A while ago I mentioned that I had tried out a campaign set in 16th Century Burma, but it had not worked terribly well. Still, I got a wargame out of it, so not everything was a disaster. While the campaign mechanics were too complex, I do like the odd elephant on the table, and when a photograph of the battle came around on my screen background, it raised a smile. So that was encouraging.
After some pondering, I decided to have a go at a rather simpler campaign idea. This dates back to somewhere around the year 2000, when I wrote an article in Miniature Wargaming based on the rise of the Aztecs. More recently, I revived and slightly modified the campaign for the Siena series in the Italian Wars. The modification involved the addition of rules for someone trying to assassinate me.
For this sort of city-state warfare, it seems, the general idea works well. There are basically two turns per campaign year, one is a random event such as a famine, revolt or invasion, and the other is as the player determines. Battles are fought if cities to which the player moves do not submit, if there is a revolt or invasion, and so on. This is all controlled by dice and playing cards.
I spent a morning or so reviving the rules and transferring them to South-East Asia. This was mostly working out the composition of the random events table and who invaders might be. This turned out to be Mogul Indians, Siamese and Ming Chinese, which seems fair to me as some of the eastern peoples were Chinese culturally.
The first turn die roll indicated that it was my move to start with in 1530. I therefore attacked Prome, my neighbour to the west. While their submit roll was not too high, nevertheless they refused to become my vassals and a wargame had to be fought.
A complication (or refinement) of this system now is that the armies are drawn randomly. I drew 7 tribal foot, 3 cavalry, a skirmisher base and an elephant. Prome drew 5 tribal foot, 4 elephants, 2 bow and a cavalry. I was quite morose at this, I confess. Elephants are very powerful units on the board, and little can stand in their way, as the last wargame demonstrated.
I was daunted, but as I had implemented some rule changes after last time to reduce the total dominance of the nellies a bit – I had slowed them down to infantry pace from cavalry – I thought that I might have a chance if I could get my cavalry into the enemy infantry. This is the joy of random systems, I suppose. They throw up totally unexpected situations which the solo wargamer has to work out how to deal with.
The set-up is above. The army of Prome is to the left, deployed up to their centreline (as they are the defenders). I initially deployed them further back but wanted to get the archers onto the hill nearest the camera (hence the general’s elephant with them). My brave lads are deployed in a fairly compact formation on the right. My plan is to get the infantry onto the hill where they might have a chance against the elephants, and get the cavalry into the opposing infantry as soon as possible. The playing cards (there are, in fact, three on the table) were ambushes set by Prome. Fortunately, they were all false, as it turned out.
The game was played on the day of Storm Darragh here in North Yorkshire, so the room was dark and I was suffering from a lot of flash splash or, alternatively, camera shake. So the shots are not terribly good, but hopefully give enough to sustain the narrative.
Prome got their archers onto the hill, but then they were too far away to affect the action. The general had to rush off to get the elephants moving against me. The enemy infantry (the cheek) moved up and charged my cavalry. This looked bad, at least initially, as the cavalry were forced back by the shock. However, they did rally magnificently.
On my left, one column of my foot charged the Prome cavalry, downhill, and routed them. I also moved myself up to support the cavalry and moved my central column up to support the cavalry. Meanwhile, my elephant which was hanging around at the back, moved into place to protect my flank from the enemy elephants. A bit of a forlorn hope, I felt.
The above picture shows the scene towards the end of the action. I have just managed to rout two of the annoying infantry bases in the centre, and one of my cavalry bases has managed to bounce a rouge elephant. On my left, a remarkable event has happened. My lone elephant base, charged by three enemies including their general has, in fact, routed one of them. The others, after the unsuccessful charge, are in some disarray.
The end was not far away. My cavalry charged down the hill at the remaining Prome infantry and routed them, while my elephant turned against one of the enemy. This resulted in the rout of the Prome army and a hugely unexpected victory for Toungoo. Prome lost 7 elements, all 5 infantry bases, a cavalry and an elephant base, to, well, I lost none.
I confess to a huge slice of luck. My elephant should have gone down to the charge of Prome. The odds were stacked against it, but it rolled a 6-1 on the combat dice and pushed its immediate foe back. This left said foe on the back foot and without its supports, who had just gone doubly terrain-shaken post-charge. My nellie followed up and on another good roll routed it. Similarly fortunate, my cavalry base blocking the other elephant managed to get away with only being shaken.
In short, it was a damn close run thing. But most empires need a bit of luck to begin with I think. I’ll have to see what the random event brings.
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