Ancient Britons and their Chariots.

It has to be confessed that when I produced the Ancient Rules, Ionia to Carthage. 546BC to 146BC; I didn’t actively avoid chariots. It’s just that they’re not one of the more important troop types during the period. But yes, I did include scythed chariots, and no, I didn’t include Libyans.

But no sooner were the rules published than somebody realised they would cover his Roman invasion of Britain. So he very nicely asked about British chariots.

Well we have an eye witness who wrote about these chariots. Gaius Julius Caesar. No, he was not unbiased. But seeing as how he won, there might even be something to be said for him perhaps exaggerating the danger they posed to lesser generals leading poorer troops.

But first, on his first invasion; Caesar, Gallic War, Book IV

When his troops first tried to land.

“24 The natives, however, perceived the design of the Romans. So they sent forward their cavalry and charioteers — an arm which it is their regular custom to employ in fights — and, following up with the rest of their forces, they sought to prevent our troops from disembarking. Disembarkation was a matter of extreme difficulty, for the following reasons. The ships, on account of their size, could not be run ashore, except in deep water; the troops — though they did not know the ground, had not their hands free, and were loaded with the great and grievous weight of their arms — had nevertheless at one and the same time to leap down from the vessels, to stand firm in the waves, and to fight the enemy. The enemy, on the other hand, had all their limbs free, and knew the ground exceeding well; and either standing on dry land or advancing a little way into the water, they boldly hurled their missiles, or spurred on their horses, which were trained to it. Frightened by all this, and wholly inexperienced in this sort of fighting, our troops did not press on with the same fire and force as they were accustomed to show in land engagements.”

“26 The fighting was fierce on both sides. Our troops, however, because they could not keep rank, nor stand firm, nor follow their proper standards — for any man from any ship attached himself to whatever standard he chanced upon — were in considerable disorder. But the enemy knew all the shallows, and as soon as they had observed from the shore a party of soldiers disembarking one by one from a ship, they spurred on their horses and attacked them while they were in difficulties, many surrounding few, while others hurled missiles into a whole party from the exposed⁠ flank.”

Then we have the Romans caught foraging.

“32 Meanwhile one legion, called the Seventh, had been sent as usual to collect corn; nor as yet had any suspicion of hostilities intervened, since part of the people remained in the fields, and part were actually frequent visitors to the camp. Then the outposts on duty before the gates of the camp reported to Caesar that a greater dust than usual was to be seen in that quarter to which the legion had marched. Caesar suspected the truth — that some fresh design had been started by the natives — and ordered the cohorts which were on outpost to proceed with him to the quarter in question, two of the others to relieve them on outpost, and the rest to arm and follow him immediately. When he had advanced some little way from the camp, he found that his troops were being hard pressed by the enemy and were holding their ground with difficulty: the legion was crowded together, while missiles were being hurled from all sides. The fact was that when the corn had been cut from the rest of the neighbourhood one part remained, and the enemy, supposing that our troops would come hither, had hidden by night in the woods; then, when the men were scattered and, having grounded arms, were engaged in cutting corn, they had suddenly attacked them. They had killed a few, throwing the rest into confusion before they could form up, and at the same time surrounding them with horsemen and chariots.

33 Their manner of fighting from chariots is as follows. First of all they drive in all directions and hurl missiles, and so by the mere terror that the teams inspire and by the noise of the wheels they generally throw ranks into confusion. When they have worked their way in between the troops of cavalry, they leap down from the chariots and fight on foot. Meanwhile the charioteers retire gradually from the combat, and dispose the chariots in such fashion that, if the warriors are hard pressed by the host of the enemy, they may have a ready means of retirement to their own side. Thus they show in action the mobile of cavalry and the stability of infantry; and by daily use and practice they become so accomplished that they are ready to gallop their teams down the steepest of slopes without loss of control, to check and turn them in a moment, to run along the pole, stand on the yoke, and then, quick as lightning, to dart back into the chariot.

34 When our troops were thrown into confusion in this fashion by the novel character of the fighting, Caesar brought assistance in the very nick of time; for his arrival caused the enemy to halt, and enabled our men to recover from their fear. This done, he deemed the moment unsuitable for provoking and engaging in a combat; he therefore stood to his own ground and, after a brief interval, led the legions back to camp.”

