Zulu War: Second March on Ulundi

This will just be a brief post: time is too short for a fuller one (plus I only took two photos), but this game was too good not to record.

Last week Anton gave us his "First March on Ulundi" scenario that encompassed both the disaster at Isandlwana and the heroic stand at Rorke's Drift. This week he followed it up with "Second March on Ulundi".

This second march was the expedition mounted four months after Isandlwana that culminated in final Zulu defeat at Ulundi. It involved two British columns: Brigadier Sir Evelyn Wood's "Flying Column" approaching from the west and the main column under Chelmsford invading from the north.

Historically, the Zulus waited outside the Royal Kraal at Ulundi, hoping to negotiate peace. (They were disappointed.) Anton's scenario explores a more aggressive what-if option in which the Zulus advance to take on the separate British columns before they can rendezvous and combine.

Here are the two photos. Sorry they aren't the best and I didn't take the usual full-table shot to orient you better.

The Flying Column (left of pic) has a lot of ground to cover. The Zulus' Left Horn comes to meet it. Note the small unit upper right: that is Wood's cavalry, which in this game managed to slip through the Zulu army to rendezvous with Chelmsford. Top right corner, you can just see the long mountain that Chelmsford's column is moving down.

 This time the Zulus had some rifle-armed units, which added variety to the tactical interactions (even if they didn't actually hit very much). No redcoats because I don't possess any, sorry - my Balkan Wars Greeks had to stand in for the Brits. Virtues of 6mm scale!

The main British column, moving south along a mountainside, turns to face the Zulu Right Horn intercepting them from the east. This was slow progress with much carnage.

Anton, Phil and I played this game through twice in a short afternoon. In the first, the Zulus were very aggressive, managed to overrun some NNC and capture a gun battery, but exhausted themselves in assaults so that the British were then able to proceed through the wreckage with relative ease. In the second game, the Zulus adopted a more patient strategy, feeding impis in gradually to keep the British pinned down and play for time. This produced the same result in the end, but the end came a bit later and with fewer British casualties.

Reflections

Never Charge Zulus! In the First March game, Mark J charged a Spent Zulu impi with part of the 24th, then came to grief when more Zulus charged his disordered line that had come off its cosy hill. In this one, Phil charged a Zulu impi in the flank with his colonial cavalry and NNC, then came to grief when more Zulus charged his disordered lines ...

The Death Star. As in the First March, the scenario special rules for squares or laagers were overpowered: British troops in this formation got 360-degree arc of fire, and a bonus when assaulted, and no penalty on movement to compensate. Anton and I discussed a few possible ways to mitigate this and I'm sure he'll hit the sweet spot.

Choices, Choices. The scenario structure is simple but brilliant in giving both sides several strategic options, hence multiple possible ways the game could go. It puts the Zulus in a Bonaparte-style central position where they can concentrate against one or the other column and potentially give it serious grief. Other approaches are also possible. Our two games were quite different and both were good fun and thought-provoking. That alone would be enough to make it a Saturday well spent ...

Victuals. ... but the post-battle phase is important! Going for a curry afterwards was the icing on the cake. If you see what I mean.

That's All, Folks. For today, that is. More soon, though: tomorrow I'm hosting one game at home during the day, then going to the club the same evening for another. You may expect reports on these too.

Zulu War: First March on Ulundi

I thought my pre-Christmas game of Marengo was going to be my only game in December and my last for the year. But no! Not only did I get to push space marines around with a young relative the day after Boxing Day - yesterday, at short notice and unexpectedly, I played a terrific Zulu War game through twice!

The story is this. My good mate Anton (author of the fine collection of BBB Boer War scenarios as well as several more obscure African WWI actions) recently commissioned a ready-painted 6mm Zulu army. He wanted to blood these. Turned out he and I and a couple of the other guys were all free yesterday. Also turned out Anton had crafted a scenario for the ill-fated British invasion of Zululand that famously came to grief at Isandlwana.

We'd previously used BBB for a conventional Isandlwana scenario with Bruce's beautiful 28mm figures. (See report here.) Anton's game was a more radical zoomed-out one that encompassed both Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, covering ~20x15 miles and including some days of pre-battle manoeuvre.

