the somewhat tardy Asano Yoshinaga (Phil).

The Western Alliance had four players: their leader, Ishida Mitsunari (Crispin) - a politician rather than a general - facing me; the unpredictable Ukita Hideie (Nick O) opposite Dave; Mori Hideie (Dave T) and Kobayakawa Hideaki (Bruce), neither of whose forces were on-table initially.

15 photos and captions below tell the story. Then there are some reflections at the end.

My contingent, the right wing of our army, with me (Ieyasu) in the middle. Potent mounted samurai are flanked by columns of samurai on foot, followed by ashigaru soldiery with arquebuses or bows. I believe these are Dixon 28mm figures, painted by Mark nearly 40 years ago and not used for over 30.

A couple of turns in and I have deployed my infantry with the missile troops screening the samurai. At top of picture, Mitsunari has likewise advanced and deployed, erecting obstacles to protect his cowardly self from my assault. Left of pic is the town of Sekigahara itself (labelled anonymously as "Post Town" for the game), an objective for the Eastern Alliance to secure victory, but now seized by Mitsunari. My personal objectives (everyone had secret personal objectives) included conducting an assault, destroying an enemy unit, and one of my units having advanced beyond the Post Town by game end.

To my left, Masanori loyally pushes forward, trying to envelop and take the Post Town nestled among its paddy fields. However, Ukita's force can be seen top of pic, descending from Mt Tenma to confront him.

The table was deep rather than wide. Here we see the half behind our Eastern Alliance front line. Asano's infantry guard the village and bridge objectives, while his cavalry scout the heights of Mt Nangu. As well that they should do so ...

... as Mori's force appears there, threatening to descend on our line of communications. Note also Mori's small cavalry contingent (bottom right) about to be a nuisance to me. Top right: some Christmas cracker debris. As usual, Mark used cracker pulls to resolve some particular events during the game.

Battle is joined! The first of my multiple attempts to break Mitsunari's line. Lower right, Ieyasu himself fights in the front line. This was an option Mark added to the rules. A general who fought added +1 to his side's dice and had the chance to gain honour ( = earn a Victory Point) but, of course, risked death.

Dave (Masanori) likewise launched assaults. Unfortunately, his attacks on the defended town would prove costly and unsuccessful and leave his left wing outnumbered by Ukita's men.

My cavalry reserve (top right) fails to respond to Dave T's sneaky patrol in my rear. My cavalry would be plagued by dismal movement rolls all evening and failed to see any combat. Perhaps they were wiser than their leader.

Aha! At last my horsemen turn and head for the enemy cavalry - who will evade, of course.

On my wing, the battle consists of repeated inconclusive charges and countercharges over several turns.

It can't last. Here both Ieyasu and Mitsunari attempt to inspire their troops by example. Ieyasu is slain; the following turn, he is avenged when Mitsunari perishes as well.

My cavalry scare off their opposite numbers on Mt Nangu. I considered piling into Mori's infantry, but chose to turn round to support my own and seek to achieve the elusive breakthrough that would let my troops advance beyond the Post Town. That didn't happen.

The turning point of the battle. Hard to tell who's who, but the gist is this. On our left, Masanori (Dave) (light blue labels) was facing Ukita (Nick) and having the worst of it. Things looked dire when Kobayakawa (Bruce) (darker blue labels) arrived from top left to back up Nick. However, Bruce's main victory condition was to end up clearly committed to whichever side won. He decided the best way to do this was to turn coat, abandon the Western Alliance, join our Eastern Alliance and stab Nick in the back. Half Nick's force was swiftly wiped out. This effectively ended the battle.

Game end on my side. My infantry had ground forward, but not far enough. My cavalry loiter at bottom of pic with their swords unbloodied. I (Ieyasu) have died honourably in battle - but I still died.

Betrayed and defeated, Nick (Ukita) asked if he could commit seppuku. Mark had anticipated just such an eventuality and had a rule for it. Here we see Ukita has rolled 4, enough to do so honourably. His loyal retainers attend him.

Final scores I think were:

Eastern Alliance:

    Dave W - 4

    Phil - 4

    Me - 2

Western Alliance:

    Crispin - 4

    Nick - 4

    Dave T - 2

Hence scores were tied, but Bruce's treachery threw his VPs into the scales to make it a win for the Eastern Alliance and (I believe) Bruce the individual winner with a maximum possible score of 5.




Reflections

The rules worked. Mark used our standard "Bloody Big BATTLES!" rules for 19th-century battles. Shunting BBB back another 200 years didn't seem to be a problem at all. Mark mostly just applied existing Attributes to create the appropriate troop types. Apart from the rule for generals in combat, the only significant change was some tweaking of ranges and shifts for the missile weapons.

