1600 – Something: And So To Bedouin

We have now arrived at Summer 1602, and this time I managed to remember to roll the random event. This rolled up another raid (5 of spades this time, as opposed to the 2 last time). The dice spoke, and it turned out that Bedouin tribesmen were raiding the Ottoman province of Egypt. You might think that I fixed the roll to get the troops I’ve just rebased, but actually, I was honest. The Bedouin against a local Ottoman defence force, it was (there is no Ottoman army about).

Both forces being local, I not only had to draw up army lists, but also randomise them. After a bit of scraping around my list of lists and the DBR army list books, I came up with some likely candidates, and the cards drawn gave reasonable forces for both sides, I thought, not that I am an expert on this warfare, you understand. The Bedouin got 6 camels (count as cavalry), 2 light horse, 1 light camel (count as light horse) and 3 tribal foot. The Ottomans got 5 cavalry, 3 light horse, 1 janissary shot (turned out to be archers, actually, but the effect is the same) and 3 militia bases.

For a desert area, I rolled up quite a lot of terrain. I might have adjusted it, but I suppose that there is really no point in raiding an empty desert. You need to go where the stuff is, and, in all probability, you have plenty of sand at home.

Above, you can see the Ottomans deployed to the left. Their foot, nearest the camera, is on a hill, with the cavalry to their left, and some light horse holding the flank. The Bedouin, on the right, have their foot also on a hill. The terrain means that their heavy camels have been split in two, one between the two built-up areas, and the other on the far side.

The Ottoman plan was to get the foot into the enclosures in front of them and fight the cavalry action in the space to its left. The Bedouin plan was also to fight in the open space, but with camels coming from both front and flank. There was also a side order of the tribal foot on the hill joining in, assaulting the Ottoman infantry.

Inevitably, the action started with a clash of light troops. Of this, although the forces were equally balanced, the Ottomans had the better of the exchanges. Above, you can see the Bedouin light camels fleeing by the mosque, while the shaken light cavalry skulks behind the left wing heavy camels. In the centre, the Ottomans have, rather audaciously, charged the central camels while outnumbered, and, although they have caused some damage, they have been bounced. Still under the control of the general, these now shaken spahis began a long retreat to the hill behind the infantry.

The shaken Ottoman cavalry made it back to the hill, covered by light horse, their colleagues from the reserve, and fire from the janissaries in the field. This caused the Bedouin sufficient cause for concern that they delayed their advance to exploit the initial victory. Meanwhile, on the Ottoman right, the rest of the camels have ridden down their light horse. One base is fleeing, and another has taken to the shrubbery in disorder. On the other hand, the remaining Bedouin light horse has rallied, while one of the heavy camels has been disrupted by heavy fire from the janissaries.

One of the hallmarks of the game was poor tempo dice roll on both sides, from time to time, and some really poor (as well as quite good) Ottoman combat dice. Having re-read that sentence, I suppose that fortunes were fairly evenly balanced, and that what happened next was due to a general’s ineptitude, or my incompetence. See what you think.

The above is the setup for the disaster. The central Bedouin camels are advancing past the field, under fire but so far unperturbed. The Bedouin right flank cavalry, having seen off the Ottoman light horse, has turned across into the gap between the village and the rough ground. Meanwhile, the previously shaken Ottoman cavalry is moving against the Bedouin tribesmen on their hill. The Bedouin, incidentally, have suffered from a tempo drought and have not got their rallied light horse moving again.

The crunch, when it came, was a significant one. The Ottoman light horse you can see on the extreme left of the shot managed to disrupt the Bedouin camels in the centre, which moved into charge range of the Ottoman cavalry on the hill, who duly obliged, as seen, and the charge alone shook the Bedouin. Meanwhile, on the Ottoman left, the cavalry and Bedouin tribal foot were refusing to charge each other.

The problem was, for the Bedouin, that their front camels had the second line behind them. Thus, as the front line crumbled, they recoiled and turned to flee, which meant they swept away the second line camels with them.

