Playtesting Bundok and Bayonet

Having read (so far) about two thirds of Campaigns on the North-West Frontier 1849-1908, I was eager to try a quick round of Bob Cordery's old classic Bundok and Bayonet with my Wofun Great Game collection. I may have been in too much of a hurry to make a balanced scenario, though: read on.

Sir Hectare McDonald, Colonel of the Upteenth Bengal Infantry, has been tasked with marching up the Whatsit Valley to reconnoiter and, if possible, burn the native village at the other end. (The natives have been uppity.) He has his understrength battalion of fifteen men, and two squadrons (eight men) of the Bengal Lancers.

The natives have a dozen riflemen, ten swordsmen, and a rusty old cannon.

Village to right, native rifles on the ridge at bottom,
gun in the village, swordsmen at center. Indian troops
enter at left.

The rules have a few similarities with TSATF; they are card-driven, and units have random move distances. When a red (British) or black (native) card is drawn, a unit is selected and rolls a morale check, trying to roll under its number of figures on a variable number of D6. Then it may choose two actions - shooting, movement, formation change, etc. On a failure, the unit still has plenty of options, but any movement must be away from the enemy.

Turn 1: The infantry moves at the double through the pass, and is fired on by native rifles and cannon, losing two of the battalion's sixteen men. Then I realize the firing required two sixes per kill at long range, and the casualties get back up. The native foot and Bengal cavalry both fail their morale rolls and thus do nothing this turn.

Gun in the village. Note the unique local architecture.

Swordsmen cunningly hidden behind a patch of stone, giggling.

Khyber rifles waiting patiently, with a fine view of the valley.

The expedition faces front.

Turn 2: The Bengal infantry changes formation to put more rifles into the firing line (only the first rank may fire or fight), but cause no casualties (the hills provide cover, requiring four hits per casualty at long range). The swordsmen pop out of hiding and charge screaming into the Bengal regiment, but lose three of their own in the melee in exchange for a single Indian figure.

The Indian infantry moves into range.

First melee.

Turn 3: The swordsmen fail their morale this turn, so their options are limited. They fight another close combat, then move away. Both sides lose two men before the natives break. While this clears room for the mountaineers to fire, at long range they remain ineffective. The Bengal Lancers move 15" onto the table, but only two of them can see a target for their carbines. The Bengal Infantry moves forward and fires at whatever targets it can see.

Turn 4: The lancers are forced to change formation to get through the pass, which means they can't attack this turn (you can change formation and move, or move and assault, but not all three). The Bengal Infantry find themselves on the end of a short(range) stick as the musketeers on the hill fell three of them. Their mounted colonel nestles into shelter and gives an order that he should have given on Turn 1: "Take the hills!" The infantry mount a bayonet charge up the slopes (losing four inches of movement to climb two contours), but lose two of their own to the sharp Khyber knives. The native gun nudges its way into the open, hoping to take the cavalry as they approach. Its long-range fire picks off one Lancer. The surviving swordsmen roll a five on 2d6 - exactly what they need to charge and fight again. They clamber into the rocks to sandwich the hapless Bengal Infantry. The fight is inconclusive.

Lancers narrow their front to move ahead.

Turn 5: The British clearly haven't brought enough troops to this battle. Colonel McDonald sounds retreat. The Bengals scramble along the ridge back whence they came. The Lancers follow, hoping to screen the infantry in retreat, but apparently stumble on the rocks as they roll seven on 4D6! The swordsmen plunge after them and, impressively, kill two horsemen for no loss. The musketeers on the hills pick off two more of the Bengal Infantry, including the Colonel, who made a great target.

Turn 6: The swordsmen fail their morale check, so stand around waving their swords and jeering at the fleeing British. Both infantry and cavalry retreat precipitately (16"+!) and are either off the board or out of sight.

The game was lost from the start, really, because there weren't enough Imperial troops. My key mistake with the Bengal Infantry was keeping them in the plains, when what I've just been reading and one of the key rules of mountain fighting tells me to hold the high ground! Standard procedure on these expeditions was to drive the tribesmen off the peaks and only then send the column through the valleys. The decimated swordsmen were the MVPs of the match, passing two difficult morale checks in succession to keep them annoying the Indians.

Takeaways:

• Only my first game, so there were a few mistakes on the rules. In particular, I didn't notice that units get an extra die to move in open ground, which made a difference early on. Shooting was also a bit tricky - all hits are on sixes, but it's possible to shoot twice and you need more or fewer hits to score casualties depending on range and cover.
• I was flipping back and forth between the morale, movement, shooting and close-combat rules, each of which was on a separate page of my printout. A quick-rules-sheet would be handy, but the rules are quite brief so it should be doable.
• The rules as a whole are simple, with basic mechanisms and a "loads-of-dice" attitude. I was getting the hang of them by the end of the game.
• Close combat is deadlier than shooting, since only one hit is needed for a casualty, whereas much of the shooting was at long-range or into rocks, requiring two or even four hits per kill.
• There's no morale check at the end of combat; it comes next turn when a unit that has taken casualties is less likely to pass. A failure means that it is limited to holding still or falling back.