The big figures on big bases worked. Mark's 28s are on wider bases than BBB's standard 1"x1": 40mm, I guess.  By making unit frontages wider, I felt this actually helped to make the battle suitably more linear, with less of the fluid maneuver and outflanking that we get in more typical BBB games. And of course, 28s just look good (and as Dave T said, "we can actually see them!").

Wargaming meets role-playing. In normal BBB games, there aren't many unknowns and there's very little fog of war. In these Xmas specials, though, we don't know how long the battle will last, or how many enemy we are up against, or where they all are or what exactly they're trying to do, or even what our own comrades are really up to. That takes more effort to create, and only works as a one-off, but I suppose makes it a truer simulation than the average wargame, as well as a richer experience. And, naturally, it gave us (OK, mostly me) the opportunity for bad accents and plenty of cultural references.

Good sportsmanship. I can only applaud the equanimity with which Nick greeted Bruce's treachery. He fought gamely on for the one turn or so until his defeat was clear, then took the honourable way out, having uttered hardly any swearwords. His good sportsmanship was rewarded when he was joint individual winner on the Western Alliance side.

Spectacular Indian Mutiny Xmas special!

Mark surpassed himself with his latest spectacular Christmas special. These are big multi-player BBB games with a twist: unlike standard scenarios where time limits are clear and everyone knows what their side's common objectives are, in these Christmas games each player has different secret objectives depending on his own individual motivations - greed, glory, self-preservation, rivalry, ambition, etc.

The setting was the climactic assault of the siege of Delhi in 1857 during the Indian Mutiny. (Retaking the whole city actually took a week but this was compressed into 8 game turns.) Mark handcrafted some 15 feet of bastioned walls to represent Delhi's fortifications. Dave W and Phil joined me on the imperial side, outnumbered by five Indian defenders: Crispin, Luke, Ben, Dave T and Nick O.

It fell to me to take the role of Brigadier Nicholson, evidently a fellow of considerable pluck and determination, judging by my objectives. These included storming both the two breaches by the Water Bastion and the Kashmir Bastion (pic above).

Mutineer's-eye view of my force, which for game purposes included both Nicholson's 1st Column and Jones's 2nd Column: four 3-base regiments of European troops plus two larger regiments of loyal sepoys. (Figures from Mark's collection, made by Irregular Miniatures.)

I advanced boldly upon the leftmost breach. I won't be able to tell you much about what was going on along the other 13 feet of fortifications.

Indian artillery on the bastions induced a little more caution towards the righthand breach while we poured fire on the defenders to soften them up for a turn first. Note the small barrels behind my troops. These represent petards for blasting our way into bastions and the like.

Festive combat resolution mechanism! Turns 2 and 3 were spent effecting entry via both breaches, only for Crispin's savage counterattacking hordes to eject the 1st Column from the Water Bastion breach and wipe out a regiment of the 2nd Column, the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers. That loss provoked a cracker pull that I lost, resulting in Nicholson being wounded and rendered hors de combat, seriously handicapping my force for the rest of the game.

To my right was Colonel Campbell's 3rd Column (Dave W). Here he demonstrates one of our patent self-hoisting petards against the Kabul gate.

Turn 4: 2nd Column's 4th Sikhs storm in to avenge the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers

and rout their whiteclad foes, already reeling from the Fusiliers' gallant resistance.

(Yellow markers indicate Disrupted; blue is Spent.)

Turn 5: we are now solidly established inside the walls and driving the enemy before us. The Sikhs are the unit upper right. 1st Column has taken the St James suburb (the grey patch) and the 8th Foot supports its right flank. Heavy casualties are starting to tell on the mutineers.

Our casualties have not been light, though. Here the wounded Nicholson parades assorted wounded and stragglers from my force and Dave's on the table edge.

Start of Turn 8. The building top left is the Magazine, which is also one of my Objectives. In front of it is a shaky line of blue-countered Spent mutineer rabble. My leading unit, the 75th Foot (the line centre left) will shake off its Disruption and charge! Unfortunately, without Nicholson to motivate them, its tired comrades will watch it go in alone.

The 1st Bengal Fusiliers won't even stay to watch ... having rolled snake-eyes earlier, they actually retired outside the breach again. I rationalised this as them being detached to escort supplies and artillery moving up and wounded moving back.

My highwater mark! The 75th routed their spent opponents so comprehensively that they then impetuously charged the rather larger and more solid mob in the Magazine. Unsurprisingly, they bounced off with heavy loss, but their gallantry cannot be faulted.