Another problem was that the Bedouin general was also in the firing line, and inevitably, he was lost in the rout. With the earlier light camels lost, and four bases of heavy camels plus the generals, the Bedouin suddenly were at 0 morale, and rolled down to -4. They routed.

That was an interesting and actually quite slow wargame. Both sides were rather cagey in the opening moves, and that really continued. Neither wanted to commit their foot in the open with the hordes of mounted around, and the light forces eventually cancelled each other out. You can see that the Bedouin managed to reactivate their light horse in the picture above, but too late to play any part in the debacle in the centre.

It is rather good in the campaign, having these, as it were, low-stakes actions going on. The worst that could happen is that the raided state could lose the income from the province for a year or so, so in campaign terms, they are not that significant. Nor do the local forces involved gain or lose GOOS as a consequence of the action. But you do get some variety, and it was good to get the Bedouin and Ottomans out. The latter have probably not been on the table for years. Perhaps it takes a sprawling campaign to make it happen.

The Re-b**ing Post

Apologies for the bad language in the title of this post, but for most wargamers, the topic is one in bad taste, if not taboo. But first, a little background, or at least a bit of explanation of motivation.

Some of you might remember that a while ago, I put my ancient armies up for adoption. I am pleased to report that they have now flown the nest, and I hope they are very happy in their new homes, and get onto the wargame table more often than I was able to manage. Those of you with really good memories might also recall that I had started to rebase them (yes, that is the rude word) in that the Celts and Romans, or their foot at least, had had the number of figures on a base doubled, or, looked at another way, the footprint of the foot halved.

I mentioned at the time that I had finally yielded to the argument that the bases look better with two rows of troops on them, in spite of my geometric better self, which argued that even an eight-deep column of men was a lot smaller than the width of a unit of, say, 500. This is, of course, entirely true and also, as most wargamers know, hardly relevant. The look and feel is at least as important as getting the width-to-depth ratios correct.

As was mentioned (or hinted at) in the last post, the Aztecs, before they masqueraded as Siberians, had already been rebased. In fact, I think this was rebased for the fourth time. Hopefully, I’ve got it right this time, although there is no guarantee. The bases, in case you are wondering, are 40 by 20 mm plastic cards, with the figures glued on. The bases are then covered in polyfiller and dunked into chinchilla dust, which is overcoated with PVA glue, and then painted. Simple, plain, and unfussy bases, I find. I have taken to painting them in plain green or sand. The ancients, most of them, had the bases dry-brushed with various colours, but I decided that it actually made it hard to discern what the figures were, so for the early moderns, I abandoned that idea. It might also be because I am a lazy and reluctant painter.

So, after the departure of the ancients and a bit of a sort out, I wondered which collection was to be next to be rebased. My beady eyes alighted on the North African, Bedouin, and Arab box. Now, I imagine that this lot, in the early modern period, are not the wargamer’s go-to armies. But in fact, they are quite interesting, with a mix of tribal types, cavalry, camels, and shot. The box also had quite a lot of infantry stands, which meant that a fair reduction in footprint was possible.

The results are above. Obviously, the cavalry and camelry to the left are untouched, although there seem to be a lot of light camels in the box. On the far left, incidentally, are the Taureg. The infantry – tribal foot and spearmen – are to the right, and the footprint has shrunk by half. The figures are Irregular, mostly, as I recall, from their dark ages and colonial ranges. You have to get a bit creative when you are trying to put together armies from the less popular quarters of the world.

My eye then latched on to my small collection of later medieval (or early early modern, depending on your taste) figures. These are more recent, Baccus figures from the Wars of the Roses range. Here, they are masquerading under Burgundian flags as Grenadines and Spanish from the Reconquista period. They were last seen in action, I think, in my Ferdinand and Isabella narrative campaign a few years ago. The cavalry are Moorish jinetes from Irregular.