If this were a campaign, the clear defeat the Indian Army suffered would lead to further uprising and perhaps fire all along the mountain chain. What next for the Border? Only time will tell...

Labeling tests

 So I bought a label-maker today:

The label strip is overlarge and needs to be cut down.

But there are useful options for smaller font, wasting less strip.

I start with one box of minis...

And one set of bases. Think I'll use smaller strips.

I think this'll work for the purpose! I've got a lot of regiments to name and bases to label - once I do I'll update the "organization."

Also read about half of Captain Nevill's book. There's not much in the way of tactics - it's more a series of brief expedition overviews, written as a textbook but only providing background for further specific study, with occasional interpolations about lessons learned from specific actions. There are lots of unit organizations that will be useful for creating "field forces" for games or campaigns - the typical expedition seems to have been primarily native infantry and artillery, with the occasional British regiment and cavalry squadron.

A few interesting takeaways:

• There was less of a set organization for brigades at this time. Every column had both infantry and artillery, and there was a much smaller proportion of British troops to native than in the World Wars. Some columns were entirely Indian.
• There is a "changeover" about 1890, when the natives obtained modern rifles in quantity - but they tended to use them more for range than weight of firepower.
• Elephants were used in a few expeditions to carry the artillery, but were also used to tear down buildings and improve the roads.
• CVF Townshend, later infamous as the commander of Kut in 1916, comes in for much praise in the account of the Chitral campaign of 1895, when he commanded a surrounded fort for 47 days. A Sikh platoon had surrendered nearby and been slaughtered by the locals; you'd think he'd have remembered this a generation later.

If you're interested in mountain fighting, this is the book for you; unfortunately, there are only a few large-scale maps. Games based on this will be more "inspired" than directly translated. Still, plenty of interest. See you next time!

So, About Those Resolutions...

See previous post.

Haven't gotten any of 'em done. Been doing some reading, though.

An old classic.

Ordered this one off Ebay, received it today, and tore thru it (compact for all the info in there). A quick and easy read. I first encountered it on Man of Tin's blog and was intrigued by the simple rules included. The 18th-century ones are far too simple and brief, but the WWII and Ancient ones a touch more complex and interesting. The Ancient rules seem influenced by Tony Bath and nicely dovetail with the Ancient naval rules in Featherstone's Naval Wargames, one of my very favorites of his guides - put the two together and you could have a real campaign! Now that Paperboys has some WWII stuff, I am considering trying the WWII rules in the chapter as well. The rest of the book is pretty outdated. Even in the day I can't imagine that the instructions for molding and painting miniatures would have been all that useful, as they're hard to visualize. But then, I've been spoiled by heavily illustrated guides. There is almost nothing on terrain either, though the book does focus much more on the soldiers than on the "backdrop."

Found a classic old used bookstore in the next county - the sort with narrow aisles, towering dark shelves and that dusty-book smell. Picked up a Ballantine volume on the Messerschmitt 109 written by the prolific aviation author Martin Caidin, a curious pair of small volumes of "War Pictures by British Artists" printed in 1942, and a history of the Northwest Frontier published in 1908 - should be plenty of gaming inspiration in the latter! There were even some "propaganda-adventure" books for children as published during the war years - an entire series about a Women's Army Corps member, and another about a USN air-midshipman in the Everglades. Also an enormous (and tempting) French volume on the history of toy soldiers that included a bit by Featherstone about wargaming. I'll definitely go back.

The author was killed at Gallipolli.

I've also just borrowed Christopher Duffy's Fire and Stone, on siege warfare. His stuff is always good, but this is one I've overlooked. Today on Virtual Wargames Club someone mentioned it contains commentary on wargaming sieges, so I'll check it out.

Organizing/Labeling: Having observed some clear labels in use at my new workplace (we use them in place of stamps or preprinted titles on paperwork) I was leaning toward bringing printer label sheets in and doing that. But today during Virtual Wargames Club someone suggested a label-maker. I'll check tomorrow if the local office store has one I can play with before purchasing.

Monthly Solo Game: Er... well, I have tomorrow free, so I will try to do something. I am leaning toward the Mike Lambo ECW solo; I haven't tried making up the boards with Memoir '44 tiles yet, and that's one reason I bought the latter. Charge! won't work until I do some labeling, and while I thought of trying a Programmed Scenario with TSATF or Bundok and Bayonet, I'm out of practice with the former and have never played the latter. So they may not be the best way of "getting back in the groove."

