A scrimmage in a Border Station --
A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

-- Excerpt from Arithmetic of the Frontier by Rudyard Kipling

It's time to step into the confessional of war gaming and bare my soul to the assembled masses. The first time I considered doing the Boxer Rebellion it conjured up images of disgruntled garment workers demanding better working conditions and more comfortable forms of under garments! What an odd name for a period of military history. Little did I know that it would lead not only to a quadrupling of my Colonial forces but would open up a plethora of gaming possibilities. At last I had an excuse to expand into the dark and shadowy world of Russian, Japanese, Italian and even U.S. colonial expansion. The trick was how to slip it past the War Department? Or should I say my beautiful wife, Dana! Not that she had ever objected to my gaming passions before, but I knew that this project was going to be a big one if all went according to the images dancing around in my head.

Tommy King has this way about him that lends itself in many ways to a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. Indeed he is the very model of a Modern Major General, and one is eternally grateful for it. On numerous occasions, when faced with the harsh realities of gaming, Tommy has managed to successfully snatch defeat from the jaws of victory! On one particular encounter he successfully stripped both myself and Dan Grna, the group's attorney, of all but our worse spear armed troops. What should have been a skirmish of miniscule proportions was turned into the Stalingrad of the Sudan! His reasoning for removing from our command our entire rifle armed troops was that he was the commander and our troops were in fact the Reserve. Odd how the Reserve seemed to be in the front lines right from the beginning! To this day Dan and I, when faced with the realities of sub-ordinate gaming under Tommy's command, often refer back to that particular game and situation. After reading the somewhat ambiguous orders we are invariably issued from Pasha Tommy, we can draw but one conclusion -- "We must be the Reserve!" That being said, however, he is probably one of the most dedicated gamers I have ever known. Once he settles on a particular genre for gaming, there is no turning him back. The Boxer Rebellion era was to prove to be another one of his grand obsessions and, as usual, he would involve our entire group in the project. Furthermore it has started a whole new genre of convention gaming entitled "If it's Colonial and has a soundtrack, we can game it!"

Birthdays provide a close gaming group with boundless opportunities to expand into new realms of gaming. So it was in the case of Tommy and his birthday. I forget which particular birthday it was, not that it matters, we're all getting older and besides gamers have better things to do than worry about some trivial aspect of life like the age of our opponents! Stumped as I usually was to find something for his birthday that was unusual, yet useful, I finally settled on the British Legation set from Old Glory. A fabulous set with buildings, walls and gates all included in one package! What makes these even better is the fact that you can intermix them with other Legations sets from the series to give more variety in the set-up. Add to that a few buildings from the Pirate range from Old Glory and the layout possibilities were almost endless (except for the bankroll, which always seems to be finite)! It was perfect! It also solved all my gift giving problems for the next two years for members of the group. Whenever a package arrived at the house and Dana would eye me suspiciously, I would answer "Don't worry -- it's John's birthday present"...or Dan or Tom, etc. We have two Johns and two Toms in our regular gaming group -- perfect for creating confusion with the War Dept.! Over the next two years, all variations of the Old Glory Legation arrived at the house until we had a total of seven Legations (though we probably purchased more like 10).

Originally I had this idea of converting all the buildings over to totally functional structures with moving shutters, door and finished interiors! This proved to be beyond my time frame, especially if we were going to make Drums Along the Maumee in May of 2003, and only had a year to put it all together, including troops. It was time for a reality check and figure out what was doable and what was not. First of all, we had to decide what we were trying to present with this game. Did we want to be 100% accurate with the layout, or did we want to come to a close representation of what Peking looked like in 1900? We choose the latter for several reasons, not the least of which was playability. The game was already going to be a visual spectacle based on its sheer size, 8'x12' (the size of my table in the basement). If someone came up to the game while it was being played, and said something like, "You know the layout isn't correct" or "The German Consulate had four buildings versus your two," we were going to politely refer them to the event listing at Anal Retentacon, a convention that surely catered to those that get caught up in such trivial matters! Playability, fun and make it eye candy were the three guiding principals that we lived by when building this game.

It quickly became apparent that we had to consolidate the actual layout of the Foreign compounds into a rectangular shape as opposed to the "L" shape of the historical layout. This worked to our advantage as it allowed us to have seven different embassies with seven separate commands. The U.S. was being given command of the wall that overlooked the entire compound and so represented an eighth command situation. Mathematically, it worked in our favor, as well, as this allowed all of the embassies to be 2'x2', with the British compound being 2'x4', which historically was larger. Looking down from the wall the embassies where dispersed as follows: On the left, starting closest to the wall, Japan, Britain and Austria. On the right, Italy, Germany, France and Russia, with the Americans manning the top of the wall. All the compounds were surrounded by paved cobblestone roads which wasn't historically accurate as dirt seems to be the choice of paving materials in Peking at the time. The compound was split in half by a canal that ran the length of the table, which was there historically. Three bridges over the canal connected the two sides. The canal was dry, as it was historically. The building of the canal presented a problem in itself: How do we give the canal depth without creating unnecessary "build-up" for the rest of the board? The solution was to build the canal down to create the depth and raise the undersides of the rest of the table by using sheets of Styrofoam. This ultimately solved an even bigger problem that reared its ugly head at the Con: Using multiple tables for a game never leaves an even playing surface. The give and take of the Styrofoam abso