In his second invasion, Caesar had the advantage of having a reasonable cavalry force. Thus he could pursue. Caesar, Gallic War, Book V

“16 The action took place in front of the camp and under the eyes of all; and it was clear that in all such fighting our infantry, by reason of their heavy armament, since they could neither pursue a retiring enemy nor venture far from the standards,⁠ were but poorly fitted for an enemy of this kind. It was clear, again, that our cavalry fought with great risk, because the enemy often retired of deliberate purpose, and, when they had separated our horse a little from the legions, leapt down from their chariots and fought on foot to our disadvantage. Their cavalry tactics, however, threatened us with exactly the same danger in retirement or pursuit.⁠ Add to this that the enemy never fought in close array, but in small parties with wide intervals; and had detachments posted at regular stations, so that one party covered another in turn, and fresh, unspent warriors took the place of the battle-weary.

17 Next day the enemy took post on the hills, at a distance from the camp, and began to show themselves in small parties and to assail our horsemen, though more feebly than on the day before. But at noon, when Caesar had sent three legions and all the cavalry with Gaius Trebonius, the lieutenant-general, to get forage, the enemy swooped suddenly from all directions upon the foraging parties, with such vigour that they did not stop short of the legions drawn up for battle. Our troops charged them fiercely and drove them back, and did not bring the pursuit to an end until the cavalry, relying on the support of the legions they saw behind them, drove the enemy headlong and slew a great number of them, giving them no chance to rally or stand fast, nor to leap down from their chariots. After this rout the succours which had assembled from all quarters took their departure; and never afterwards did the enemy engage us at their full strength.”

Our final real mention of chariots is where the army consisted of nothing but chariots.

“19 When Cassivellaunus, as above set forth, had relinquished all hope of a struggle, and disbanded the greater part of his force, with the remainder — about four thousand charioteers — he kept our marches under observation, and, withdrawing a little from the route, concealed himself in entangled positions among the woods. In whatever districts he had learnt that we intended to march he drove all cattle and human beings from the fields into the woods; then, whenever our cavalry dashed out over the fields to plunder and devastate more freely, he sent out charioteers from the woods by every road and path, engaging our cavalry to their great danger, and preventing them by the fear thus caused from ranging farther afield. The only course left to Caesar was to allow no party to remove very far from the main column of the legions, and to do as much harm to the enemy in laying waste the fields and in conflagrations as the marching powers of the legionaries could accomplish.”

So after wading through reams of Caesar’s commentary, what do we make of the chariots?

Firstly, they weren’t heavy cavalry. They never smashed into formed up troops to attempt to ride them down. If they are in any way to be compared to cavalry, it’s light cavalry, skirmishing, hitting from unexpected places, catching troops unprepared.

Secondly they knew the terrain, so they were happy to move through woods, steep slopes or similar.

Thirdly they were a danger to cavalry when they had the initiative. What seems most unusual is the fact that if they got the cavalry separated from the legions, the chariot warriors, “leapt down from their chariots and fought on foot to our disadvantage.”

All this makes them a pretty unusual, if not unique, troop type.

One explanation for the dismounting against cavalry may be seen in contemporary German practice where German cavalry were accompanied by light infantry, described by Phil Barker as “elite light infantry “horse-killers”. Plutarch also describes Gallic cavalry fighting Parthian cataphracts at the Battle of Carrhae in 53BC “grappling with the men, pushed them from their horses, hard as it was to move them owing to the weight of their armour; and many of the Gauls forsook their own horses, and crawling under those of the enemy, stabbed them in the belly.”

If the British Chariot warriors adopted this sort of technique, especially when the Roman cavalry had lost the initiative, or were struggling to cope with having to deal with the physical presence of chariots in the combat you could understand the cavalry having problems coping.

So, suggestions. And these are suggestions, and need careful playtesting.

Chariots are treated as light cavalry.

Troop type	Strength	Equipped	Discipline	Drill	Archer	Mounted	Combat value
British chariots	6	Well	1	1		yes	9

Well-equipped I justify because chariot warriors were probably the best equipped, and they’ve got this chariot as well.

Discipline 1 and Drill 1 because it leaves a little room for improvement on campaign.

But some troop type specific rules.

