A second 2nd Hukou

We first visited that immense yet ignored conflict, the Taiping Rebellion, back in February when we fought the Second Battle of Hukou (report here). In the intervening time, our scholarly friend and scenario author Jeremy has revised it on the basis of our first playtest (plus one of his own), so we tried it again: a second Second Hukou, you might say.

In our first game, the Taipings' assault had foundered somewhat on unduly fearsome imperial artillery redoubts. The revised version reduced the amount of artillery. This time the Taipings (commanded by Dave T and Mark) swept over the Qing stockades rather more easily, but still not without some serious tussles. The really interesting part came after the line was breached, as the Qing scrambled to evacuate part of their army while still covering objectives in the depth of their position. 

Some pictures, with some commentary, and then some reflections.

February's battlefield was a bit bleak - no trees or houses. For this game, Bob built some of the 6mm Oriental Village pack from Paper Terrain. Cute!

View from behind the Taipings as they form up to assault the Qing defences. All the Qing start with yellow counters for Disruption (or Low Ammo for the cannon). Most of the Qing infantry are Raw (the infamously underfunded regular troops). The ones in yellow uniforms are Trained but Fragile (more disciplined Hunanese militia but reeling from an earlier defeat). All the Taipings are Aggressive; those in light blue are Veterans armed with decent muskets, so are the only infantry not to be penalised with Ragged Volleys.

Big white counters are objectives: the three fortified stockades; the junction at Sanli (top centre); the escape route levee across the lake (top left - an addition since playtest #1); and the town of Hukou (out of shot top right). The wooded ridge is mostly impassable and separates the main battlefield from the road to Hukou along the Yangtze (upper right).

Trained (but Fragile) yellowcoat Hunanese militia in the front line; raw regulars mostly in the second line; cavalry backing them up.

Battle is joined. The easternmost stockade (foreground) is outflanked by Lindley's "picked men" and swiftly overrun, but the other redoubts prove more ... redoubtable.

The Qing respond. All Bob's cavalry do is rally and trot forward a bit. (He actually forgot to do it on Turn 1, would you believe, but we gave him a Mulligan. "You had one job ..."!) My infantry launch a couple of countercharges to no great effect. One of my damaged units has fallen back and formed column (the yellow "T" left foreground) to head for the boats in Hukou.

View from behind the Taiping line. Taipings press forward. The Qing line bends a bit but hasn't yet snapped. 

Now the cavalry arrive! And my yellowcoats join in, enveloping a whitecoat Taiping unit. But although the Qing numbers look impressive, the superior quality of the highly motivated Taiping fanatics meant none of our charges did any real damage except to ourselves. A little unlucky.

Meanwhile, Taiping cavalry (left foreground) was sneaking up along the Yangtze towards Hukou. Fortunately a substantial and adequately garrisoned fort bars their way. However, Taiping guns will be along soon to pummel it. In Hukou itself, one infantry unit supports the artillery defending the town; a second (the "T" from three pics previous) queues at the quayside to embark; a third (bottom right) has already taken to the boats and quit the battle. If we can get three units off, we earn an objective - not as straightforward as it sounds, as denuding Hukou risks losing the town objective. The big green D12 is the turn clock: it's Turn 5 of 10.

Now the Qing have been forced out of all their fortified line (the red troops left edge were in the westernmost stockade). Undaunted, a brave Qing brigade retakes the central stockade! In the distance top left, another yellow brigade has fallen back and formed column, hoping to move through Sanli (right of top edge) to Hukou.

My gallant counterattackers. They won't last long. However, we do manage a couple of bloody exchanges elsewhere on the battlefield, where Qing and Taiping units mutually destruct entirely. That's probably a good trade-off for the Qing, whose troops are worse, whereas the Taipings need as many units as possible to advance and take as many objectives as possible.

Beginning of the end. The Qing army is disintegrating now. Taiping veterans have seized Sanli (left) and the Taipings are wiping out Qing units at an increasing rate. Those Spent Qing troops (blue counter) bottom right won't be able to hold the levee exit objective against onrushing Taipings (out of shot to the right).

All was not lost, though - Bob mustered two cavalry brigades and retook Sanli. Although it would fall again shortly, this would protect Hukou from a possible attack from the rear. As Mark's cavalry assault on my fort was rebuffed, Hukou stayed secure. That plus the units we evacuated was enough to earn a draw.

"To the boats, men!" I can see Bob needs to acquire some junks for next time ...

Reflections

The Rules As Written. Jeremy had introduced new weapon types to reflect the idiosyncracies of cumbersome and inefficient Chinese artillery and assorted infantry armament. For this second playtest, we threw those out and just applied a blanket "Ragged Volleys" attribute (R) - a left shift on the firing table - per the standard rulebook. Mathematically this works out much the same. It showed that BBB as written is flexible enough to cover idiosyncratic troops and doesn't usually need any new rule.

Phase II Was the Fun Bit. As I've noted before, there is limited entertainment to be had from "smash-mouth" frontal assaults on fortified lines. But here, the initial assault was both necessary and interesting, as the speed and manner in which the Taipings breached the Qing line then shaped the ensuing Phase II. As the defenders, Bob and I were having to make decisions about whether and when to counterattack and shore up the line or fall back and cover the various objectives beyond. The attackers similarly had to decide which units should exploit in which direction. It worked well as a scenario situation.