The biggest concern was the building of the Tartar Wall. Historically this was a massive structure with some of the blocks reaching 50' each! If you look at pictures from the period, you see various blockhouses and gate houses that would be a modelers dream to create and an outstanding structure to game with. Unfortunately, the restraints of time prevented only the crudest of structures being built. The finished piece was built in two sections totaling almost eight feet in length and a foot wide, with two ramps leading up to the top on the Foreign Compound side. Whether that was historically accurate or not didn't matter. It certainly helped with playability. To finish the game board off, we ringed the outside with various broken and burned out structures and rubble. This did follow a somewhat historical guideline, as the Boxers and the Allies either burned or destroyed the surrounding structures to either remove cover or open up fields of fire. This certainly helped to balance play for the Boxers as it afforded them some cover to advance through and also prevented the Boxers from launching giant, unimpeded assault waves that would have easily overwhelmed the Compound. During the construction of these ruins, a few decisions were made that proved to be extremely valuable in the long run. Firstly, due to the sheer size of the gaming surface, 8'x12', it was suggested by Uwe Eickert to reduced the width of each of these sections by 6". The reasoning was to help with the "lean factor". I don't know about you, but I can certainly tell you that Colonial gaming has helped to increase the waistline! Too many Tom Collins at the Officers Mess! This change in size would protect the structures and give room to place rules, dice and other impedimenta that clutter up a table. Man I hate that! Put together a good looking gaming only to have it covered in non-scenery crap!

One particular process I learned when making the ruins was how to produce brick rubble for only pennies. I went to the local hobby shop and purchased one piece of pre-molded plastic sheeting in the form of bricks. I then turned the sheet over, exposing the unusable side, and built a mold wall around the edges. After this was done, I poured about 1/4 inch thick layer of Hydrocal over it. After it set and was completely dry, I picked up the hardened product and removed the plastic sheet. At this point I dropped it on the workbench and let it shatter into dozens of broken brick sections. Eureka! Brick ruins for literally nothing!

At another location during all this time of construction for the playing surface, a key component to the game was being worked on -- the figures! Frank and K.C Cousins were probably the most instrumental in bringing this game to fruition. Every single figure that was in the game was painted by them -- and to a standard of 7 out of 10, at least! The majority of the figures were from the Old Glory Boxer Rebellion line. Additional figures were added from Wargames Foundry (when you could find them) and from The London War Room, which has the old Houston figures. The old Glory line was great for about 90% of our needs, but if you're familiar at all with Chinese Imperial armies, you'll understand that it is chock full of little oddities. The Houston line was perfect for things like Jingals (two man muskets or larger breach loading versions), rocket propelled arrows and even figures that carried large bundles of fire crackers to scare away evil spirits and frighten the enemy! Perhaps my favorite troops were the Tigermen. We amassed over 200 Old Glory figures dressed up in Tiger suits and swinging swords! Who could ask for more? Frank and K.C., I owe you big time!

We chose our perennial favorite for the rules, The Sword and the Flame, which we felt could easily accommodate 15-20 players. Using this as the core, we stripped out a lot of the rules to make it even simpler than it already is. We mandated that the morale rules would apply to the Boxers, but not to the Allies in certain circumstances. Morale only applied to the Allies if they were outside of their compounds -- not inside the embassy compound. The reasoning: "where could they go?" Otherwise, we could see the Allies getting overwhelmed quickly by 3000 Boxer figures! This quantity presented another problem in itself. If we allowed the Boxers to come into play all at once, and let them to choose their entry point, they could easily overrun the Allies. The solution was random entry points and to control the amount allowed to enter the board at one time. This "God-like" approach also allowed us to keep up interest in the game. If a sector's action died down, or someone appeared to be just waiting for something to happen, we could suddenly funnel in a few hundred troops into their sector to heat things up! This forced the Allies to always be on their toes and to keep a floating reserve ready to plug gaps as needed.

All in all, I believe that the game played very well and that all who participated enjoyed themselves. We actually were applauded at the end of each game, which incidentally ran for over 8 hours in both cases! Gush! Whenever situations arose that were not covered in the rules, we decided on a 50/50 roll of the dice to decide the issue -- Rules Lawyers need not apply! Enjoyment was the rule of the day and the Gods of Gaming smiled on us.

In addition to running it again at Drums 2004, we're also going to start up the Toledo chapter of "The Pink Flamingo Club" at the hotel bar. Bring your favorite Colonial headgear and cheesy medals and smoking jacket. All are invited to participate. I think we'll even serve dinner this time during the game. All this, and it's only the second time anyone in "5 Guys and a Lawyer" has hosted a convention game -- last year being the first time! Egg Rolls anyone?