Anglo Sikh War Play test Battle of Suraj Khund

Having reminded ourselves of the rules I wanted to test the game mechanics with something slightly more complex.

A mini version of Suraj Khund seemed a good option and one I had in mind for a while. 

Suraj Khund was a divisional level battle in between the first and second sieges of Multan. Unusual as the operations around Multan had irregular forces on both sides in large numbers and was quite confused with both sides launching attacks at the other at the same time.

The first troops to arrive at Multan when the city rebelled were Muslim irregulars and native trained regulars of Daudpatra, led by Lt Edwardes these forces consisted of several thousand Pathan and Baluchi tribesmen bolstered by 2 battalions of trained matchlock armed troops. These were eventually reinforced by General Whish with British and Indian troops and then also by Sikh regulars, I know very confusing.

Things took a turn for the worst when the Sikh regular brigades changed sides and the outnumbered British and allies had to withdraw 9km and dig into a fortified camp.

The British and allies dug themselves in to await reinforcements and the Sikhs put up earthworks and artillery to annoy them whilst they got busy arguing with each other.

The British decided to attack the Sikh positions in flank and relieve the pressure on their camp, just before they launched their attack the Sikhs launched their own on the defenders of the camp, in this case a part of the defences entirely covered by Native irregulars and native matchlock troops

So the game starts with the unusual feature of the Sikhs attacking with regular foot, whilst the "British " are defending with native irregulars.

To add to the confusion I chose not to tell either player what was going on until the British flank attack deployed on table.

The Sikhs had 2 battalions of matchlock troops with a large gun in their entrenchments, supported by two units of tribal irregulars and 2 of irregular horse. On their left flank 6 battalions of regular Sikh foot are advancing to attack the British native allies.

Facing the Sikhs are again 2 battalions of matchlock armed natives with a gun in earthworks, these are supported by 5 units of tribal irregulars pouring out of the British camp to block the Sikh advance.

The flank attack will move on as soon as British movement cards are drawn and will march out of scrub on the Sikh right flank, the opposite flank to the Sikh Regulars. The company forces are two brigades of foot each with one British and 2 Sepoy battalions and a section of horse guns. The British also have a regiment of Bengal irregular cavalry.  

Steve commanded the Sikhs and managed to gain the initiative for the first three quarters of the game. Unfortunately one of his first cards was "uncontrolled advance" this meant testing each of his "tribal" units on a roll of a 6 they charged headlong at the nearest enemy. This led to one tribal unit leaping out of the defences to charge the matchlocks in their earthworks ending the turn by itself in the middle of no mans land between the defences.

Meanwhile Chris decides his 5 units of tribal irregulars are best used as a speed bump to disrupt the Sikh regulars and throws them forward on his right flank.

Steve is meanwhile able to get his Sikh regulars forward on his left, once past the earthworks he can start to deploy them into a longer line to make use of their numbers.

The game is shaping up nicely for a straight up fight with most of the fighting on one flank with the rogue Sikh tribal unit almost on the flank of the British works as they get a second move. 

The tribal irregulars are looking very dangerous on the flank of the matchlocks, but you should always listen to your mum and not go wandering off alone..

At this point the Company flanking Division arrives through the scrub, Steve is heard to say "thats unexpected" or something along those lines, possibly questioning my parentage. 

It will be interesting to see how the rules cope with the British regulars piling into one flank whilst the Sikh regulars take on the Muslim Tribal warbands on the other.

Chris has opted to push his cavalry through the centre with an infantry brigade either side supported by a horse gun each.

Meanwhile the Tribal irregulars have closed with the Sikh regulars on the British right and one unit of irregulars is running across the face of their own entrenchments to hit the rogue Sikh warband which is now caught between the irregulars on one flank and an Indian infantry Brigade on its other.

Chris's warbands give the Sikh foot ineffective volleys and close in, they will stand off taking the opportunity to fire at each other until one side draws a melee resolution card. The Warbands have done their job though as they act as a "speedbump" to stop the Sikhs assaulting the earthworks..

With both the flanking British and Warband putting a volley into the rogue Sikh Warband it wisely legs it back in the direction of its own earthworks less a few casualties.

Meanwhile the lead flanking Brigade is almost at the Sikh trenches and facing a bunch of irregular cavalry.

Lovely Bengal Irregulars from Empress, originally by Iron Duke, I actually took a picture of this base to remind me to repair the ankles of the grey horse which were about to snap!

The rogue Sikh Warband has fled from the Company foot only to run headlong into Bengal Cavalry halfway back. Its really not been their day.

Steve turns his right hand battalion of Matchlocks to face the British intent on contesting the entrenchments. 

O

On the British right the Tribal irregulars have bounced from the Sikhs as the Mellee card is drawn, they are in various states of disrepair as they flood back to their own lines but have inflicted enough casualties on the Sikhs to slow them down and even force one battalion to retire. 

On the left the first unit of Sikh cavalry charge the British line, they take massive casualties and retreat as far as they can, they wont be back this game but it has prevented the British volleying the irregular matchlocks.