Divided Command. Mark and Dave had a sensible division of command: Dave took the Taiping left wing, Mark the right. For the hell of it, Bob and I did it differently: I commanded the infantry while he had the cavalry and artillery. This produced amusing results as we regularly failed to coordinate, but it kind of felt right for an army run by mandarin bureaucracy.

Replay Value. Our two playtests produced quite different games. Of course this was partly due to scenario revision, but also due to the Taipings following different plans. Both sides have some options, particularly concerning the sideshow route along the Yangtze, so as and when we do it again (a "Third Second Hukou"|?), I can imagine it going differently again. That's the richness of complete-battle scenarios at this scale.

More, Please! This game did have a distinctive Chinese flavour. Jeremy has produced a second scenario and is working on a third, so hopefully we will get more Taiping action on the table soon. Looking forward to it!

A Taiping battle: 2nd Hukou (1860)

A mere eight years ago, I invested in a four-volume work in Chinese: a military history of that immense yet unknown conflict, the Taiping Rebellion. (As I recorded at the time here.) Obviously I meant to generate scenarios from it, but competing priorities, lack of time, paucity of other sources, and especially the language obstacle meant this project has lain fallow ever since - until last year, when OWS made a new friend. Jeremy speaks Chinese and has studied this war seriously. He is back in Hong Kong now, has access to good Chinese sources, and has been working on BBB scenarios for it.

I was excited to see his first one arrive on our tabletop at OWS this week. Stalwart OWS member Bob Medcraft laid it on for us. Bob's garage is full of armies of all nations and eras, so it was no great problem for him to rustle up a battle's worth of 19th-century Chinese in 15mm scale. (Actually, that's not fair - although he had enough miscellaneous Oriental troops for the core of the two armies already, he did paint up dozens of extra figures specially. Some of these were figures he and some other gamers had got Steve Barber to sculpt as private commission a while ago.)

The scenario in question was for the Second Battle of Hukou (22 December 1860). This was a tricky one for Jeremy to reconstruct as he had to interpret and reconcile conflicting sources, as well as tracking down a good map. The strategic situation is that the Taipings were trying to capture the city of Wuchang, far up the Yangtze from their capital of Nanjing. To do so, they sent four widely separated columns to converge on it. One of these, some 30,000 men under Yang Fuqing, was to capture Hukou, secure water transport there, and then reach Wuchang by river. The Qing government forces defending Hukou had about 25,000 poor infantry in a stockaded defensive line east of Hukou, backed up by 15,000 or so cavalry, plus a small garrison in the town itself and adjacent fort. The stockade line had its right resting on a river and its left against a ridge of steep hills running alongside the Yangtze.

There were five victory locations: the three stockades; Hukou itself; and the village of Sanli, halfway between them. The Taipings could earn an Objective each for Hukou and Sanli; one more for taking any two of the three stockades; and another one if they held either Hukou or Sanli and the Qings failed to evacuate at least five infantry units up the Yangtze. They needed two Objectives to earn a draw or three to win.

Here's how our game of this unusual and exotic battle went.

Qing defenders of the northernmost stockade. Each stockade counted as a Town in BBB terms, capable of holding one infantry unit, and had two artillery units in front of it in 'Rifle Pits' (1 level of cover). The first line of Qing infantry was Raw and Passive - and these were their better troops. 15mm figures from Bob's collection, I think a mix of Khurasan, Steve Barber, maybe some Eureka.

View of the whole stockade line. Hukou is the sandy-coloured felt top right, beyond the wooded ridge. (Bob mostly plays competition games where a few bits of felt is sufficient terrain, so he forgot to bring any trees or buildings.) The second line of infantry is Peng Chunyao's Hunanese contingent - these were not only Raw and Passive but Fragile as well. Behind them is a mass of regular cavalry. All the Qings started the battle Disrupted because the Taipings attacked at dawn.

Pan out some more and we see the Taiping attackers arrayed. All the Taipings were rated Aggressive and at least Trained. Three infantry units were classed as Veteran 'Guards'. The little 2-base unit and artillery on the right centre hill, flanking the stockade line, was a force of 'picked men' that included a British sailor, Augustus Lindley, whose account is one of the sources Jeremy used.

Crispin and Phil commanded the Qings. Bob took the Taiping left, I had the centre, and Dave W our right. Our plan, such as it was, was for Bob to pin the Qings frontally while I rolled up the stockades from the right and Dave pushed through towards Sanli and Hukou.

A closer look at the Qings in the stockades. Even though Jeremy created a special weapon class, 'Chinese Artillery' (CA), with lower firepower than normal Western smoothbore cannon, that artillery proved formidable.

Our attack develops on the right. I get my two blue brigades onto the hill above the stockades' flank. The picked men and a supporting brigade rout a Qing effort at a spoiling counterattack and stand atop the ridge. However, this has left them Disrupted, Low on Ammo and exposed.

