"Today, "said Tony Figlia, "Today, we're going to fight the battle of Kush."
At Tony's request, out came my 30mm British colonial collection, and we set up the scene as sketched at right. I should note that I would never dispute the issue with Tony, but after the battle, I researched my British colonial library to find out all about Kush and Fort Johnson, and discovered... nothing! Kush was not to be found in any of the indices, and although there were numerous references to Fort Napier, Fort Farewell, Fort Newdigate, Fort Peddle, etc., etc., and even a "Fort Funk", Fort Johnson remained an unknown.
The rules were my own, the second edition of, no doubt, many more to come. A grouping of new and old thoughts and procedures. Most worked, because they had been table-top-tested in other rules sets. For example, the wild ride of the division commander, once per bound, as he dashes over the field, riding from unit to unit, rallying the troops.
At the outset, two Ghurka battalions plus one battery occupied Fort Johnson. Off the table, to the east, was a huge British column of infantry, cavalry and guns, dashing to relieve the troops in the fort. And in front of the fort were the attacking units... native cavalry, native camelry, bushmen types, native riflemen, semitrained Askaris, all supported by a number of European Troops of a Foreign Power, whose country of origin is unknown.
The half-bound sequence consisted of 5 phases:
- a. Action phase of Side A, the active side, which dices for the number of actions each of its units may undertake. Either 3, 4, or 5 actions are assigned. Cavalry move at the rate of 7 inches per action, hence a 5-action move whizzes them across the field for a distance of 35 inches. British line move at 3 inches per action, hence they will advance 15 inches if they are given a full 5 actions. This is not a fire phase. On this action phase, no unit can come closer to an enemy unit than 2 inches; closing to contact occurs later on in the bound.
b. A 1-action reaction phase for the non-active side, permitting its units to adjust themselves... to face, reform, fall back, advance, etc., everything but fire.
c. A fire phase using a deck of 9 cards. I defined three types of firing units:
- (i) British and European troops.
(ii) Trained native troops. These include the Ghurkas, Sikhs, etc., all the troops trained by the British.
(iii) Untrained native troops. These are the Askaris, and all other native units fighting on the side of the bad guys.
Each card in the deck states the type of unit which will fire, together with a specified percent-per-man. For example, one card will say: "Untrained native troops at 40%-per-man". A 12-man unit, therefore, will be given total percentage points of 12 x 40, or 480 points. Each 100 points yields a 10-sided die (480 points gives 4 dice plus an 80 percent chance of a fifth), and, for each die, a toss of 1,2,3,4,5 is a hit on the target. Percentages of the British and European troops are higher than those of the native units.
One of the 9 cards in the deck is annotated "End of Fire Phase", and cards are continually drawn until this card appears, signaling the end of firing. Note that the fire deck is called upon twice per bound... after each side moves... there's a lot of firing in these rules.
- d. The fire phase is now followed by a melee phase. The active side, Side A, chooses a unit to close (remember that all units, during movement, had to remain 2 inches away from the enemy), and combat is resolved. After Side A selects all the units it wishes to engage in combat, Side B can do the same. Winners in combat are permitted to advance.
e. The last phase in the half-bound is a rally phase... this is when Side A's commander commences his unit-to-unit dash across the field.
Colonels Figlia and Simon, in charge of the bad guys, quickly advanced northwards on the fort, and the Figlia native troops took up positions in the rocky region just south of the fort and began popping away at the Ghurkas. Our thought was that we had to break the Indian troops before the relief column showed up, or all was lost (this, by the way, proved to be true, for all was lost when the British units appeared).
My own bad-guy units approached the fort from the west, hoping that the Figliates would keep the Ghurkas occupied to the south. Not so... the Ghurka cannon spoke often and rapidly, focusing on my band of fanatical bushmen and camel riders.
The Ghurka crewmen came under the heading of "Trained Native Units", and each time, twice a bound, that any of their cards appeared in the fire deck... BOOM! a shellburst would land in the middle of my units. Guns could fire shell if the range was over 20 inches; below 20 inches and they fired canister, which was treated, in essence, as a 12-man blast of rifle fire.
Each brigade of 2 or 3 units was given its own data sheet; for my advancing brigade it looked like:
Each hit on a unit resulted in a box (an "0") crossed out; when a complete set, such as "0 0 0", was crossed out, a figure was removed from the field. Note that units in the battle ranged in size from 6 to 15 figures, but, regardless of size, when all boxes were crossed out... a total of 6 losses... the unit was deemed ineffective and taken from the field.
