As with most wargamers, I am never wholly satisfied with the rules I play with. Itching to play a solo game with my newly painted houses on the table, I thought I would try the 'Rifle and Saber' rules from the highly respected 'One -Hour Wargames' book by Neil Thomas. I have played the Medieval rules before but not these for the late 19th century.
To add a twist of my own, I thought I would add in area templates and scatter dice for artillery shooting. These are lifted directly from my 30 plus years of playing the various editions of Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop. The scatter of artillery fire is both realistic (sort of) and fun as it adds a completely random element to proceedings.
Mr Thomas's rules don't allow for misses, just less damage on a single D6 roll. With my tweak, the template is placed over the target unit and a scatter dice rolled together with 2 D6 at half range or over, or 1 D6 if closer. The dice gives a 1 in 3 chance of a direct hit, so I decided that however many models were under the template would be the number of hits. Whilst this could be up to 10 (as happened in the game!), I reasoned that as 2 in 3 shots were likely to scatter and do less if any damage, this would be a similar effect to 3 rolls on a D6,as in the rules as written. Well lady luck didn't agree, or at the very least is a Socialist as you will see!
The Commanders tossed to bat and the Royalists bowed to Lady Luck (not for the last time this day). The Socialists had 3 infantry companies plus a machine gun section in place in the village, plus two supporting guns to the left.
The counter battery fire resulted in two scattered misses. First round to the rebels!
A general advance ensued from the Royalist forces. The landship trundled up the road with a naval assault company in support. The Highland company advanced towards the wood supported by the Heavy Cavalry squadron. The Guard company followed by the Lancer squadron advanced around the left hand side of the church. As all of the infantry could neither shoot because they were moving or not within 12" range, shooting was left to the 4 field guns and the landship (which I decided could move and fire).
The ensuing artillery fire heavily favoured the Rebel guns, who scored a number of direct hits, knocking out one gun completely and damaging the landship. They also inflicted notable casualties on the advancing heavy cavalry, the Highlanders and the Naval company. In response, the Royalist guns inflicted light casualties on an infantry company and one gun. 5 out of 6 shots scattered relatively harmlessly! Well almost...a flock of sheep took 4 casualties and shouts of 'lamb kebabs tonight!' could be heard from the Socialist lines. The Landship inflicted light casualties on the machine gun section to its front.
At this point the Heavy Cavalry charged the Infantry company to its front and whilst inflicting 3 casualties, failed to break the unit and so had to retreat 6". This was fairly disastrous as the Infantry then took aim and inflicted sufficient hits to break the Heavy Cavalry who turned to leave the field. The Highland Company also took sufficient casualties' from subsequent close range artillery and rifle fire to also break and retreat.
In the meantime the Landship had taken so much damage from the machine guns to its front that it failed and ground to a halt, blocking the road. The Naval assault company then took another direct hit from a field gun and also broke!
On the left hand side of the field things were looking better for the Royalist forces. The Guard company had reached firing range with only a few casualties and the Lancer squadron managed to charge the Rebel company and break them.
The Lancers were however carrying casualties and now coming under fire from the machine Gun section. The Royalist Commander was finally persuaded to save what was left of his forces and ordered a general retreat. The day ended as it had started with the Rebels still in control of the village, a hard lesson for the Royalist commander to swallow.
Lessons learned:
The Royalist Artillerymen need more training!
Frontal assaults on defended urban areas are costly!
Hand to hand combat will never break a defending unit unless they are already near the 15 casualty level as 1 D6 damage (average 3/4) will not be anywhere near enough on its own. This does reinforce the authors statement that cavalry were no longer effective by this era.
Conclusions
First of all, the templates worked but perhaps a little too effectively. I still like them, but might need to lessen the scatter distance.
The 'one hour' rules worked fine but felt a little thin for my taste. I like simple rules but these are just a bit too stripped back.
The need to gain 15 casualties before a unit ceases to play a role feels too arbitrary. I felt the need for morale tests even if a relatively simple mechanic.
I want my toy soldier cavalry to be able to charge heroically and have a chance of breaking a unit, realistic or not!
Overall, I think these rules are clever in their simplicity and I can see why they are popular, especially for a very quick game. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the book, they are just not generally for me.
I am still drawn back to Daniel Mersey's Lament series as they seem to be my sweet spot for level of complexity balanced with fun game play. I do have other favourites but for different sorts of games and circumstances.
H.G.Wells own rules and Paul Wrights excellent Funny Little Wars expansions are great fun! A decent lawn or large carpeted room are a necessity however! Oh and better knees than mine are an advantage.
Howard Whitehouse's 'A Gentleman's War', has been a major source of inspiration to me and has lots to offer. It doesn't lend itself readily to solo play, but it does provide a competitive game with a very strong strategic element, whilst still having a great sense of fun!
I intend to say more about these and other rule books in later blog posts.
Off for tea now...can I smell roast lamb? Tara a bit!