They move, manoeuvre, and can evade, as skirmishing cavalry.
But if they want to test to charge skirmishers, confused enemy, or enemy flanks or rear they test as if they were not skirmishers.
They are chariots that can move through difficult terrain. (Scythed chariots just don’t go in there.)
They get -1 to their javelins when skirmishing (this actually makes them slightly more effective)

The results or these tweaks.

Chariots are less likely to charge frontally into cavalry and formed up infantry, but will be happy enough to mug them when they catch them at a disadvantage.
The chariots will probably do more damage when skirmishing, which might allow for carrying more missiles, or chariot warriors leaping off and attacking people when they saw an opportunity.
Chariots should be difficult to catch, but frankly, if you’re cavalry you might regret catching them.

So if anybody fancies having a go and tries them, please let me know whether they work or not. I don’t want to create some sort of Ancient British Panzer Division, but I do want to somehow capture a little of the flavour.

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In case you’ve not come across them,

The Ancient Rules. Ionia to Carthage. 546BC to 146BC. are available from Wargame Vault, in pdf, for £5

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/537709/Ancient-Rules-Ionia-to-Carthage-546BC-to-146BC

They’re also available from Amazon, £5 on Kindle, or £12 in paperback

The Battle of Marathon 490BC.

When looking at the battle, the Greek army is the easiest to work out. Most ancient sources say there were 9,000 Athenian hoplites, supported by 1,000 Plataean hoplites who were the only people who had come to the assistance of Athens. Justin is one of the few who differs and even he gives the Athenians 10,000 hoplites rather than 9,000.

The Persian army is more difficult to work out. Herodotus states that the generals lead their army from the King’s presence to the Aleïan plain in Cilicia. So it was an army drawn from the heartlands of the Empire, not something cobbled together in the Western satrapies. Here they rendezvoused with the fleet and sailing around the Ionian coast before working their way across the island chains. Finally they landed at Marathon where the Athenian and Plataean force met them.

We have no idea of size from the sources, only that there were 600 triremes and they embarked cavalry as well. We’re given no real details, but if the army served on the ships instead of marines, that would mean at least 12,000 men. What really gives us a feeling for the size of the Persian army is that when the Greeks fought, they did thin out the middle of their line, but by doing so managed to ensure their line was pretty much the same length as that of the Persians. So if the Persians outnumbered them, it was not by any great number. (In this game the Greeks slightly outnumber the Persians)

With regard to who was present in the Persian army, we know there were cavalry in the force, but they weren’t present at the battle. One assumption is that they had been embarked ready for the next phase of the journey which would be to land nearer Athens. This would make sense at loading men onto their triremes is going to be faster than loading horses.

With regard to infantry, all Herodotus says is, “For a long time they fought at Marathon; and the foreigners overcame the middle part of the line, against which the Persians themselves and the Sacae were arrayed.”

I decided to try a refight, using ‘Ancient Rules. Ionia to Carthage. 546BC to 146BC.’

So for the Persians I picked this army

Troop type	Strength	Equipped	Discipline	Drill	Archer	Mounted	Combat value
Sparabara (Medes and Persians)	16	Average	1	1	3		6/3
Useful levies with bow (Sacre, Parthians, Bactrians and Babylonians	16	Average	1	1	1		6/1

For the Greeks I picked this

Troop type	Strength	Equipped	Discipline	Drill	Archer	Mounted	Combat value
Plataean hoplites	24	Well	1	1			7
Athenian hoplites, 1,4 and Callimachus	24	Well	1	1			7
Athenian hoplites, 2 and 3	16	Well	1	1			7

Because the Athenians weren’t a total levy of every man who could hold a spear and shield I’ve assumed they were well equipped.
Callimachus, who commanded that day, took the place of honour on the right.
Datis, the Persian commander, was said by Herodotus to have survived the battle. Nothing is known of his role, I’d put him with the Persians who are in the middle.
Hoplite units 2 and 3 are weaker.
Because no units on either side have combined drill and discipline higher than 2, everybody rolls a straight d6 in combat as ‘inspired.’

The Game

Move 1

Both sides are drawn up 24” apart. The Greeks get to move first and the entire line moves forward 6”. They are now 18” away from the Persians.

In their turn the Persians decide to shoot.

