Monday 16 July 2012

Boer War Battle in 10mm

On Saturday some of the Rejects got together to test out a set of rules written by one of the group. John is a big advocate of 10mm in his own words "because its cheaper than 15mm and the figures are easier to paint". Well I can't argue with his reasoning or the quality of the rules he put together for this Boer War battle. The figures are all by Pendraken and all the scenery and buildings were scratch built by John.

The British were tasked with crossing the river and taking the town, the Boers with stopping them.

Both bridges were rigged for demolition and both were blown during the course of the game as the British tried to cross (Taking lots of troops with them).

Meanwhile the second force of British under my command quickly secured a ford across the river and proceeded to cross it.
British advance towards the bridges. They tied down significant Boer reserves in the town which would otherwise have defended the ford.

My Imperial troops get a foothold on the far bank and quickly feed through reserves to consolidate their position. 

With the main bridge blown the Imperial troops settled in for a prolonged firefight.

Johns scratch built buildings are made from Balsa wood and cardboard. Simple but effective.
Boer Artillery. Both sides found their artillery to be ineffective at long and medium range. 

Imperial troops form up and steadily push back the Boers with massed firepower and a few well placed bayonet charges! 
I didn't get a decent shot of the final stages of the game (I was too engrossed in winning for a change!). My Imperial troops consolidated their foothold across the ford and forced back the Boer's. One particular bayonet charge forced a whole Boer unit off the table and by this stage I had made enough room to bring my artillery across the river to support the infantry at close range. Meanwhile units from the other British column had cross the Ford I now controlled and were moving towards the town, more or less unopposed. 

The Boar players decided to throw in the towel at this stage. With nearly a whole division plus artillery across the river it was just a matter of grinding down the Boer's until they failed their moral tests. It was a good game with plenty of movement and easily understood rules. John did a sterling job as umpire and this is certainly a period, scale and rule-set we would happily play again. 

10 comments:

  1. It Looked and sounded like a great game !

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  2. Shame me and Fran missed the game, it looked like a cracker!

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    1. It was a great game (Of course I would say that, I was on the winning side). John did a great job as umpire. I think Postie enjoyed being a player for a change even if he did loose a lot of troops when Surjit blew the bridges! I thought we'd had it at that point but somehow my troops got across the ford relatively unscathed and then it was just a matter of time before the Boers broke or gave up.

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  3. A cracking little game; the table looks particularly well put together.

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  4. It does look like a fun game. I hear that smaller figures are easier to paint, but I'm such an anal retentive that I think I would try to paint them like 28mm and go stark raving mad. I like the terrain, how big are those river sections? They seem huge and look to be 6 - 8" across.

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    1. The river sections were about 8" across. The Ford reduced movement to 8" (down from 12" on roads for infantry) so it took two or three turns to get a unit cleanly across. I move two units up as fire support and forced my way across with the remaining three.

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  5. Great looking game. Thanks for the report.

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  6. Interesting report.
    I used to play Warmaster in 10mm, and found it could give a real 'large scale battle' feel, despite the small individual figure size.

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