These were originally based eight figures to a stand, and the plan was to go to sixteen. This worked fine for the pikemen on the left, but the crossbowmen and handgunners looked a bit crowded. My style consultant advised that twelve to a base looked better, and I think she was right, although it meant that I only reduced the number of bases by a third, not half.

I learnt a number of things from this exercise. Firstly, rebasing is not as scary as it seems. With my basing scheme, once the polyfiller was cracked, the figures could often be simply pulled off, and the base scraped clean and reused. The ability to pull the figures off was a great boon, but it does not seem to say much for the glue I originally used. With the reuse, I now have a box with an increasing number of spare bases in it, and I suppose that they will have to be jettisoned in due course.

There are some oddities, of course. The North African spearmen in the top picture have both ranks carrying flags, and the way the figures are, one flag is behind the other. I’ll live with that. They do look like a unit that is serious, rather than a few blokes with pointy sticks left out in the desert.

I also have a few leftover figures. For example, originally there were three bases of janissaries, that is, three strips. Now, there is only one, with a leftover strip. I’m taking note of these when they arise and, as Irregular 6 mm are back in production, an order to make the odd strips into bases will happen in due course. Mind you, figuring out which strips I used originally has been tricky at times; the most obscure was the Bedouin foot, which turned out to come from the French Revolution range.

As you might imagine, I have a fair bit of this to do. Next up, who might need to appear in the 1600 campaign, are the Irish. The pike and shot armed figures are already double strips, but the gallowglasses, bonnachts, and kern are not. I have also run across some Hessians for the Thirty Years' War, who will need a bit of augmentation. As the Estimable Mrs P reminded me, ‘If you buy them, you will have to paint them, you know’.

Beyond that, I have more late medievals - crossbows, longbows, dismounted men at arms and the like – which include some old H&R figures as well, the East Asians – Samurai, Chinese and Koreans – who will, I suspect need a fair bit of augmentation even to get to 12 base armies, the South East Asians – Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese and so on, and a few of the Indian infantry bases who are six to a stand at the moment, but come on irregular bases and might need some thought.

Once that lot is underway, I might extend my map to cover the whole Eurasian landmass. I did it for the play-by-email game, so it should be viable for a solo one. So long as the provinces don’t shrink to mere blobs….

1600 Something – The Raiders

Something that I think is quite useful in a solo wargame campaign is random events. This is probably not news to anyone. After all, in a multi-player campaign, they can prove to be annoyances, distractions, and general amusement. In a solo game, they can equally stir things up and, on occasion, bring forward wargame match-ups that you might not otherwise have considered.

The latest 1600 wargame is a case in point. I got around to rolling the random event (which should have been done at the start of the Spring 1602 move, but on a continent as big as Europe, it probably does not matter much). I rolled an event, and the card draw gave ‘raids’. Now, when I drew up the rules and tables, I had in mind a number of things, particularly trying to avoid the ‘flank power’ effect, where two of the states have unassailable areas, while the rest do not. In most games set in and around Europe, the flank powers are, as they were historically, Russia and England (or Britain).

To avoid this, the raid random event could strike at any of the peripheral provinces. The raiders could be Taureg, Barbary Corsairs, Bedouin, Persians, Tartars, or Siberian tribesmen. As it happens, I rolled up the Siberian tribes, and they were to raid Novgorod. This is all controlled by dice rolls.

All well and good. My trusty old DBR army list was consulted, and it would seem that the westernmost Siberian tribe was the Komi, although the notes say that they were mostly subdued by 1600. The tribe, according to the lists, was mostly bows and war bands, which translates into my rules system as tribal foot.

Now, there is a slight problem here, and the wargame purist might like to look away (or skip to the next post, which is about a nice, safe topic, rebasing). This is because I do not have any figures for Siberian tribesmen, let alone Komi specifically. As far as I know (which is not very far, admittedly) there are no manufacturers of such figures in existence. I will, probably, sit corrected (and am very happy to do so on this) but they certainly do not exist in 1:300th scale.