Each unit will roll a d6 with the following factors

+1 for each level of target’s disciple or drill
+1 for target infantry with big shield or mounted with horse or elephant armour
+1 for target in cover.
-1 for target mounted
-1 shot at by 3pt archers

So for the Sparabara, they’re rolling a d6 +3 (Greek drill and discipline both 1, and they have a really big shield.) with a -1 for being 3pt archers. So +2 (The lower you roll in shooting, the better.

The other 4 units get +3

The Plataeans face desultory fire.

Unit 1 suffers galling fire and loses 1 strength point (figure), the Bactrians having rolled a 1.

Unit 2 also suffers galling fire and loses a strength point, but for the rest of the Greek army, the Persians, Medes and Babylonians fire with little effect.

Move 2

Again the Greeks move forward. They are now 12” away and are at medium range. The pluses and minuses to the dice are the same but at medium range you look on a lot tougher table for the victims.

The Plataeans are hit with intense fire and lose 3sps

Units 2 and 3 both suffer galling fire and lose 2sps

The Persian mediocre die rolling continues and the remaining three units also lose 2sps from the galling fire.
But the next move of six inches would bring the Greeks into short range. Even the Persians just repeated their die rolls, the Greeks would lose at least three and probably 4 more men per unit. Purely for this scenario I am allowing for the celebrated Marathon attack at a run, so the Greeks cross this last beaten zone without being shot at. Actually this isn’t the only time we know the Greeks did this. The Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries fighting for Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa did it as well. Xenophon mentions officers trying to stop units getting broken up too much.

So whilst the Greeks miss that last lethal bout of missile fire, I’m going to give the Persians +1 in combat in the first round. This is to allow for the Greeks arriving in something less than perfect order.

Turn 3

Much to the Persian astonishment (because they’re decent sports and didn’t read the last bit I wrote) the Greeks hit and we go straight into close combat.

In close combat, it is your combat value (six for the Persians, seven for the Greeks) plus a dice. In both cases this is a d6. There isn’t a charge bonus as such. However the Persians get +1 because of the one off bonus

The Plataeans roll a 3 to the Parthians 2. There is a difference of 1. So the Parthians lose one casualty. However the Plataeans also lose one because in combat even the winner suffers at least one casualty. The two units are stuck in combat.

The Bactrians are obviously tough, they roll a 6 to unit 1’s 3. Unit 1 suffers 3 casualties and bounces back 2”, the Bactrians suffer the obligatory 1 for being in combat.

Unit 2 rolls 6 to the Sacae 3, so the Sacae are rolled back 2”, suffer 3 casualties and unit 2 follows up having suffered 1.

Unit 3 and the Persians roll 4 each. Effectively there has been more abuse and name calling than real fighting, so they stay locked in combat (or rude gestures)

Unit 4 rolls 6 to the Medes 4. The Medes roll back 2” and take 2 casualties. Unit 4 suffers 1 and follows up.

Callimachus rolls a 4 to the Babylonians 2. The Babylonians lose 2 and go back, Callimachus loses 1 but follows up.

Now the Persian combat turn. They no longer have the +1

The Parthians manage to roll 6 to the Plataeans 4, inflict 2 casualties on them and suffer 1. The Plataeans roll back.

The Bactrians are not in contact with Unit 1 so shoot at it instead. At short range their intense fire does 4sp.

The Sacae also throw unit 2 back doing 3 casualties and taking 1.

Unit 3 finally decides to fight the Persians rather than merely abusing them. They win the combat but only inflict 1 point of damage, and lose the obligatory point themselves, so they stick in combat.

Unit 4 and the Medes draw, so obviously both sides are gasping for breath whilst still ‘in contact’

Callimachus shows how it’s done by the simple expedient of defeating the Babylonians 5 to 1. They roll back having suffered 4 casualties, whilst Callimachus, in pursuit, has suffered only 1.

So casualties at the end of this move

Parthians 2	Bactrians 1	Sacae 4	Persians 1	Medes 2	Babylonians 6
Plataeans 6	Unit 1 8	Unit 2 7	Unit 3 3	Unit 4 3	Callimachus 4

Remember this includes shooting casualties.

Move 4

The Plataeans manage to charge in before the Parthians can shoot, inflict 2 casualties but suffers the obligatory 1 the victor always suffers.