Crispin and Phil take due advantage. Dave's picked men are overrun by massed cavalry. However, my thin white line repels a Qing infantry brigade.

Freshly squeezed Mandarins! The Taipings' turn to attack again. As per the plan, we stormed the first stockade, routing some Qing brigades. The blue brigade is one of mine that exploited one victory and achieved a second. However, in retrospect, that may have been a mistake, as it was left exposed to a subsequent flank attack.

A couple of turns of see-saw counter-attack and counter-counter-attack ensued. The exposed brigade has fallen back Spent out of shot beyond lower left corner. We launched more attacks to try to take advantage of the Qing counter-attackers' Disruption. As their growing collection of blue 'Spent' counters shows, we smashed some back, but that left us Disrupted (yellow counters) and vulnerable in turn. In particular, that left-hand unit in green drove back its foes, only to unmask two batteries at cannister range. That didn't go well.

On our far right, one Taiping Guards unit approaches the fort by the Yangtze protecting Hukou. No further progress was possible here. Note the impeccably manicured fingers of the Qing mandarin. Long plaited moustache just out of shot.

I think we played seven turns out of 10. My blue brigade holds a stockade but Qing counter-attackers have advanced past its left. There are too many of them, and too few of us, for us to take any more of the stockade line. Our one glimmer of hope is the white-coated unit just visible top right. This (plus three other units behind it) would have had a good chance of taking the village of Sanli (sandy felt top right) and cutting the Qing evacuation route. If we'd had time to play the last couple of turns and managed to take and hold Sanli, it would have been a draw; otherwise, a Qing victory. 

The victorious Qing commanders fly their banners proudly.

Reflections:

The virtues of 15mm. I know there are other players who use 15mm for BBB, but at OWS we almost always use 6mm or 10mm. It was a nice change to 'go large' and see individual soldiers more clearly. We had enough figures on the table for it to still look like a battle, not a skirmish. One minor disadvantage was that Bob's base frontages were larger than the standard BBB 1" (I guess 40mm), so initial deployments were slightly more cramped than the scenario envisaged, but otherwise it worked fine.

The exotic East. We all loved the fact that we were dipping our toes in the Yangtze and learning about the Taiping Rebellion. Fundamentally it's still just 19th-century horse and musket, of course. But Jeremy's addition of Chinese weapon types and his use of standard BBB attributes to rate the two very different armies' troops captured the different flavour of this war.

Terrain aesthetics. To capture it fully, we really needed pagodas in the town, Chinese buildings in the villages, and junks on the Yangtze. Not to mention some trees in the woods (couldn't see the trees for the woods? shouldn't it be the other way round?). Hopefully we'll be better equipped next time.

Complex situations make interesting scenarios. A simple assault on a stockade line wouldn't have been much fun. (See my essay on frontal assault games here.) The fact that we had a flank option, plus an evacuation route to threaten, gave both sides more choices to make, more scope for maneuver, and more interesting things to do.

Historical research. Huge kudos to Jeremy for his work in taking conflicting sources, making sense of them, tracking down necessary geographical and other details, and turning all this into a historically accurate and eminently playable scenario that brought some obscure and fascinating history to life for us players. This is what BBB is all about!

Taiping error! (not really)

OK, pop quizzers, here's your starter for 10: name the second bloodiest conflict in the whole of human history, after World War II (according to the list here).

A little light reading for me.

Oops, did I give it away in the title of this blog post? That's right, the Taiping Rebellion which lasted from 1850 to 1864 certainly claimed tens of millions of lives. It's the war in which Gordon of Khartoum aka "Chinese Gordon" made his name, and the modern version of the game of Mah Jong may have been born during it (allegedly during a major siege, hence the tiles represent the walls of the besieged city). But despite the huge casualties and these small cultural contributions, I think it fair to say that most westerners are entirely unaware of it, and even those of us nerdy obsessive wargamers who like to explore obscure corners of history don't know much about it.

As my thing is bloody big battles of the nineteenth century, and as the Taiping Rebellion was one of the biggest and bloodiest of C19 wars, I obviously need to find out about its major battles and give them the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" treatment. Now finding out about them is easier said than done. This thread on TMP reveals the paucity of sources. Even the apparently best source in English, Jen Yu-Wen's "The Taiping Revolutionary Movement" gets criticised for its cursory treatment of the actual battles.

So I talked to a Chinese academic friend of mine. He did some research and identified a 2,700-page 4-volume work that might have the level of detail I need: "A Complete War History of the Taiping Kingdom", edited by Professor Cui Zhiqing of Nanjing University. With the help of a Chinese colleague, I tracked down a set in a Chinese bookshop; and with the help of her niece, I was able to buy it. This week it arrived.

I am thus the proud owner of this magnificent and (hopefully) comprehensive work. The small obstacle now is that it is all in Chinese apart from the table of contents. Next step, then, is to wheedle favours from Chinese friends and colleagues, first to work out which chapters cover the biggest battles in detail, and then to get the relevant pages translated ...

What do you reckon, then: was it an error, or an inspired purchase? I'm optimistic that it was the latter, and that a bit of effort and patience will eventually produce some fascinating BBB scenarios to give some insight into this vast yet hidden war.