It is a bit of a shame, I think, that there is such a dearth of figures for the Cossack campaigns which fanned out across Siberia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, especially with the preponderance of skirmish-level wargames these days. Small parties of cossacks taking on the locals should give a good game, I would think.

Still, I have a local Muscovite army of seven cavalry bases, three light horse cossacks, a base of skirmishers, and one of streltsi. The Komi had six bases of bows and six of tribal foot. Given that both parties are what are described in the rules as ‘local’ forces, they were determined by a card draw.

For the figures I have, of course, my Muscovites, who have been out in this campaign before. For the Komi, however, you might think I have a problem, which I do, but I had already decided on my plan: Aztecs. As you might recall, the Aztecs have already been rebased and, as they do not get onto the table very much, they were agreeable to becoming Western Eurasians for an afternoon or so.

I rolled up quite a dense terrain for this encounter. The Komi are to the left, in possession of the village. The main body of tribal foot is deployed in and around it, with archers on the hills, and also deployed in the woods on the far side. The Muscovites, being mostly cavalry, deployed that on their right, planning to cross the stream and outflank the Komi, while the foot deployed in the fields.

As the action developed, the cossacks crossed the stream and took on the Komi archers in the wood. They did not do too well. The Komi archers on the hills advanced to take on the outnumbered Muscovite foot. You can see the skirmishers fleeing by the wood to the right, but one archer base has been lost, and the rest of the Komi foot has been dislocated. Meanwhile, the Muscovite cavalry is across the stream and reorganising.

Examining the situation, the Muscovite general decided that a wider encircling movement was necessary, and sent it off, led by some Cossack. The Komi, too, were reorganising, pulling back their archers and moving tribal foot across onto the hills to meet what looked like an attack in the rear, which was going to develop. The Muscovites could not take route one, between the village and the trees, for fear of either being charged from the village or getting shot up from the woods.

Advances and reorganisations continued. The streltsi attempted to advance from the fields and were driven back by the Komi archers on the hill, while their supporting cavalry failed to charge. On the off chance, the Muscovites were starting to deploy their main body of cavalry, as the Komi would certainly need to weaken their flank to defend the hills.

The crunch came sooner than I was expecting. The Muscovite flank or rear advance is only about halfway to its destination, but the main body of Muscovite cavalry has charged some Komi uphill. This really should not have worked, but it did on the first really good Muscovite combat roll of the game. The tribal foot was charged, crumbled, and fled easily. The centre of the Komi position was blown wide open.

Komi morale did not survive the impact of the Muscovite charge. Morale slumped to 1, and they withdrew. I do not, I’m afraid, give much for their chances of getting away. There are a lot of Muscovite cavalry wandering around already.

As I said earlier, that was interesting, a historical match-up (sort of). Tactically, it put an almost entirely cavalry army against a bow-armed foot one. I thought it was going to be a long, attritional slog, but a bit of chance-grabbing by the Muscovites handed them victory.

The game really has little bearing on the campaign, as local forces were engaged, and so no adjustments to the GOOS score or anything else are necessary. As a wargam,e it was an interesting match-up. And how do you think the Aztecs did as Siberian tribesmen?

1600-Something: The Late General’s Battle

The situation in Europe is slowly heating up. More forces are being raised, especially in the north, where Sweden is going to have to do something dramatic soon or run out of money. It is further west that attention is currently focused, however, as the Spanish raised a new army and placed it in Franche-Comte. The French, as had previously been noted, have been busily raising armies, and so this, which could be construed as a defensive measure by the Spanish (Franche-Comte is, after all, a home province for them) was bound to irritate the rather active and bellicose French King (who, historically, would be Henri IV).

As the French, in Spring 1602, got a move card, and the diplomacy route between the two countries failed, due to their differing strategic aims, the French invaded. I was a bit shocked when I discovered that the Spanish army was isolated, while the French had support. Oh, OK, so a single Spanish army is to take on one and a half French armies. This already sounds like it might end badly.