Note also that the Unit Commander, Agah Khan, has two sets of Morale Points next to his name, lines (a) and (b). If he's attached to a unit (touching it), he can use both the higher percentages of line (a) and the lower percentages of (b) to augment the unit's morale level. If he's not touching the unit, he can use only the smaller values on line (b). Each time one of the morale point figures is used, it's crossed out.
During the advance of my Beadied-Eyed Bushmen, their commander, Agah Khan, after each Ghurka cannon blast, tossed in one or more of his point values to assist, to hold the unit in place... Agah soon ran out of points, and the Beadied-Eyed devils fell back.
Before they did, however, they did manage to make one valiant assault on the walls of the fort. Here they were assisted by my dismounted camel-people, and by the Dreaded Riflemen of the Dunes. In a recent past issue, I noted that my camel riders were mounted on two-humped camels, and that certain persons found this to be an historic anomaly. Regardless of the humpery discussion, I had yet another question... how did camel-mounted troops actually fight? In movie after movie, we always see them surging forward, sitting on high, somehow balancing themselves atop a hump 8 feet in the air, waving huge scimitars, shouting and frothing at the mouth.
Then we see the British line mowing them down by the thousands, and finally, we see the entire camel corps (or what's left of them) stop in their tracks, turn tail, and run like crazy.
In short, I have never seen a camel corps close to contact... and if they did, of what use would they be, sitting 8 feet off the ground?
The Simon solution: camel riders will dismount and fight on foot. Which was exactly the case in my assault on Fort Johnson.
In the melee procedures, one unit (termed the lead unit) is placed in contact with the opposition's lead unit, and dice are tossed to determine if any of the surrounding units will join in the fight. When the Beadied-Eyed Hushmen closed, a high percentage dice toss mandated that all units with 10 inches of the two lead units would join in, i.e., a huge melee occurred, which scooped in every Ghurka unit in the fort, including the artillery, and also included all my supporting units.
This was to my benefit, for only if I could assemble a mass attack, could the Ghurkas be driven back.
Each man in melee is given a percent value... for example, the Beadied-Eyed Bushmen were valued at 80 points each. There were 10 of them, giving rise to 10 x 80, or 800 points, yielding 8 combat dice. My other units added another 5 dice, giving me 13 in all.
The defending Ghurkas (around 20 of them) managed to scrape up 14 dice. The kicker was that a toss of 1,2,3,4,5 of the Ghurkas' dice scored a hit on me, while my people, because of the protection offered by the walls of the fort, registered a hit only on a toss of 1,2,3.
I tossed my 13 dice... and scored only 1 hit on the Ghurkas! I think they scored about 5 on my men. After the data sheets were annotated, and figures removed, the winner was determined. Two parameters were of interest: S, the number of your remaining figures, and H, the number of hits scored on the opposition.
The parameters S and H were added and the sum multiplied by a die. I had around 10 men remaining, which, added to my 1 hit, gave me a total of 11 to be multiplied by the die roll. My toss was a "2", and 2 x 11 is 22... definitely not large enough to beat the Ghurkas' final number. Back fell my men.
By this time, the British column had entered the field, deployed, and was slowly beating our troops back. As soon as the column appeared, the British commander, at the end of each of his halfbounds, commenced his rallying rides. His intent, of course, was to immediately head for the fort to help the Ghurkas in the pounding they were receiving. First, he diced for the distance he moved, which could range from 20 inches to 40 inches (remember that he had to cover the entire ping-pong table).
Upon his arrival at Fort Johnson, the rallying procedure began. The British division commander had a rallying factor of 60 percent. With a percentage dice toss of 60 or under, he could rally back (restore) one casualty figure in the unit, which was then placed with the unit. If he was successful, he could rally another, with this second figure rallying at a toss of 50 or under. And a third with a toss of 40 or under... each successive, successful rally reduced the percentage by 10 percent.
If he failed any dice toss, he could no longer rally any more men in the unit but had to ride on, starting his rallying procedure at the new unit with 60 percent.
Note that although the commander was able to rally a unit and bring troops back into line, its data sheet record remained untouched, leaving the unit in its weakened state.
Alas!... we natives (and our allies, the European Troops of a Foreign Power) never really had a chance at Fort Johnson. In the meantime, I shall continue my researches to find out what really happened at the fort.
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© Copyright 1993 Wally Simon
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