The British Allied matchlocks now fire at the Sikh regulars, the fire being so ineffective we have to question whether they had remembered to load their matchlocks.

Chris gets a cavalry move card and forms the Bengal Irregulars then charges the Sikh Warband. As its cavalry charging foot we prosecute the melee immediatley with no need of a card.

Chris needs 5's and 6's to inflict a casualty in the melee, he made me take this picture he was so pleased with his dice throw, 8 hits from 11. Naturally enough the rogue warband is destroyed.

The British get plenty of advantage in hand to hand as you might expect. Each side gets a dice per base plus a dice for level of quality, British is 5, sepoys usually 3 or 4, Sikh regulars 4, irregular 2or 3. The British also get 2 more dice for aggressive and a further dice for bayonet. In this particular instance they also get a dice for drawing the Melee resolution card. Sikh regulars get a plus 2 for aggressive whilst Sepoys get a plus 1 for bayonet making Sikh regulars typically slightly better than sepoys and both generally better than the Tribal irregulars. However in this case Steve was able to hold his own with good dice despite having less dice to throw, The Melee went to three rounds depleting both sides before the British eventually had to pull back with just two bases remaining.

I missed getting a photo of the Irregular cavalry charging the gun, as it was unloaded this was pretty one sided and the gun crew ran away. The cavalry's test for winning saw them withdraw to reform. 

With the British decimated it was now the turn of the Bengal Sepoys to take on the Sikh Matchlock men.

The Sikh Matchlocks and the first Sepoy battalion fight themselves to a stand still so the second Sepoy battalion passes through the first and volleys the badly mauled matchlocks. 

The Company get an infantry move card and advance the second brigade on the Sikhs, supported by one battalion of matchlocks from the earthworks Chris means business. 

The Bengal Cavalry advance in support of the foot. Although charging an unbroken line of Sikh regulars may not be a great idea.

Chris gets another British and Allies infantry move card and gets forward again.

Chris has brought the last 2 bases of British back into the fight whilst Steve deploys the second matchlock battalion to face them. To their right the second Company brigade has charged the Sikh regular line after giving a short range volley, unfortunately one battalion of Sepoys breaks under the Sikh closing fire and routs, the other two close with the bayonet.

As the Melee resolution card has not been drawn Steve gets his movements and pulls his line of Sikh regulars back a little, Chris gets a cavalry card and pushed his irregulars forward but they dont quite have the movement. Its all still to play for really although the company cavalry could still turn the tide.

The Company forces are up against it but could still take the Sikh entrenchment, whilst the Sikhs, although still very strong on their left, don't look like taking the British trenches. 

I am not sure I would want to call it but we have already gone half an hour over our finish time. Thoroughly enjoyed and the rules needed very little support from us to work through all the different complexities. I am happy that we are vurtually there now.

A word about some of the mechanism's here. The uncontrolled advance may seem extreme. However there were a number of engagements where commanders found it difficult to control their untrained tribal elements who just wanted to get to grips with the enemy. The retreat of a full move or two moves when failing morale may also seem a little extreme, but without this we found that troops failing melee came straight back to fight far too quickly so this mechanism forced them to spend time re-organising and marching back before they could get back involved.

In terms of forces the actual battle had many more irregulars on both sides. The British flanking force had 6 battalions as our game but was missing companies from each left to guard the camp, it had 6 horse guns so our two gun sections a good representation but it also had 2 squadrons of Bengal Native Light Cavalry to supplement the irregular Bengal Cavalry. The Sikhs may have had thousands of irregular cavalry milling about and possibly having 9,000 foot and 3,000 horse. The British irregular and tribal elements were mainly foot and again were likely to have numbered in the thousands with more irregulars being fed in by Edwardes from the camp as they became available, he was also able to feed in 2 battalions of Van Cortlandts "Sikh" regulars, actually Muslim troops possibly best represented as uniformed irregulars. 

A much simplified version of a battle I hope to do on a much larger scale in future and a very good test of the rules which held up well and gave us a fun game for both sides.

Hopefully you enjoyed the little write up, as always thanks for stopping by.

Re-Based 40mm Napoleonics

You might remember I picked up some painted 40mm French Infantry from Ebay a while back. With some help from Steve Shann I have rebased them after a bit of a refresh to bring them more in line with my own figures (Not much bit of highlights on flesh and a brighter blue highlight mainly).

I also took the opportunity to re-base my cavalry from single bases which were a pain to store and move and always got damaged. So having just finished these off I thought why not get a few snaps for you.

British Light Dragoons, all Perry's but with some simple conversions to arms and a head swap.

These two mounted officers are both Ebay purchases rebased and touched up. The left is Sash and Sabre the right is a 3d printed Piano Wargames.

Two lots of Sash and Sabres Voltiguers.

This lot with a Perry Officer and a Perry Voltiguer on the far right.

I also put the Light Dragoon commander on a larger base, again makes him less prone to damage and looks nicer I think. An NCO rather than an Officer, as I paint more I am looking at 3d printed officers for these figures.