I've enthused before about how such higher-level games that draw the frame wider can present more interesting decisions and provide additional insights beyond what we can obtain from simply fighting a straight battlefield clash. This was no exception. I offer a number of Reflections at the end of this post. First, though, as is now traditional, let me give you some photos to look at.

What it's all about - Zulus! Figures are Anton's Baccus 6mm. This is just a fraction of the Zulu army. Those card sabots are 15-year-old veterans, first used while we were still developing the BBB rules ... each sabot is 3"x1" and represents 3 BBB bases; Zulu units (impis) all start 6 bases strong (two sabots); the Zulu force numbers 16 impis in total = 96 bases. These are organised into Left Horn (4 impis), Right Horn (3 impis), Chest (5 impis) and Loins (4 impis). The Loins are in reserve and only enter when triggered by 4 impis becoming Spent.

The impudent invaders. These are figures from Mark Smith's collection In the foreground is Number 2 Column: Natal Native Horse, some Natal Native Contingent, and a rocket battery. Behind them is Number 3 Column: two companies of the 24th, more NNC, Imperial Mounted Infantry and some other regular horse, and a battery of mountain guns. Top right is the garrison at Rorke's Drift. This mighty total of 17 bases means the British face 6:1 odds.

The theatre of operations. The lichen-lined Buffalo River at left is impassable except at Rorke's Drift and Fugitive's Drift (marked with discreet bridges). Isandlwana is the small hill in the centre nearest to the British. The Brits all enter from the left (west) edge at Rorke's Drift. Zulu Horns enter on the eastern half of the top and bottom (north and south) edges); Chest and Loins, east edge.

This was the first playtest of Anton's first draft. Unusually, the victory conditions don't include any objective locations. Instead, it is all about how many British units march off the east edge towards Ulundi, versus how many Zulu units march off west to invade Natal.

The first three turns are all marching and no fighting. Most Zulu units cannot enter before Turn 3 and only on a die roll thereafter. The British force therefore makes good ground unopposed initially. Our British commander was Mark J, up against me, Anton and Mark S as the three Zulus. MJ has opted to have his whole force bear north initially, wide of Isandlwana, onto the North Heights. (Superstitious, maybe?)

Contact! Turn 4: Chelmsford's cavalry scouts spot the first Zulus (one impi from the Right Horn; two more from the Chest beyond it). This shot gives a good impression of the sheer amount of manoeuvre space we had.

First volley! The British cavalry finds the Zulus lurking beneath the steep slope of the North Heights (indicated by the green pipecleaner). Note the British bases formed back to back: BBB doesn't normally bother with squares as a formation, but they're rather necessary for colonial actions, so Anton has a scenario special rule for them.

Wider view of the situation on Turn 4. At top of pic you can just make out three impis of my Left Horn who got lucky with their arrival rolls. Much good it would do them.

The battle develops. More Brits arrive at the eastern end of the North Heights and pin down the approaching Zulus with fire. (White smoke = Disrupted.) The NNH move south onto the plateau above Isandlawana.

Meanwhile, my Left Horn presses towards Fugitive's Drift, intend on crossing there and heading for Natal.

Almost all of the Right Horn and Chest have now arrived. Impis surge forward to confront the British on the North Heights. Note the impi top left that is charging up against a square of the 24th and the gun battery behind it. This charge will be repelled by fire with the loss of a second base, rendering the Zulu unit Spent (black smoke marker) ...

... whereupon the British invite calamity upon themselves. MJ decided to follow up his success by having the 24th come out of square to charge down at the Spent Zulus, hoping to complete their rout. He only pushed them back and was left in Line and Disrupted. The third impi of the Right Horn arrived, charged, got lucky and wiped out the 24th and the battery beyond, ending up atop the North Heights. Those NNC who also descended onto the plain are regretting it.

"They don't like it up 'em, sir!"

"No - but neither do I!"

Durnford responds by leaving the NNC to their fate, pulling back his remaining two regular units to form one large square with him in the middle of it. At this point MJ gave up on any idea of getting troops off the east edge for victory.