Library Gaming: While I'm a children's librarian again, the population at my new branch turns out to be overwhelmingly preschool. So gaming won't happen - much. There are a few teens and a busy chess club, so I may try to fit in some gridded games. Not enough to run roleplaying games, though, unless we promote it, and I'm not in the Teen department anymore so that's not really my bailiwick anymore. I've run games before with elementary and middle-schoolers, but there's not enough kids of that age at any given time to play - although the branch actually owns several DnD volumes I'd like to make use of. There's also a "music club," so I get to play folksongs and talk about history on Fridays. In the meantime, I'm still building Paperboys - a US Colored regiment for display during Black History Month, and a 40mm figure of George Washington which might work as a craft for older kids for President's Day. In March will come paper suffragettes.

Painting: None at all. There are the 40K minis, and there are some French Resistance types that would fit in with my VBCW-ish collection. Just need to buckle down on those.

I find that it's the getting started I have the most difficulty with in doing a project - once I actually get off my butt and start, I become absorbed and can keep going for ages. Need to do that tomorrow. Good night, and hope your projects are going better than mine!

New Year's Gaming Resolutions

Yeah, maybe a little late. Starting up a new(ish) job has been a bit distracting, in the sense that after I come home I haven't been thinking much about gaming, beyond my usual heavy reading - largely Napoleonics at present.

I am trying here to pick things that I think I'm actually capable of doing (and posting about) in the near future.

1. Rationalize and organize my Wofun 18mms into proper "Imagi-nations" armies. I have a lot more units now than when I first posted about them, and they are scattered in stackable toolboxes and one or two less effective containers. I've also found it would be a good idea to label them, as at 18mm some are not easily distinguishable. I'll leave them at their full strengths (usually 5-6 bases) in the box, drawing out the number appropriate to the ruleset as needed. I'm not sure how to label them, with the bases 20x30mm and low in height as well. I'd rather not have tags, since that'll make arranging columns a bit unwieldy. Some sort of very small sticky labels might be best. Suggestions?

2. Organize my solo gaming and do it on a more regular basis. I have two books of solo scenarios - Mike Lambo's English Civil War and Charles S. Grant's Programmed Wargame Scenarios. The ECWs already have a ruleset, while after all my '45 tests I'm leaning towards a reduced version of Charge! for the Grant scenarios. I've done the first ECW and the first two Programmed scenarios for this blog already, and I'd like to simply work my way through them. Given my other gaming commitments, I think one per month, perhaps alternating, is the best way to do this.

3. Do a little actual painting. At a minimum, I'd like to paint my 8th Edition 40K starter set to the standards in the booklet, which require just six paints apiece and do not include things like highlighting. I've spent so much of my effort on Wofun and Paperboys that my coloring skills are atrophying - and despite my love for Youtube painting videos, I've never tried many of their techniques. This is more of a challenge I'm setting myself, but I think I can get fifteen basic 40K minis to "tabletop standard" in twelve months! Anything more, like following along with a proper video, will be a bonus.

4. Library gaming (and gaming-adjacent activities). Not the fairly random things I've been doing, but something better planned and perhaps even promoted. My new branch seems a little more easy-going about that sort of stuff, and my bosses have expressed interest. I'd like to run a plan by them with specific dates and projects. I don't think I have time to prep a 180th-anniversary refight of Olustee, but at a minimum I ought to be able to do:

- 54mm Paperboys suffragettes for March.

- Paper pirate ships and a round of Limeys and Slimeys for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

- DnD-esque games for summer (Summer Reading Theme this year: Adventure).

- A Christmas Carnage-style snowball fight in December. 

Nice to have:

- Paperboys US Colored Infantry for February.

- A refight of Trenton around Christmas.

- A jousting game taken from White Dwarf 215, using either 54mm Paperboys knights (easy for kids to color) or painted plastics (requires more planning). Perhaps during Renfest time.

- Some activities with the Warhammer Alliance set. Might also work for summer.

The system has also emphasized skygazing, so paper or other crafting of spacecraft models might be possible in between attempts to spot the International Space Station and watching an eclipse - particularly in April, Dark Skies Month.

So that's what I think I can achieve this year. A few other things I'd like to do if I can find the time:

5. Some colonial campaigning, either Darkest Africa or Northwest Frontier. I've been talking about these for a while, but I have the terrain for both now and it would be nice to get something together with them.

6. Something to do with Very British Civil War - I have most of the books now, and enough painted minis to run a game.

7. Going to another convention. I ought to get to one of the Orlando ones.

8. Running that dang Picacho Pass scenario. I have the appropriate rules and minis, just need to absorb the former, figure out a scenario and source proper terrain.

9. Another remote game, or more. Jon Freitag kindly offered me a slot recently, so I hope to get that one in soon.

Hope your gaming this year goes as well or better. Until next time!