It is 1852. It is Indian Mutiny time. The British forces are trying to relieve the town. The Indian forces are opposing them. The Liebls are hosting the game. The players at table-side number seven, and we’re all clutching our 4-sided, 6-sided, 12-sided, and percentage dice.
Bob and Cleo have set out their 25mm army and their goodlooking terrain boards, each board measuring 2-feet by 2-feet. The long side has 6 boards, the short side has 3, and so the field measures 12 feet by 6 feet.
On one short edge lies the town of Rannupor, defended by several British units, and on the opposing short edge, 12 feet away, the relief force will enter and batter its way up the field. Infantry move a distance equal to the amount displayed on the toss of three 6-sided dice… an average of, say, 9 inches. Traveling at 9 inches per turn, it will take the British 16 turns to move from its start baseline to the other baseline, and this, of course, doesn’t account for the fact that native units will be opposing them, that there’s an almost uncrossable river in the way, and that the units in the British force may not obey their orders all the time.
I push several Indian units which are commanded by Koer Singh, who, said Bob, is the most able native commander on the field. Koer Singh has 5 units under him, and each turn, I must take an order sheet and write separate orders for each unit and dice for each unit to see if it will obey its order. Koer Singh’s command factor is 70 percent, which means that if the dice toss is 70 or less, the unit obeys.
Each commanding general on the field has a command factor, and these range from 45 to 70 percent, and this includes both native and British. Bob wants to show how abysmal were the leaders on both sides during the mutiny. I must agree that Bob’s procedures is one way of fully showing the lack of leadership, but, at the same time, it makes for a slow, slow, slow game.
Two of Koer Singh’s units are artillery with a 36 inch range for roundshot, and an 18 inch range for canister. I set them up, side by side, approximately 20 inches from the walls of Rannupor, just out of canister range, and thinking that I’m well out of musket range, which is 12 inches.
Argh! It turns out that, perched on the walls is a British unit, armed, not with muskets, but with rifles, and rifles have a 24 inch range. There are 16 riflemen, and each tosses a 12-sided die during the fire phase, and each scores a hit on a toss of 7-through-12. That’s a 50 percent chance of success, and the 16 riflemen come through in fine fashion, wiping out my first artillery crew of 4 men.
Since the riflemen are firing at long range (over 12 inches), each artilleryman gets a savings throw of a “1”… toss a “1” on a 12 sided die, and the gunner lives. Alas! None of my crewmen survived to write home.
Firing is simultaneous, and so, before they keel over, the gunners get to fire their piece. For roundshot, each of the 4 crewman tosses a 12-sider, and a hit is scored if an 11 or 12 (16 percent chance of success) appears. I manage to plunk 2 of the Brits and each tosses his savings die. Since they’re under hard cover, their savings toss on a 12-sider ranges from 1-to-5. One Brit lives, one dies.
And so, in this first exchange of fire, I lose an artillery piece and 4 gunners, and the Brits lose one man in a 16-man unit.
It’s the second turn, and my boys and the British fire again. I had thought to have the remaining gun limber up, but that takes an entire turn, during which time they’d be potted by the dreaded riflemen, and so I decided to have my boys die with their boots, or jodhpurs, on, and keep firing.
No surprise… on this second volley, my second guncrew disappeared, and I could see that Koer Singh was looking at me crosseyed, thinking that he… or, for that matter, anyone else… could do better.
But now Bob announced that the Indian units that were wiped out had a chance of returning. The first three clobbered Indian units in each Indian commander’s force could magically reappear on the table. And so Koer Singh’s artillery was not entirely lost…. well, maybe.
The table was 6 boards long and 3 boards wide, 18 in all. The boards were numbered and I tossed a die to see on which board the first artillery piece would reappear. And it turned out to be right on the British baseline. This first gun had been wiped out on Turn 1, and it showed itself again on Turn 2… it was limbered, and so it had to be unlimbered on Turn 3 and could fire on Turn 4. But as soon as it appeared, one of the British units charged it… my poor guys never had a chance to unlimber… they were wiped out for a second time…. but by now, they were used to it.
In the melee, the men in combat were paired off, and each tossed a 12-sider. My crewmen each added +1 to their die, while each Brit, after summing all his modifiers, added +5. If a man doubled his opponent’s total, he killed the opponent. And that’s exactly what happened here.
About 3 feet from the British baseline, they came upon a bridge, the only way across an unfordable river… except for a few minor fords. The bridge measured about 8 inches long and 4 inches wide, a formidable structure. The Indians had mined the bridge, and they used a 4-sided die to see if it blew up in timely fashion… it did. The British were now in sad straits.
But what boggled my mind was that Bob, to show that the bridge had been blown, now turned the bridge over, on its back, and placed it in its former position! Unbelievable! There, in the middle of the field, lay this upside-down bridge… to my mind, this transformed the game into a Quadruple Class AAA Abomination! It was bad enough that there were no casualty figures used, and that when a man was killed, he was tipped over on his side (a regular, run-of-the-mill Class A Abomination), but now we had to contend with an upside-down “bridge casualty figure”… what further surprises did our host have for us?
Since my units were on the opposite side of the field from the British, and since they were making no time at all, I had one of my native units fire once, and then pulled back beyond the range of the dreaded riflemen. I, and the other guys who commanded units there, sat down and discussed how George W Bush was doing, and how Hilary was making out, and why didn’t Britney Spears pants fall down since she wore them so low, and so on. In effect, on my half of the field, there was a complete standstill… no action, no motion, no nuthin’.
It was around Turn 11 when the British gave up. They had advanced about 4 feet in (two terrain boards worth) out of their planned 12-foot march, and it was obvious that the battle was over… the relief column wouldn’t make it. In truth, the relief column wasn’t needed… I had no plans to attack the town of Rannupor, not with all those nasty riflemen manning the walls.
On a scale of 1-to-10, I’d have to give the scenario a -3.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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