"And what of the Left Horn?", I hear you ask. Well, this was stymied by the British Wunderwaffen: the rocket battery. Anton's special rule for this was that it would automatically panic any Zulu unit it fired at, forcing it back 12" Disrupted, and also Disrupting other Zulus nearby. With some NNC also firing on my troops from Isandlwana, this made it virtually impossible for me to get across Fugitive's Drift. My troops basically just yo-yoed for the rest of the game.

The game was nominally 12 turns but we called it a draw on Turn 9 so we could reset, tweak the scenario, and play it again. This is the final situation when we stopped. The NNH (right edge) had actually snuck through the Zulus and had a chance of exiting, but no other Brits were anywhere near the east edge, nor were any Zulus likely to get close to the west edge.

For the second game, we changed a few things but the game structure was still essentially the same. This time, Mark S took command of the British. Benefiting from MJ's experience in game 1, MS kept his force concentrated and took the whole lot over the North Heights. This worked, in that he managed to get three units off the east edge on the last turn. The Zulus did likewise off the west edge and earned a point for threatening Rorke's Drift, but since we were awarding the Brits 2 VP per unit exited and the Zulus only 1 VP, the Brits sneaked a win. I don't think the Brits lost a single base, while decimating the Zulu army, but it was a much tougher challenge than that makes it sound and it was certainly a different and entertaining game. We still weren't happy with the victory conditions, though, so that will be the focus of our post-playtest attention.

Reflections

The Narrative. As MJ said, it's good if the game tells a story and if episodes within it can be rationalised in a persuasive narrative fashion. These characterful games certainly achieved that. In particular, when his company of the 24th charged down off the heights and incurred disaster, we could all picture the scene and imagine the excitable officer giving the order while veteran NCOs gritted their teeth and muttered "Gawd 'elp us".

Nothing Is Guaranteed in War. The special rocket rule was too much. Being able to guarantee that it could automatically drive off a Zulu unit with every shot made for some gamey play and didn't feel right. Besides, virtually nothing else in BBB is guaranteed success, so why should this be? We'll definitely change that so that the rockets can still be scary but can also fail to produce an effect.

Not Just a Thin Red Line. Although there was no shortage of the stereotypical Zulu War tabletop fare of Zulu charges foundering in the teeth of British volleys, there was far more to both games than that. The fact that the British needed to traverse the length of the table and also try to stop the Zulus doing so meant it was a game of manoeuvre, rather than just buckets of firing dice - the benefit of zooming out, as already mentioned.

The Big Picture. It was nice to have both Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana on the same table and to appreciate the larger situation - another advantage of zooming out.

What's the Mission? Both the big picture and our struggle with the victory conditions had us chewing over what Chelmsford was really trying to do and why he split his force. I think we have a better idea of that now and (hopefully) some better ideas for how to define the objectives for the game to give players the right historical incentives. We'll see.

New Toys on the Table! Anton's new army of massed Zulus did look good. New troops, a conflict I haven't dabbled in much, and a new scenario, all keeps the games fresh and fun.

More to Come. Anton is already working on the next scenario, the Second March on Ulundi ...

Update: Second March on Ulundi report is here.

Zulus! Isandlwana game at Colours 2023

Surprised not to have seen many reports of the Colours wargames show that happened in Newbury as usual earlier this month. Here's my own modest addition to the literature on this subject.

I can't say much about the show in general as I spent most of it helping to run our participation game. I talked to a couple of traders who said it had gone well for them, which is always good to hear. It was swelteringly hot and my impression was that it was really busy in the morning but that a lot of people faded, wilted and went home early when they got too hot and bothered to stay for the afternoon.

At last year's show we ran a nice obscure Hungary 1848 battle in 6mm. This time we went much more mainstream as Bruce laid on a game of Isandlwana using his gorgeous 28mm figures. Lots of people are familiar with this battle. Indeed, several of our guest players or spectators had actually visited the battlefield and knew it very well indeed, one even having had a relative perish there in 1879. That being so, it was particularly gratifying that one of our knowledgeable guests played the whole game through and said at the end, "that felt right".

