Today (Saturday) there was only Lawrence and me skirmishing, all the rest were doing Spearhead with 1941 Italians and British!
We tried a new sort of Colonial skirmish - in the Second Afghan war.
I painted a company of Wargames Factory British soon after they came out, and they have stayed in a box since then. It was nice to get a few out after all this time!
The scenario was that a british camp has been shot at sporadically by an Afghan gun, so the British send a platoon size force into the hills to try to silence it.
(The Afghans were randomly placed and run by the rules' solo system)
The force contains 20 Sikh guides, and 20 British regulars..
Our column, led by the Sikhs, pushed on down the valley edge..
A pair of Sikh scouts probed ahead carefully.
The British stood back in reserve, guarding the rear.
They spotted a fierce group of Ghazi in ambush!
The first group of Sikhs fired a ragged volley..
..The enraged Ghazi charged in!
The Sikhs outflanked the Ghazis, and with difficulty..
..killed them all!
The Sikhs continued their advance, leaving 2 dead, and with several wounded.
Soon, they (and the British) saw and engaged Afghans in a ruined house.
The Sikh scouts were both hit by return fire.
..but soon the Afghans, outshot, retreated to a second building.
The British moved on, leaving half the force to watch the buildings.
The first Sikh group took cover...
..as the flank force spotted and killed the Afghan chief in the second house!
The force that had fallen back from the first house then retreated again.
Followed by the Chief's bodyguards.
Half of the British followed up aggressively.
And half the force pushed on round the house
..while continuing to shoot at the retreating Afghans.
Ouch!
The advance force was now involved against a new force..
..with devastating results!
They then came under fire from another hidden unit.
The British were able to reply with massive fire..
..and wiped them out in seconds.
The British followed up - and on the next hill saw the gun they were after..
Unspotted by the gun crew, the British shredded the gun crew with accurate fire.
As the last 2 crew attempted to drag the gun away, the gun was captured at beyonet point!
Further back, the Sikhs attacked another hill.
Neither side caused many shooting casualties despite the range.
..So the Afghans charged in!
The Sikhs lost their Subedar in the melee...
The objective of the mission achieved, the Empire force retired to base dragging the Ancient cannon with them!
This was a fun game! - very close at times. The losses of Empire troops were minimal (4 dead and 8 wounded) - mainly thanks to unlucky Afghan shooting dice!
Players:
Lawrence : The Sikhs
Me : The British
The rules can be freely downloaded from Colonial Skirmish rules
Great looking game. Very nice figures too.
ReplyDeleteNice game.
ReplyDeleteThe firepower of the brits would play a massive role in the open but in hilly areas..??..a bit like the present! :-/
Cheers
paul
Thanks Paul!
ReplyDeleteIn the 2nd Afghan war, our Martini Henries gave us an ? 8:1 shooting rate over the Jazail.
In the fairly open terrain of our game, we managed mostly to get a 3:1 shooter advantage, which is why we did so well (well, and the dice were kind!).
Where the terrain was rocky, our Sikhs found it hard to hit anything even so!
I wish our guys in Afghanistan had Ghazis and massed rifled muskets to fight instead of the experienced Guerrilla forces they are actually fighting!! :-)
Excellent AAR, Herkybird, thanks for posting it!
ReplyDeleteI like your simple but quite nice looking terrain! What are you using for the ground cover? It reminds me of a sheet of vinyl upholstery I used for my own Second Afghan War games for several years. It was fast & easy and also looked pretty good. Did you build the closely matching hill from scratch...?
Thanks for the kind comments M.G.!
ReplyDeleteThe base cloths are impossible to get now, they were made by 2 chaps from the material used on bus seats!!!
All the hills were from the same place.
Lawrence says they were sold by 'Makeshift',till the owners fell out (sigh).
Durham wargames group have a 'how to make them article on their site: http://www.durhamwargames.co.uk/terrain/battlemat/index.asp
The main site for their club is at: http://www.durhamwargames.co.uk/
I hope this is helpful?
Yes, thank you, Richard!
ReplyDeleteIf u r interested, please check out my current Afghan/NWF terrain on my blog at: MaiwandDay.blogspot.com