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.

My Colonial Collection, Part Five: Northwest Frontier

 I've been following for a while the blog of a friend who goes by the online handle Sgt. Guinness, and runs the South Florida Miniatures Gamers group here in ... south Florida. His favorite ruleset is The Sword and the Flame, and we have had many a fine game at the clubhouse here. Since the pandemic, he's focused on an online, semi-solo Northwest Frontier campaign. That in turn has caused me to get my butt in gear re: collecting Northwest Frontier minis; I've never had Pathans of my own, and very little in the way of Indian Army. This despite the locale and period being a popular one for gaming; there is an attractive sample battle report in The Sword and the Flame I've always wanted to reenact.

Having bought a lot of the Wofun fiberglass versions of Peter Dennis' Paperboys, I inclined towards some of their other collections. The one that caught my eye was The Great Game, an 1880s-ish set of individual figures (as opposed to Peter's multiple-troops-in-a-strip). These will work for TSATF, or possibly The Men Who Would Be Kings (which uses smaller units - handy since few of these are twenty strong). They are side-on flats, rather than front-and-back, which makes them easier to "point" at opponents.

Designed by Vyacheslav Batalov, these appear to be a "Great Game Gone Hot" series, as they include Russians, Central Asians, British Indians and Afghans (both tribal and regular army). The Russian frontier is not something I know much about, nor for that matter the redcoated Afghan Army that fought in the second Anglo-Afghan War. I've started reading the well-regarded The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, but I don't know how much Russian background it'll provide.

I can't take a photo of every single unit in the collection. Most range from 15-20 infantry figures or 8-10 cavalry, plus small command/character elements and plenty of artillery. The figures are delightfully characterful; however, the sides are mirrored, unlike Dennis' which are front and back. A couple favorites are Gurkhas in rifle green, and imitative Afghans in helmets and kilts!

There are three basic factions - Afghans, Indian Army and Russian, each split into a handful of types and most in separate infantry, cavalry, artillery and character/command groups. The tribal types can easily fight the regulars as well as being on the same side, thus making for wider campaigns.

• Russian:
• Russian regulars
• Cossacks
• "Middle Asian" militia (presumably equivalent to Indian auxiliaries).
• British:
• Bengal Army (lancers, etc)
• Gurkhas
• Afghan:
• Regulars
• Tribesmen

I've obtained a bottle of Agrax Earthshade Contrast paint, which is popular among Wofun owners for dulling the wide white edges of these figures. I'll try it on them - it'll also match the brown-gray terrain. I'll probably build some vertical cardboard terrain to fight among, as depicted on the classic Tremorden Rederring website.

As for what scenarios I'll use? I'd like to do some sort of campaign. There are a few ways of doing it that I'd like to try: Grid-Based Wargaming's Snakes and Ladders campaign and a series of solo scenarios from Charles Grant's book, laid out as an "expedition."

That's enough for today, and possibly this month. I'm surprised to find I've published ten blogposts this month alone! Probably due to finally getting some library gaming in...

XD20 Session Two

 I had three players yesterday to run another session of XD20.

Bet you didn't know you could game AND snack
at the library.

My previous players returned, as well as a new one and a fourth kid who listened in for a while. A warrior (scared of bugs), a frog (scared of pointy things) and a magic-user (scared of heights). The new player developed her abilities and sense of self over the course of the session - read on.

Today's mission: "The Queen's pet displacer beast has climbed the tallest tree in the hunting preserve. Get it down. No, you're not allowed to hurt it."

This was a challenge for all three, since there were jagged branches everywhere, bugs living under the bark, and the monster was fifty feet up. The magic user (we eventually settled on the term "witch") luckily had a cat with which she could psychically communicate, so was still able to participate through him.

They climbed the tree and eventually found the displacer beast sunning itself on a branch. The cat vaguely communicated with the displacer beast, which didn't want to come down but was starting to get hungry. A small cat and a large frog looked like tasty snacks. The players tried several methods to both  annoy and attack the beast (by throwing things at it), but kept rolling low - particularly the warrior, whose player had to switch out dice several times. Attacks and dodges required an extra 1-in-2 die roll to see if they recognized the beast, or its shadow-image instead. Eventually the cat got the beast to chase it down the tree - right over the warrior, frog and witch, who all took damage. 