One of our British team objectives was to find and capture the king of Delhi (Bahadur Shah, I think). Here we see him making his escape past the Red Fort. More splendid Irregular Miniatures.

So how did it turn out? As I said, I didn't have much idea what was happening beyond my scrap with Crispin. He and a couple of other Indian players did better than us on the personal objectives. However, what we didn't know was that there were two factions on the Indian side. Luke and Ben's faction achieved every one of their objectives and therefore achieved a team win. Hurrah for them! (The treacherous dogs, damn their eyes.)

If you enjoyed this and fancy trying some large-scale India games yourself, do take a look at Mark's scenario book, "Bloody Big Battles in INDIA!"

Reflections

Just a seasonal one: the value and importance of good friends.

On which note, I wish all readers of this blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope you all get to spend some quality time with the people most important to you. See you in 2024!

Xmas special: The Innsbruck Incident (1809)

Mark's Christmas games are a much-loved fixture in the OWS calendar. As they are so popular, and as our group has grown significantly this year, he had to accommodate ten of us around a 12' table and create personal briefings for all of us, each with distinct and not necessarily compatible objectives. He excelled himself and choreographed it perfectly.

The setting was the Tyrolean Rebellion of 1809: specifically, the Second Battle of Bergisel (near Innsbruck) on 29 May. Briefly, Napoleon gave the Tyrol to Bavaria after defeating Austria in 1806. The Tyrolese were not happy and when the Fifth Coalition resumed war in 1809, they revolted.

I found myself in the role of Generallieutenant Graf Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy, commanding 3rd Bavarian Division, charged with repelling the rebel attack on Innsbruck with the aid of my loyal lieutenants Vincenti (Mike), Seydewitz (Bruce) and Siebein (John). The hills were alive with rebel Landsturm, Schützen and irregulars, backed up by a few Austrian regulars. Mike covered our eastern flank against Crispin's Schützen; John had to fend off Luke and Ben's irregulars arriving from the west; Bruce and I were confronted by the enemy main body approaching from the south over the Bergisel (Dave T, Phil and Nick with a bit of everything, including artillery and even some cavalry).

It was non-stop fighting on all fronts from the off and rocked along so fast that I can't really tell you what was going on outside my central sector. There was more fog of war than in our regular BBB games: we didn't know how many game turns we had to hold on for, the ref sprung surprises on us all (ammunition shortages, armistice proposals, etc), and it was punctuated with Xmas crackers being pulled to decide such things as Tyrolese falling log traps or Bavarian cavalry rallying. Four photos briefly tell the story:

Looking west along the valley of the Inn! Bavarian main body clustered around Innsbruck in the centre; flank guards top right and bottom of pic; rebels about to swarm over the mountains from the south (left).

How things looked from where I was sitting on Turn 1. My three small triangular Bavarian units in echelon above Husslhof, backed up by Seydewitz's cavalry, are all that stands between the rebel masses on the mountaintops and Innsbruck (off bottom of pic), not to mention our precious ammo wagons.

A closer look at the foe. White-coated Austrian regulars top left; Schuetzen lower left; and 1000s of irregulars clustered in prayer around Father Haspinger's cross. 6mm figures by Baccus. The scythemen with the Tyrolese flags are a mix of WEC13 Armed Peasants and YG1 Yodelling Goatherds.

Endex. Hard to tell, but the only Bavarians left on this central sector are two of my infantry units holed up in Husslhof and Wilten and a lonely battery by the wagons, which have just been overrun by Tyrolese Landsturm. The mob at bottom centre are more rebels who snuck round into our rear, probably to the dismay of the good burghers of Innsbruck. Not sure how this added up to a Bavarian victory - credit to Mike on our left (out of pic), methinks.

At game end, Mark totted up victory points for us according to our individual objectives. I think I got a respectable 3VP, but our most successful Bavarian was Mike with 4VP, and our Bavarian players' combined total was enough for a Bavarian win. However, the winning individual player was Phil, who I think was the Capuchin priest, Father Joachim Haspinger, and who earned 5 VPs for repeated charges by his zealous congregation. But who cares who won? It was splendid good fun and a perfect way to round off what has been a really good year wargames-wise, not only in terms of quantity and quality of games, but also - most importantly - because our happy band is growing and thriving. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all, and here's to more of the same in 2023!

===

Previous Christmas specials: 

Jaithak (Gurkha War, 1814)
Khoosh-Ab (1857)
Amoaful (1874)
Java (1811)
Caucasus (1845)
The first one Mark ran was Magdala (1868) but sadly I don't have a record of that.