This is a tribute to Bruce's skilful scenario design, as he adapted BBB (a ruleset geared to making battles of 100s of 1000s of men feasible as wargames on 6'x4' in an evening) to an action in which the smaller side had fewer than 2,000. BBB's elastic scale proved capable of shrinking down that far and still producing a very plausible game.

I thought I took a bunch of photos of his work but apparently not. I can only assume I was too busy chatting with people and helping to run the game. All I can offer you is a view of the racecourse, a couple of pics of the terrain being created and one of the British deployment, followed by a few reflections.

The view from our splendid vantage point. We were as overheated as greenhouse tomatoes, but it still beats the Distelfink room at Historicon. Maybe it captured the right feeling of southern Africa and all we needed was some itchy woollen clothing with tight high collars.

 

Step 1 of laying out the terrain was to put together Bruce's cunningly crafted polystyrene jigsaw for the hills.

Drape a cloth over the top, add the most prominent hilltops, sprinkle tiny gravel to help to define the slopes. Dongas (streams) and campsite will follow. Top left of pic is the range of hills the main Zulu force camped behind and attacked across. Isandlwana hill is the rocky brown one. Zulu right horn came from left edge of pic, left horn from the right edge. Our visiting expert complimented Bruce on his choice of green cloth: apparently, the movie 'Zulu Dawn' gives a false impression of a dry brown battlefield because it was filmed in the more convenient dry season, whereas the actual battle took place when the grass would have been lush and green.

A thin red line awaits the storm. Each pair of redcoats represents a company, with one figure being equivalent to 50-80 men. Bottom right, Lt Raw's men gallop frantically back to camp, having discovered the Zulu army. To see more and better pics of Bruce's figures in action (including Zulus this time), see my report of his Nyezane game.

Reflections:

It's a thin red line. Inevitably, the much-debated question came up of whether the massacre was due to ammunition problems (difficulty opening ammo boxes, etc), along with the alternative theory that it was because of weapons fouling up and misfiring. My own feeling after playing the game is that it didn't need any one major factor to make it happen. The problem is, unless the British deploy in a proper tight square (preferably protected by improvised obstacles and with guns at the corners) as they did later in the Sudan, eventually the Zulus will find a flank somewhere. Once they do, the line will get rolled up and swarmed and it's game over.

Popular vs Obscure. I love to explore the esoteric corners of history. There's a particular pleasure to be had from researching wars and recreating battles that few people have ever heard of, especially when (as so often) they present unusual tactical challenges; colourful, even bizarre incidents; and strong characters. Bringing such games to the tabletop, especially at shows, is in its way a service to our little community. However, there is also a lot to be said for the 'headline acts': Gettysburg, Waterloo, Balaclava - the famous battles that everybody knows and can enjoy identifying the terrain features and notable regiments as portrayed on our tables; the ones where the 'what-ifs' have been discussed at length and it can be particularly interesting to see how alternative plans play out in a game. Our previous more obscure games at shows have been appreciated and gone down well enough, but I have to say I think Isandlwana was the most popular yet, so maybe we will go for more such better-known battles in future.

28mm vs 6mm or 10mm. Another factor in the popularity of the Isandlwana game may have been the use of 28mm figures. We usually use 6mm or 10mm because these give the right mass effect for the massed battles we normally lay on. However, larger figures are easier to identify and more eye-catching at a show. Another conundrum to chew over for future games - or maybe we could go in the opposite direction and try 2mm next time!

Update: Bruce's scenarios for Isandlwana and Nyezane are both freely available in the "BBB Zulu Wars" folder in the BBB io group files. 

 

Zulus! - Nyezane

Our Bruce at OWS is a multi-talented chap: a fine painter, diligent researcher, judicious game designer. He brought all these skills together to entertain us with a scenario for one of the less well known (to me, at least, though I realise it is familiar to others) actions of the Zulu War: Nyezane.

The game used Bruce's beautiful 28mm figures with the "Bloody Big Battles!" rules. Each figure was one base in BBB terms. The unusual combo of 28mm and BBB worked perfectly well both gamewise and visually. I was on the British side and our thin red line looked suitably thin!