Once it was down, a couple potions, a nervous and uncooperative tree guard (this was a special and holy tree, you see), and a hastily set trap served to stop the displacer beast from displacing itself to freedom. Job done. The adventurers took themselves off to the infirmary, while the Queen began to cement herself in my mind as a twit - this is the second time she's nearly gotten the party killed.

What will the party meet next week? No idea.

The Great Game, by GS Goraya

 Searching for Peter Hopkirk's classic history The Great Game, I happened upon this one instead. At first I mistook it for Hopkirk's. It is shorter, and appears to be a university thesis. So it's clear and well-organized, and I got a lot out of it - if not much in the way of history or wargaming inspiration! In particular, I realized that the conventional Western view of Afghanistan, which I share since I mostly got it from British sources, is simplistic and misses much subtlety and multiculturalism. Checking my preconceptions...

Takeaways:

• Afghanistan is not a "grave of empire," but has been conquered time and again, with many different ethnic groups meeting and coalescing in what was for long a "crossroads of empire." Ironically, the British were aware of this, since they looked for Alexandrian, classical and Semitic cultural features in the peoples of Afghanistan. The British and Russian "game," mostly the British, hemmed this crossroads in. (The analogy of hemming, the sewing term, is expressly used as a reference to clearing up "loose threads" - or borders - and bringing them under control). Once Afghanistan lost its ability to communicate by trade with the outside world, now held by nominal British political control, it became a poorer country. Landlocked countries always have economic difficulties, but ones that have their external relations controlled by another are even worse off. Some attention is paid to the creation of Pakistan, which controls much of what was once Afghan territory - including a route to the sea - and Goraya suggests that this is the root of Afghanistan's independent international relations. There are parallels here with the separation of "island" populations that lead to the endangerment and extinction of species.
• Afghanistan's nominal independence since the 19th century always has been that of a buffer state - first between British and Russian imperial states, then between Commonwealth and Communism. The purpose of the Wakhan corridor was to provide neutral ground between three spheres of influence - British, Chinese and Russian.
• Afghanistan is not an anarchic state, impossible to control (hence the "grave of empires" thing), but has a structure. This is not of provinces or states, but of kinship and kingship. This "anarchy" was seen as a romantic and almost democratic throwback by some explorers, but the structure is there, simply not formalized as in a so-called "modern" state.
• The colonial, and later national, conventional structure of "modern" Afghanistan was overlaid on this initial structure, but did not replace it. There are parallels here with the infamous "straight-line" borders of Africa and the Middle East, imposed by colonial overlords with no consideration of the underlying communities. Goraya refers repeatedly to the simplistic reduction and labeling of multicultural spaces as "frontiers," or "settled and unsettled" spaces. Other parallels come to mind, of America's Westward Expansion into an "empty" frontier.
• The kinship/kingship structure has a subtle religious component, and this is the root of what the British would have called "Ghazi fanaticism." When the king or chief was imposed on the group from without - as was done before the first war - this was, in effect, imposing a new link between God and man. Not a good idea. The imposed king actually told the British his people wouldn't accept a puppet!

A short volume, but punchy and clear in its summary of Afghanistan's relationship with the outside world. Recommended.

More XD20 at the Library

 One of the hilarious things about roleplaying games (and occasionally, wargames) is the non sequiturs overheard by non-gamers. As pictures are worth a thousand words:

My players were visual learners.

Not having squared paper or miniatures, this was the method I chose to clarify positioning to tonight's players as they hunted... a giant crab. (Get yer minds outta the gutter.)

0: Characters were designed and characterized. We had:

• A giant frog. Not kidding. She may have been thinking of something like a Bullywug, but my monster manual didn't list it. We decided she was an escaped lab experiment with a very long and sticky tongue. She was afraid of sharp things (problematic, given the genre) and randomly was good at cooking. She carried many cooking potions. How useful these would be in an adventure... well, we're about to see.
• A fairly generic fighter, armed with a trident. Frightened of bugs, but ready to fight for his friends and family.

That gave me some useful ideas. Both characters met in the break room of the Royal Guard barracks where they had obtained jobs. After introductions and descriptions, the Captain came in and announced that the Queen was hungry for giant crustacean tonight. Our two heroes were ordered to head through town to the nearby coast, kill and retrieve a monster crab.