Never one to shirk a wargame, however, the army lists were duly drawn up, the terrain rolled for, and the armies deployed. I could say that the terrain was favourable to the Spanish, but that would be an exaggeration. It could have been worse, would be, I think, nearer the mark.

The deployment is above, with the Spanish to the left. They have 4 pike, 4 shot, 3 demi-lancers, and a base of light horse. The foot are deployed on a hill, with the forward unit on the top of the slope, the other unit in reserve on the top. The cavalry are deployed on the left, under the general, with the idea of resisting any attempt to outflank the foot on that side. The light horse are to do the same job on the right. Now, there’s optimism for you.

The French plan was fairly simple. They would use their cavalry advantage to wipe out the Spanish lancers, and then outflank the hill on both sides, both infantry and cavalry cooperating. To this end, the general was deployed with the cavalry, while the sub-general had command of the foot on the French left, nearest the camera. The French deployed their cavalry in two groups, one in line with 3 bases to be the immediate opponents of the Spanish, and then the other two bases in column near the village, to be the reserves who mop up the victorious chargers. Well, it worked for the Muscovites a game or two ago.

With a bit of a feast of tempo points, the French surged forward, getting everyone moving, as seen above. The main cavalry strike force is getting into position, and the infantry on the near side is looking rather bulky against the comparatively slight Spanish on the hill. A lot would depend on the cavalry clash, and the French reserve cavalry are moving up in anticipation of demi-lancer for lunch.

I really thought the Spanish were going to lose this one. The initial chance of a charge at the French cavalry was missed. The French had the tempo and moved into range; the Spanish fluffed their charge roll. Next turn, the Spanish won the tempo and declared another charge. They made it this time, just, and the results are seen above. One French base routed, two others shaken, and the Spanish pushing on.

At this point, my camera battery expired, so you’ll just have to believe the next bit. The cavalry combat went the Spanish way the next turn, and the French cavalry fled. This included the general, whose risk roll indicated he was a casualty. Humbug. As the Spanish spread out pursuing the fleeing French, the latter did not have the tempo to bring their reserves into the action. Not only that, but French morale wavered, losing all units their current orders. More humbug.

The French sub-general managed to get some of his foot (the red coats) moving forward again and engaged in a firefight with the Spanish on the hill. Meanwhile, the Spanish lancers were rallying on the far side of the field, unmolested by the now orderless French right. The French were having tempo trouble, as one usually has when the general has been lost, and were not doing as well as they could in the firefight.

Things only got worse for the French. The Spanish infantry on the hill attacked downhill. The leftmost musketeers caused their foes to recoil. The pike in two ranks pushed back the French pike and, worst of all for the French, the right flank Spanish shot routed their opposition. This latter included the French sub-general, who had to roll for his risk as well and, inevitably, perhaps, became a casualty.

The end of the battle is above. The Spanish foot are advancing down their hill, while the remnants of the red coats flee. The coup de grâce was actually administered by the Spanish general and his lancers, who trotted up to the French carabiniers marooned without orders by the village, took them in flank, and routed them. This was too much for French morale, and they withdrew.

That was, to say the least, unexpected. After the last Bavarian against Austrian affair, I thought the Spanish were toast, especially after they failed the first charge attempt. They were in a far worse defensive position for one thing, and the forces facing them were more balanced and outnumbered them in almost every department.

Mind you, it was, I think, the first time my French millers had been on the table (slightly anachronistic, maybe, but really, why not?). Given the recent performance of the Bavarian cuirassiers, I suppose it should not be a surprise.

Still, Europe is now agog over the Franco-Spanish war and wondering what it might mean that the French have received an unexpected setback. I wonder as well. Obviously, the Spanish GOOS score will have improved, and one of their main war aims is to maintain the Spanish Road from Italy to the Netherlands. So far, so good….