Unit 1 gets back in contact with the Bactrians, inflicts 2 casualties and suffers 1.

Unit 2 also charges in before the Sacae shoot, doing 5 casualties and only suffering 1

Unit 3 is finding the going tough, but still inflicts 2 casualties to the Persians 1.

Unit 4 inflicts 2 casualties to 1 on the Medes.

Callimachus inflicts 5 on the Babylonians and receives 1 back.

In the Persian turn they have the Sacae and Babylonians have reached half strength. They need a morale test. Here you roll a dice the original size of the unit. So a 12 strong unit rolls a d12, a 24 strong unit rolls d20 and a d4 or two d12s. As 16 strong units they roll a d10 and a d6. For the unit to keep obeying orders it must roll less than or equal to the current unit strength.

The Sacae roll an 8. There are no additions to the dice and their discipline takes them down to 7 so they are fine. Just.

The Babylonians roll 7, they’re suffered 11 casualties and have 5 left, so they break.

Then we return to combat. There is no shooting, so we are straight into combat.

The Plataeans have the bit between their teeth and defeat the Parthians by 3, suffering 1.

The Bactrians give Unit 1 a severe thrashing, inflicting 4 on it and suffering 1

Unit 2 inflicts another 2 on the Sacae and suffers 1

The Persians manage to check unit 3 and suffer 1 each. The Medes finally throw unit 4 back inflicting 2 and suffering 1.

Parthians 7	Bactrians 4	Sacae 11	Persians 4	Medes 5
Plataeans 8	Unit 1 14	Unit 2 8	Unit 3 5	Unit 4 5	Callimachus 4

Move 5

This starts with the Greeks having to test morale. Unit 1 rolls 6 so passes. Unit 2 is now on 8 to it too has to test. It rolls a 14. There aren’t enough plusses to save them, Unit 2 is running.

There is also movement. Callimachus is almost behind the enemy line, he turns his men 90 degrees to face left and the Medes. He manages this comparatively complex manoeuvre without his men becoming confused.

The Plataeans inflict a casualty on the Parthians but suffer the obligatory 1.

Unit 1 charges back into the Bactrians rather than face a storm of arrows and gets thrashed losing 4 more. The Bactrians lose 1

The Persians and Unit 3 inflict one casualty on each other.

Unit 4 charges back into the Medes and they do a casualty on each other.

Now with the Persian turn they too have to test Morale.

The Parthians have 8 casualties, and the Sacae suffered more

The Parthians roll 9 but their discipline just holds them. The Sacae roll over their remaining figures so head for the rear.

Parthians 8	Bactrians 5	Sacae 11	Persians 5	Medes 6
Plataeans 9	Unit 1 18	Unit 2 8	Unit 3 6	Unit 4 6	Callimachus 4

And at this point we’ll call a halt to the play through. For the Persian force, the Bactrians and the Persians are still in reasonable order. The Medes would be fine if Callimachus wasn’t about to descend upon their flank whilst they’re still engaged to the front.

The Parthians have to desperately hold on until the Bactrians can fall on the Plataean flank.

My guess is that Callimachus will roll up the flank, taking both the Medes and eventually the Persians. If the Parthians can hang on, then the Persian army might take that wing.

I picked the scenario because it’s comparatively simple. There isn’t a lot of manoeuvring and nobody has spare units to move around the flank. Under these rules Persian infantry has a chance of holding Greeks. Certainly the Persians can realistically hope that their infantry will hold up the hoplites long enough for the cavalry on the wings to give them victory.

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It’s entirely probably that you’ve not heard of the Ancient Rules. Ionia to Carthage. 546BC to 146BC

They’re available from Amazon in Paperback for £12, or on Kindle for £5.

They are also available from Wargame Vault, in pdf, for £5

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/537709/Ancient-Rules-Ionia-to-Carthage-546BC-to-146BC

When I set out to write this set of rules I wanted to do something a bit different. I wanted to concentrate more on the men than the weaponry. So while equipment is important, drill and discipline can be equally important. Also I wanted to ensure troops couldn’t manoeuvre more than their historical counterparts.