I took 13 photos which I've annotated below. If you want to skip the photos there are some reflections at the foot of the post as usual. First, here's a synopsis of the game.

This was a rare BBB game in that it used hidden movement for the Zulus. Speaking for the British, this definitely helped create an atmosphere and caused us some nerves. To win, we couldn't just sit back and blast away - we had to advance and capture a kraal and/or the Wombane hilltop. The trouble with advancing was that, while our small units' firepower was potent enough to have a reasonable chance of repelling a frontal assault, there was a high chance of a failed movement roll causing some dislocation of our formation and presenting an exposed flank to the hidden Zulu 'horns' we knew would be probing around each side.

I did try to push up on the right towards Wombane, while Crispin commanded our left protecting our wagons. However, by the time I got close to the peak, the Zulu right was closing on our wagon guard, our artillery in the centre was looking vulnerable, and I was worried that advancing any further would just see me swarmed and massacred.

I therefore fell back towards the left to close up our line. Zulus did duly swarm towards us on all fronts. Our firepower took its traditional toll on their ranks, but they overran our gun troop in the centre and our colonial volunteer unit on the left. It was touch and go for a while. Amazingly, it was the raw and fragile Natal Native Contingent, holding out heroically in the bush on our left, whose stand held up a lot of Mark's Zulus for a long time and probably saved the wagons. On our right, John had the consolation of overrunning my Naval Brigade, but too late to matter. Meanwhile, we had caused such carnage to the Zulu army that we had earned the casualty victory point we needed to turn defeat into a draw.

 The tiny 2-figure British units of Colonel Pearson's column queue up along the trail. The wagons are static and the porters are just for decoration.

The valiant Natal Native Contingent who belied their poor write-up in the history books and their "Passive, Raw, Fragile" rating to perform gallantly.

 Another shot of Pearson's column gives a better view of the guns, the rocket troop, and the Gatling bringing up the rear.

What lies ahead of Pearson's column: the trail leads up over a knoll (white objective marker) and onto the higher ground beyond, passing between the kraal and the green peak of Wombane at top of pic. Green scatter marks two bush-filled ravines that could conceal a Zulu ambush. A large patch of light bush is on the British left.

 Captain Hart's little scouting party discovers the Zulu ambush. This brief and bloody encounter will be Hart's first and last contribution to the action.

The British advance takes shape. The Zulu ambush party has retreated behind Wombane. No others have been spotted yet. NNC and Colonial Volunteers cover our left, artillery takes position in the centre, while our most potent infantry push up on the right with the idea of taking Wombane.

Masses of Zulus lurk off-table. In the foreground here are the two 3-base "Sharpshooter" units. Their fire managed the sum total of one Disruption result all game (though one of these units did participate in taking the British guns).

 Five of the 10 Zulu 7-base impis. As John said, "Zulus, sir - sevens of 'em!"

View of the British advance from the Zulu side of the table before the Zulu onrush begins.

Now nine of the 10 Zulu impis are revealed. Left of pic, one clashes with the NNC. Another has overrun the Colonial Volunteers. The British artillery pins down the Zulu centre ...

... while the Zulu left charges, only to be repelled by intense British rifle fire.

Action followed thick and fast so there were a few turns with no photos. This shows the situation almost at the end of the game. On the left, the British line has creaked but managed to keep the Zulus at bay and saved the wagons. The Gatling has been removed as it jammed permanently after its first (very effective) shot. The guns in the centre were overrun and the knoll lost. Bottom right, the Naval Brigade had moved to fire at the knoll, trusting that the spent Zulu impi to their right would not be able to rally and charge their flank - but it did.

 

Zulu view of the last turn, showing how the massed impis have straggled and been broken up by difficult terrain and British fire.

Reflections

28mm figures! Not a scale I touch much, and not a scale that gets used much for BBB. But it worked seamlessly with the rules, even with round bases. Furthermore, it was a visual treat. Perhaps for more conventional battles it would look a little odd to have units of 28s wandering around almost at bayonet point and would not give the massed battle effect you really want for ACW, FPW etc. But for this Zulu War game it looked just fine.