Off they went to Murder Rocks. To get there, they had to pass through the Wizards' Quarter, and passed a potion-supply shop with open displays of colorful beetles outside. This enabled our first tests - fear for the fighter, and hunger for the frog. The frog was also wary of running into her former master, but they made it to the coast.

This was a steep, broken slope of black rock and coral (sharp, thus intimidating the frog), with a huge flat crab sunning itself at the bottom (intimidating the fighter).

Zoom in to follow along by the numbers.

1: Our heroes scrambled down the slope - the frog assisting the fighter by letting out her long tongue for him to slide down.

2: The fighter, terrified of the crab, thought it might help if he couldn't see it. We decided that one of the frog's many potions was one for blindness. He drank it, then using his innate sense of the space around him, leapt onto the crab.

3a: He rolled low, and ended up slipping off and lying under the monster. He stabbed it with his trident, but couldn't really move and was drenched in stinking black ichor. (Grossness brings kids to attention like nothing else.)

3b: So the frog dropped a "lightness" potion that caused the crab to levitate.

4: It drifted away towards the sea. Not a good thing, since their job was to capture it. The fighter, recovering from his blindness, followed it and batted it back until it crunched into the cliff.

5: At which point it flipped on its back and died.

Our heroes used the last of the levitation potion to move the crab up along the coast road, through the town and back to the palace, at which point the warrior took a shower and the frog joined the cooks. Adventure complete.

Let's just say I gamemaster by the seat of my pants, and XD20 is perfect for that. The teens enjoyed it, and I think it was a fair introduction to DnD. They seemed eager to try again. This was the first time I was able to get more than one player, which helped enormously; there is a distinct atmosphere in a group game where players can bounce ideas off each other, and it was great to see them cooperate in achieving the goal. Hopefully, more exposure will bring more players and more adventures!

Starting on the Spanish Civil War

 This weekend I was gifted with a handful of minis which may be very loosely interpreted to represent 1/72 Spanish Civil War troops. This is a war I know almost nothing about, other than a bit of literature, folk music and aviation. What I have now is basically WWII stuff, though with paint jobs and a little imagination it'll work.

Toy vehicles. I can identify the Daimler armored cars
(well past the period but fair stand-ins), but not the tank.

70-80 cheap toy soldiers. About a third have
rifles, a third bazookas, and a third pistols.
These can represent Russians or possibly Italians.

1945 Germans, so includes some Volksturm. The Wehrmacht
can represent Germans or Spanish line infantry, while the
armed civvies could make militia of either side.

Some nice lasercut wooden bases.

Since both rulesets I've found are "high-level", with single bases representing platoons or companies, even this small collection should be enough to experiment - Graham Evans' complex For Whom the Dice Rolls and Bob Cordery's three-page rules from Wargames Illustrated #13. Both have mechanisms to represent the conflicting relationships between troops of different political backgrounds, which seems to be the key element of any SCW ruleset.

DB Oops

 Participated in a small club tournament yesterday. De Bellis Antiquitatis was so popular last time that it went off swimmingly.

Game one was between Romans (me) and Carthaginians (my opponent). 

While he was new to DBA too, he had the advantage of familiarity with the troops and tactics. So, for example, he was sanguine when I assaulted light cavalry with my heavy, knowing they could just run away. Our generals met on the field, and mine was flanked and thus eliminated when he lost, ending the game quickly.

In my second game, the sides were reversed:

I discovered that light cavalry could move multiple times in a turn, and raced mine in an end-around hoping to reach my opponent's camp. Didn't go too well. Both of us being inexperienced, we asked for lots of help with the rules and ended the game without a decision.

My third game was nearly a repeat of one from last month, Playing Classical Indians with elephants again, I managed to avoid running them onto Alexandrian pikes this time, but was badly compressed by terrain and never got many of my troops into action.

In the meantime, my opponent's light cavalry took my camp, and I didn't realize I could try to take it back until near the end of the game.

So, having ended up with approximately three points over the course of the tourney (the winner amassed 25), I received the coveted Snake Eyes award:

As usual, the conversation and food were the highlight of the day. We had a potluck, and there were favorable comments on the overstuffed sandwiches I brought from my favorite deli. I picked up a copy of DBA 3.0, some more terrain (including a sandy sheet I will use for the Fort Wagner scenario), and was gifted with a small selection of Spanish Civil War figures by one of the members. Post to follow. Happy gaming!