He's a Perry trooper with hands swapped mounted on a AWI Front Rank horse which came out quite nice.

Then there are the 40mm French I bought, these had a fabulous paint job, I did though add my own touches to these guys, a highlight to the blue to make them brighter and extra layer of pale flesh highlighting the face. Other than that its mainly just a rebase. Battalion one.

Battalion two essentially the same process and outcome.

Battalion three in white. A slightly smaller unit, the white had yellowed with age somewhat so required a layer of highlight to bring it back out, again though the starting point was excellent so not a huge ammount of work.

Lastly a re-base for my French Hussars very much the same as the British Light Dragoons.

Much happier with these on larger bases, As you may have guessed this is now a little out of hand for Skirmish gaming and I am actively reviewing how we step it up to battalion level. Lots more to paint so a couple of brigades a side with artillery and cavalry support eventually.

Megalomania at its finest.

No more to base or re-base now so it will be on with painting fresh units, I really need to focus on British and Spanish, the French have essentially 7 battalions ready, with only 1 British and 2 Spanish to face them.

Watch this space I guess.

Great Northern War with BLB

We have had a few play throughs with Beneath the Lilly Banners recently and decided it would be good to try a small Great Northern War game with the Talon and Claw amends added.

The Russians have two squadrons of dismounted dragoons holding a farm ahead of their line and slightly left of centre with a sotnia of Cossacks and 2 squadrons of mounted dragoons covering the left flank. their centre and right is 3 battalions of foot and a double battery of field guns.

The swedes have 3 Squadrons of horse and 3 Battalions of foot supported by a light gun.

Steve's lovely new Eastern Europe buildings are on the back left of our picture from TM terrain. The Church is particularly lovely.

Up to press I have been pretty sceptical of BLB in particular due to the low movement rates. The Swedes being very manouvreable get bonuses on movement, infantry move 6 inches instead of 4 and wheel at full movement making them really easy to use. They also get some other rules bonuses making them a bit more effective. I was hopeful this would solve some of my concerns.

The Swedes always get one more level of orders than they have rolled to reflect their professional staff work and officer crps, so for most of the game I was able to order all of my troops, this makes a big difference when you are attacking and another reason they cost more in a points based game.

I used the Swedish Dragoons below to represent the two squadrons of drilled horse and Adelsfana as the Elite Veterans. 

Steve has his Cossacks deployed forward but pretty quickly pulled them back out of harms way.

King Charles was not a fan of artillery and often left it behind, in todays game I felt I might as well as done the same, not really much use in attack for the Swedes.

Initial moves I send my Elite horse squadron to my left to try flank the Russians and my dragoons right to try tie up the Russian Horse. My foot Brigade marches straight down the throat of the Russians to try for conclusions.

My Dragoons are immediatly shot at by the dismounted Russians int he farm and I take my first casulaty.

The double battery inflicts 3 casualties on my Elite Veteran infantry unit. Thats with a ,long range modifier and a new target modifier, next turn it will be easier, its a bit of a shock, that double battery will have destroyed a battalion before I am half way and another before we can close. I need to change my plan.

Steve realises that this will impact the playability of this as a test game and removes a gun. Something learned already.

Move 2 I change direction, as the Gusn are un manouvreable I decide to attack through the farm where the guns cant reach me and punch through the Russians on my right.

Even with the increases movement rate of the Swedes it takes me another two moves to get there and my bets battalion has 5 casualties now having taken 3 morale tests. Just as well we are manovreable.

Field guns are pretty devastating, well placed artillery will be a key factor for future games I feel.

I deploy my light gun to support the attack on the farm. 2 dice I score one hit, but as its cover I have to re-roll hits and miss. My musketry however inflicts casualties as does the return fire from the Dragoons.

Next move the Swedes declare a charge on the dragoons and convincingly pass their test.

The beat up Dragoons fall theirs and leg it out the back of the Farm.

on my left the Adalsfana have been advancing to try get around the flank of the Russians, I was planning to try charge the rear of the artillery, however one volley from the Russkies and they are seen off in retreat. 

The Adalsfana took a real kicking from that one volley and wont be much use for the rest of the game,.

On my right the Dragoons have steadily advanced as Steve has steadily retired denying me a target.

My lead battalion now charges the second dismounted Dragoon squadron, they stand but are not surprisingly defeated in hand to hand, Steve rolls well for them and they retire in good order out the back of the farm.

I push my Elite Veteran unit out of the farm at the left of the Russian line away from the gun and throw a wasted long range volley at them.

Its now 10pm and we have not quite got to grips again. Having said that I have enjoyed the game much more and we took our time going through every step to ensure we had it right. 

I am still concerned about the movements rates but much happier with the mechanics and the differences for Great Northern War.

We agree to have another game next week, slightly larger and try increasing movement rates slightly. We decide that we will add an average dice of movement for each unit.

I cant wait to get to a point where the Great Northern War collections are back on table regularly.