Hidden movement and fog of war. There are pros and cons to hidden movement. The map movement does entail a certain amount of faff. We Brit players had to wander off around the hall or talk amongst ourselves while secret movement was being plotted and resolved. But on the plus side, (a) it is obviously more realistic and (b) it did add to the feel of the game to wonder where the masses of Zulus could be hiding and when we might be pounced on from any direction. Though since Bruce has gone to the trouble of painting up all these beautiful figures, it would have been nice to see more of them on the table.

Victory conditions: Bruce said he'd played it solo and managed a British win, but he didn't have to contend with hidden movement. For us Brit players it felt as though you would have to take a big gamble and get pretty lucky to take the necessary objectives and fend off the Zulu hordes without being flanked and swarmed. But it's tricky to write victory conditions that will encourage both sides to attack (as they did). We've offered Bruce some suggestions.

Generals are useful and the Zulus didn't have any. As Mark remarked, this made it difficult for them to coordinate attacks and take advantage of their numbers. One Zulu impi marched into a bush-filled ravine and never made it out the other side before the game ended. But that's OK. As Bruce said, the Zulu command structure wasn't on top form in this action.

Bags of flavour. The asymmetry of forces made for a good game, as it always does. It was fun to have such colourful units on the table: Gatlings, rockets, Naval Brigade, Colonial Volunteers ... and the Zulus weren't just a homogeneous mob either, as they had their Sharpshooters and units of different quality.

Corners of history. Nyezane isn't particularly obscure but it was obscure enough for me. And Bruce is talking about following it up with another Zulu game, but this time set in the Second Zulu Civil War in 1856 - the battle of Ndondakusuka. I wasn't aware they'd had one civil war, never mind two!

From Famine to Feast!

For various reasons I have endured a month without a wargame. My dice-rolling muscles have atrophied from disuse. My faculties have been starved of their usual stimulation. Unable to play a game, I was reduced to writing about game design and provoking debate.

This week the drought ended. I made up for lost time with four excellent games in five days. Happy happy joy joy.

Monday: The Washing of the Spears
Plan A was that Garry would lay on a Spanish Civil War skirmish. This was thwarted by his dog-sitting responsibilities. But surely, I said, surely dogs can be moored to a post outside the village hall for a couple of hours? Not these mollycoddled beasts, came the reply. Get a cat, say I.

Happily Bruce had Plan B in the form of his magnificently painted Zulus and their redcoated foes. We spent a happy evening on the northern flank at Isandhlwana, him conducting sustained volley fire, me recycling figures until the fourth wave of Zulus overran the last of the plucky Brits. He'd had his fun, then I had mine. Bruce's rules are slick and quick and produce the right effects with suitable flavour. And his 28mm figures really are gorgeous.

 The assegai-laundryman's handbook

Tuesday: Waterloo v1.0
A proper Bloody Big Battle. This was the first playtest of the Waterloo scenario we have created for the planned display/participation game at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum on 24 October. (Full draft of the scenario in the BBB Yahoo group files as usual.) Six players turned out to be the ideal number, as the battle resolved itself nicely into three fairly distinct fights left, right and centre. It pivoted like a classic linear ancients game: the French left had outflanked and then taken Hougoumont and made good ground beyond it, but the French right was being driven back on Plancenoit by the combined efforts of the Prussians and some outstandingly gallant Dutch-Belgians and friends. Much exciting to-and-fro and ebb-and-flow, and an honourable draw.

D'Erlon's corps advances against La Haye Sainte.

"They came on in the same old way ..."

The players were pleasantly surprised by how well BBB works for Napoleonics, given that it is designed for the wars of half a century later. Before the game some were questioning whether a simple "Aggressive" rating for heavy cavalry would adequately reflect their potency in this period. Three hours later the same players were commenting on how much impact the cavalry were able to make - because with 3" musket range, and no rifled artillery or breechloaders, it is much easier for them to charge around without being blown away. The game had a suitably Napoleonic feel and is very different from, say, a Franco-Prussian BBB battle.

