Mad Dogs and Englishmen playtest for Sikh Wars

I picked up these rules hoping for a good fit for my large Sikh Wars collections.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen are large scale skirmish rules so my instinct was they may not be the best fit for Divisional size Sikh Wars actions , however the author has played the rules with as many as 2,000 figures on table and has produced army lists and scenarios for the Sikh Wars so seemed worth a go.

The key thing missing were the chance cards, printed in the rule book, I don't have a photocopier to be able to print these off so unfortunately couldn't use them for this game. I feel these would add a lot to the game, next time hopefully.

Steve set up a game with 3 brigades of Sikh Foot and 2 Brigades of cavalry defending against 3 Brigades of Company troops and one Brigade of cavalry.

In total the Sikhs has 7 regular foot and 4 irregular with 2 guns and 4 regiments of cavalry. 1 Regiment of regulars occupied a village.

The Company had 3 battalions of Queens foot and 7 of Sepoys supported by 2 guns and one regiment of British Horse and one of Company native horse.

Steve had read through the rules and had a reasonable idea of how they worked but we took our time over the game to be sure we had a reasonable grasp.

Each brigade had a commander with command points dependant on his quality. Commanders can use these to order their units and to remove terror from units (A bit like shock in Sharp Practice) so far so good I like this. Poor commanders, or those without a European style staff to issue their orders might not be able to give each unit an order, for those that cant you can dice to see if they do what you want.

Again I quite like this mechanism.

Movement is randomised, native foot get 2 d6 of movement, we assumed you have to move all you get so brigades can become disjointed, European troops get three, assuming they are more eager to get to grips with their enemy. This is reflective of how the British Troops performed in the Sikh Wars so again so far so good. I did wonder though if tribal irregulars might move a bit faster.

Each commander has a card and activation is on the turn of the commanders card so again you dont really get control of who goes when as you might in other rules. Again I like this.

Moving comes before firing, so we get going and 2 British brigade commanders come out first. Each has 4 command points so can order every unit they have. They advance and one gun is unlimbered and fires, one casualty caused. On my right the British are already in range so we unleash a long range volley which is surprisingly effective

Firing is a D10 for every figure. Once hits are calculated we can then roll a further D10 to decide if these are kills or terror. Terror can potential be removed where kills cannot. The lower you roll the more of your hits are kills, on a 1 or 2 all hits are kills.

Steves cavalry are next and he declines to use them yet, they have no where to go.

Steve is largely content to wait for the British to come to him. A wise choice given the low command ratings and historically accurate too. Probably for the same reason.

My cavalry are next, I decide to charge and take the extra D6 charge bonus, unfortunately I get the worst of all rolls, I am 25 inches from the Sikh foot and roll 23. This is going to be painful.

As I dont reach him Steve does not need to do his compulsory morale test and doesn't get his closing fire.

The rest of Steve's foot are out and content to wait for the British with a couple of counter volleys that do small ammounts of damage.

My centre brigade then comes out, the British get a great move and bound forward, the Sepoys roll poorly and are left behind, the gun moves and fires with little effect. The British pour in a volley against the village but the hard cover means little in the way of casualties.

So far so good, a few things we cant find in the rules, can we interpenetrate? We assume we can and press on regardless. 

Next go and the Sikhs facing the cavalry come out first. One volley and they completely wipe out the cavalry regiment to a man.

We stand back and consider this for a  few minutes, Steve has rolled well but that seems really extreme.

I take a quick photo before putting them back in the box.

Last card is Steves left hand brigade, Sikh foot and gun fire on my British battalion poor dice rolling leaves no casualties and 4 terror.

With the exception of the cavalry action this all seems very positive and the rules flow reasonably well with some nice mechanics.

Next move and my cavalry are out first, the remaining regiment charges the Sikh Foot. Closing fire requires a roll to determine range, Steve gets long range but still kills half of my cavalry, we then fail a morale and flee. However as we want to see how melee works we assume they passed and go through the phase. As the foot get a dice per figure for both ranks and with bonuses for being Sikh fight as well as the horse, the horse are wiped out to a man inflicting no casualties on the Sikhs.

Again this feel really odd, once horse are in amongst infantry in line we would expect them to do a lot of damage but the foot are able to see them off very easily.

The native horse join the British horse in their box. 

My right hand brigade are next, my commander using 2 command poitns to remove all of the terror on the British and we charge the Sikh foot, a quick melee sees 14 out of the Sikh 20 killed, again very, very bloody, the Sikhs fail their morale test and retreat behind their next unit.

The first sepoy unit advances in support, fairly slowly. The second I am unable to order as I have spent my command points, I roll to see if they will advance, they wont, so I loose a long range volley at the gun and inflict one casualty. Pretty happy with how the rules handle this move other than how bloody the combat seemed.

On my left the British advance to point blank range and volley the first unit of tribesmen who not unnaturally run away. The three sepoy units advance cautiously and unleash two ineffective volleys at the other units of tribesmen.

In the cnetre the gun and two Sikh battalions make a proper mess of my British unit with far more terror than figures I take a morale test but pass.

On the left the tribesmen fire a volley into a Sepoy unit, a good roll sees 9 kills and whilst the sepoys pass their morale they are in proper trouble. Again this feel a little too bloody.

At this point we run out of time with everything still to play for, only three moves but that's ok we took our time to get a feel for the rules and checked things as we went along.

Some really interesting mechanics which we liked. The cards no doubt will add a significant element to the game.

A bit concerned about how poorly the cavalry performed and how effective some of the musketry can be. Tempted to try a much smaller game with the cards next time and play it through see how we get on.

Lots of food for thought.

Thanks for stopping by.