TSATF, Fastoso variant

My fellow South Florida Miniatures Gamer Jeff, AKA Sgt. Guinness, just kindly introduced me to a variant of my favorite ruleset, The Sword and the Flame. It's by Mark Fastoso, as shown in a number of scenario books he wrote back in the day which I shall have to hunt down.

TSATF is based on 20-man infantry units, 12 cavalry, four gunners. Infantry and cavalry are commonly split in half as well.

Turns out even smaller sizes can work. Fastoso's co-author Roy Jones posted the rule changes in threads on The Miniatures Page such as this one:

Infantry: 8 men

Cavalry: 6 men

Artillery: 2-3 men (artillery fire in TSATF is based on the number of crew).

Stragglers: D6 roll - 1-2:one, 3-4:two, 5:three, 6:none.

Why is this important? Because of my oddly-proportioned Great Game collection from Wofun. Most of the units range from 15-20 infantry, 8-10 cavalry, and there aren't so many of these units that you can build a large game. The Indian Army selection, for example, have what would be three TSATF units and one and a half cavalry units, while the Russians only have one (1) infantry unit. Granted, this is plus Cossacks, Central Asians, etc, but still.

Then I took a closer look. Turns out the late Larry Brom chose his unit sies randomly, possibly based on the box sizes of the miniatures he was using. And given the popularity of half-units in the game, it's not all that farfetched that even smaller numbers could work.

I'm also considering Bob Cordery's classic Bundok and Bayonet. It is a larger-scale game, with five men to a company but still twenty to the battalion. (So my units would still be undersized.) It looks good, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet, and TSATF is more familiar. We'll see. I may try both.

Of course, there is the obvious but costlier solution of just buying more. Unlike Paperboys, though, I don't think this lot are available in print.

Two companies of Bengal infantry.

Five (!) companies of Afghan regulars.

A mere eight Bengal Lancers to a unit (I have two of these).
 Would four- or five-man squadrons work? I'd have to reduce
 stragglers even more... though some players leave them out.

I'll try it! After I run Leuthen with Wofuns and Paperboys, that is. Plastic Seven Years War 10mms will be out soonish, and that would be an excuse to buy more of the colonials...

The famous church in 18mm scale paper.
Easier to build than it looks!

Up the Whatsit Valley

 Having watched Sgt Guinness' campaign for a while, I'm seriously thinking about running one of my own set in the Northwest Frontier. Since I'll be doing it solo, my best bet is to use Charles S. Grant's classic Programmed Wargames Scenarios. The obvious scenarios are from the final chapter, Reconnaissance in Strength, in which a Blue "player" force marches upcountry against a programmed Red force. My first thought, given the Great-Game-gone-hot feel of my Wofun collection, was to have an Afghan force in the center of a valley, with Russians and British both coming at him from opposite ends. After they meet in the middle, having between them vanquished the locals, they would have one big fight to settle who holds the entire pass.

The catch is that Red force needs nine infantry units, four cavalry and two gun batteries, while Blue has five infantry, three cavalry and two batteries. The artillery provided in the "complete" set is actually very ample for all three, no problem there. But for the rest:

Afghans - four infantry units, one and a half cavalry units.

Indian Army - three infantry units, two cavalry units.

Russians - three infantry units, three and a half cavalry units.

These are on the order of 15-20 infantry or 8-10 cavalry apiece. To field the appropriate numbers, I'd need to break them down into half-units. Easy enough, and there are options for that in both The Sword and the Flame and The Men Who Would be Kings, but it might still seem a little small. Perhaps the scenarios can be modified. I also needn't stick quite to the suggested proportions - a Russian army with lots of cavalry seems appropriate! One issue is that Blue ends the series with not only his "standard" force, but the survivors from previous scenarios, thus having to be larger. Of course we could just have a standard campaign, with two of these allied against the other. Russians and their Afghan allies invading the Raj?

Another possibility is Bob Cordery's Bundock and Bayonet, in which companies are represented by five figures. That would work alright.

On the other hand, I'm reading the "Gordon Expedition" chapter of Mike Snook's Into the Jaws of Death right now, and I have plenty of River War minis... this "scenario-string" would work just fine for that, too, with some fiddling with the numbers since in TSATF the natives should always significantly outnumber the Europeans. Perhaps simply doubling Blue's assigned assets?

Thoughts and suggestions welcomed.

Somewhere in Turkestan

Recalling that it's possible to play The Sword and the Flame on a small scale, I divided up the smallish units from the Wofun Great Game collection. I just finished Peter Hopkirk's classic history of the period, and like I hoped it has provided some inspiration. For one thing, I learned that the Turcomans provided were enemies of the Russians well into the 1880s, which means they can be enemies on the tabletop.

The Western side is two half-units of Russian infantry, plus a mounted commander, and half a unit of Cossacks. These count as Egyptians. They must march through Book Valley, wondering all the while if Turcoman locals (counting as Pathans) will pop up on the hills to attack.

For solo-game purposes, I'm using Mr. Babbage's rules from The Men Who Would Be Kings. This means that the enemy (four Turcoman half-units) will not appear right away, but the Russkies will roll for their appearance every turn.

Given the relatively high movement rates of TSATF and my small table. I used cm instead of inches. This proved a mistake.

Turn 1: The Russian, under Lt. Rosskov, enter the Valley of Books. All is silent.

Turn 2: The Russians head towards the center of the valley. A squad of Turcoman rifles appears in front of the Cossacks, who fire a volley of carbines to kill one of the enemy. The Turcomans (-men?) slink back into the rocks.

I finally added some Agrax Earthshade to figure edges.

Turn 3: As the Cossacks ride on, twenty more Turcoman rifles appear on the hill to their right, barely in carbine range. The Cossacks pick off another. One of the local units charges (but rolls a 4 for stragglers, leaving five men to reach six Cossacks). The other fires over their heads as they close, killing one Cossack. In CC the Cossacks handily defeat all their opponents (it helps that they win ties). The stragglers fade back into the rocks. Another Turcoman unit appears ahead of the slowly marching infantry, advances to short range and exchanges fire. One native and three Russians fall. The Russian infantry fail their morale check and stop short.

Turn 4: The Cossacks turn about and charge. So does the Russian officer, whilst the infantry move up and spread into line. More Turcoman rifles appear behind them, though they kill two with a hasty volley as the Cossacks (again) wipe the board with their opponents. In return, Turcoman fire kills three more Russian infantry - the survivors retreat and form up with the other half-unit.

I ended the game here, on the grounds that the Russian expedition had been decimated without getting far at all. The Cossacks skirmish to hold off the Turcomans on the hills while their infantry beat a hasty retreat.

It may be obvious at this point that I haven't played TSATF in a while. I elided over the more complex rules, out of laziness. I didn't have a ruler so used one of the measuring DBA measuring sticks (4cm per section). I mostly used the Quick Play rules charts inside the covers, so retreat and morale, for example, were mostly based on what Featherstone calls "military possibilities." The game was quite loose, and I gave up with the Russians barely onto the table because it was obvious that the Turcomans weren't going away! The Cossacks were twice victorious, but they surely couldn't hold off all the locals...

A mix of TSATF and Babbage, loosely played, still made for a fun game. This is one of the useful things about solo play - you can do what feels right in the moment.