Incidentally, in connection with the planned SOFO event, I came up with a way to engage with members of the public and help them to relate to and understand Waterloo. I took a map of the campaign and plotted the troop movements on to a map of Oxfordshire. Imagine Napoleon invading from Swindon and Reading towards Brussels aka Banbury. Oxford is the Quatre Bras crossroads where Ney is stalled. Napoleon hits the Prussians at Wheatley (Ligny), trying to drive them back along their supply line to High Wycombe (Namur), but instead they fall back northwards upon Bicester (Wavre). The Anglo-Dutch forces scattered around Cheltenham and Stow-on-the-Wold join those retreating from Quatre Bras and unite at Woodstock (Waterloo).

More legible version on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/yJUdiy

Wednesday: Indian Takeaway
Mark treated me to Maharajapore, where my East India Company / British forces took on his Marathas in the Gwalior Campaign (1843). This is one of the BBB scenarios Mark is compiling for his planned "Wars in India" collection. These are battles, indeed entire wars that I know next to nothing about, so I am being educated as well as entertained.

 

Gough's advance guard?

(Actually Lord and Lady Curzon 80 years or so later) 

As the Brits at Maharajapore I had the pleasure of hurling my troops against large numbers of entrenched Maratha cannon. I skilfully coordinated a masterly assault against the main Maratha position. Shockingly bad dice bounced me off at every point. A second attempt was successful but I had lost precious troops and even more precious time.

The Maratha army was Passive and ponderous but was gradually reacting, bringing up reserves and infiltrating round my flanks. With my smaller but more agile and better quality force, I was able to probe for weakness. I managed to pounce on and destroy a second Maratha artillery position. But time ran out before I could take another one, so I was narrowly defeated.

This was a really excellent game full of spicy tactical challenges. The scenario has plenty of manoeuvre, decisions every turn, and juxtaposes asymmetric forces. Great fun.

Friday: Waterloo v.1.1
Just three of us mustered for this second and last playtest before the main event at SOFO. Mark was well cast as a careful and skilful Wellington, while I played Ney to Anton's Napoleon. Our bold plan: to screen Hill and Hougoumont, while punching through the poorer quality Allied troops above Papelotte and driving on Mont St. Jean.

The screening worked fine, and we also seized La Haye Sainte on Turn 3. The punching was also quite successful, sending Saxe-Weimar's Dutch Belgians reeling out of Papelotte. For the driving part, Anton then committed the Guard against the 5th Division and the Hanoverians along the Ohain Road. These were smashed backward. Unfortunately we did not support the Guard's left. We had troops milling around in and near La Haye Sainte, but these failed to move up to protect the Guard, while at the same time causing an unholy traffic jam which masked our artillery from covering their flank with fire.

Wellington had not been idle, and some redeployed guns pounded the Guard from the front, while Clinton piled in on their left. Much as in the historical battle, the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regt unleashed a devastating volley and then went in with the bayonet, shattering the Guard Chasseur Division.

 

La garde recule

On Turn 6, a concerted assault by Reille's corps against Alten above La Haye Sainte was unlucky to be narrowly repulsed. At that point we held two of the Objectives quite securely (La Haye and Plancenoit). But loss of the Guard cancelled one and meant we were losing. Reille was unlikely to reorder in time either to take Hougoumont or to give adequate support to take Mont St. Jean. The Allied line in front of MSJ was too strong to be breached frontally. There might just have been time and space for Milhaud and some of d'Erlon's troops to work round and take MSJ from the east to retrieve a draw, but it seemed improbable. We therefore conceded the game to the Allies.

Waterloo: it's a classic. After playing it twice this week I have more sympathy for Napoleon. He and Ney get criticised for not outflanking the Allied right; for devoting too much effort to taking Hougoumont; for uncoordinated and unimaginative frontal attacks. But actually the limited time and space make it quite difficult. I think Napoleon has options to weight his efforts left, right or centre, and any of the three could succeed. But it would need skilful handling and good fortune on the French side, plus probably some tactical errors and bad luck on the Allies' part, for the French to really beat the Allied army.

Looking forward to fighting it again at SOFO in October. Maybe some passing visitors to the museum will want to join in, don the cocked hat and show us how it should be done!