And I wanted rules where you weren’t faced with rebasing figures. All units are on an 80mm frontage. I tend to use two 40mm frontage bases on an 80mm sabot base. But provided both sides have approximately the same base size it doesn’t matter. Indeed 28mm on 120mm bases works well.

Finally I wanted the rules to integrate into wargames campaigns. So whilst you can fight ‘one off’ battles, you will get more from these rules if you start with the wargames campaign and watch your armies grow and improve, Or alternatively, fail spectacularly as you’re forced to pad out the numbers with more and more poorly trained and inadequately remunerated levies.

Because I wanted to provide a full campaign background, the rules include a section covering naval warfare as well.

The rules have a nominal start date of about 540BC when the Achaemenid Persians conquered Ionia, and have a nominal end date of 146BC with the fall of Carthage. I confess to having concentrated on Achaemenid Persia, Greece, the Roman Republic, and Carthage. But there are enough troop types described to field Macedonians and the various Hellenistic successors.

This rule set itself isn’t particularly long. The rules are about fourteen pages, the galley rules about ten. But the campaign rules are just over twenty pages, and the campaign itself, which is designed for solo play, is about thirty. Perhaps there is a hint in that?

Brass Cartridge Case Tribal.

I was sorting out some 6mm figures and was putting some WW2 forces for Kalashnikov Tribal Multi-Battalion, and discovered a heap of other 6mm stuff, painted and unpainted.

Among them were some ‘Chinese’ from the 19^th century. I had at one time wanted to do the Taiping Rebellion. Anyway I faffed in various scales, but I decided that I could do this in KTM-B as well. So I rebased and painted stuff.

But a war that takes place in the 19^th century is different. For a start there are no ‘MGIAT’ (My God It’s A Tank). Artillery doesn’t really do indirect fire. Personal weapons differ in their effectiveness.

But still I decided I’d tweak the rules and we had a play test. Brass Cartridge Case Tribal is not the final name for the rules, it just seemed that Kalashnikov wasn’t really appropriate in context.

The first thing that happened was we had fewer people than expected, but even so, each player had about twenty battalions (Foot, horse and guns.) So I’d set things up as brigades, and at the start of the game you worry about the morale and training of the brigade, not the battalions. It’s only when the brigade starts getting into action that it is ‘shaken out’ into the constituent battalions and you worry about them as individual units.

The next thing was artillery. Where KTM-B has MGIAT, and artillery are effectively stationary (or relatively slow moving) MGIAT, here guns are a category of their own. To put it simply they have the firepower of MGIAT but the survivability of infantry (but can take cover and be dug in).

Cavalry also got some tweaks, in our playtest game half the cavalry acted as mounted infantry, whilst the others charged impetuously with cold steel. Both can work, but those who acted as mounted infantry lived longer.
A tweak I put in was that cavalry who wish to charge pinned troops (those whose morale is failing) don’t need to pay logistic points to charge, and get 50% more dice to roll in the melee.

Regular cavalry can also act as recce units. When doing this they launch an assault. The troops they are attacking work out the casualties they will do and the units that are inflicting them. Then the recce unit suffers no casualties (and inflicts no casualties) but high tails it an inch back for every theoretical casualty inflicted on them. So you can send recce in to see just what is there.

What really cheered me was the fact that the three players have played the original KTM-B but not for quite some time. By the time we had got into the second move, they were running the firing and shooting without me needing to do anything. So the game remains as fast and dirty as always.

And just to prove that whatever happens I can make my life more complicated than necessary, the play test game had three sides, who ended up being mutually hostile. And we were having to re-imagine the sequence of play on the fly. Luckily the players sorted that one to their own satisfaction and I let them get on with it.
But we had ships, a thousand charging horsemen, walled cities, infernal machines set to explode in the water, shore batteries shooting it out with monitors, and through it all, a lot of mediocre infantry who still managed to keep the show on the road and make it look like a battle.

In case you’ve never heard of Kalashnikov Tribal Multi-Battalion, it is available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/504837/Kalashnikov-Tribal-Battalion

It is also available from Amazon for £4 on Kindle or £10 in paperback

Hell Cannons

One development of the Syrian civil war was the Hell cannon. They fall somewhere between the old smoothbore cannon, and a more modern mortar design. There were many variations but there does seem to be a theme. As many of them used Calor gas bottles filled with explosives. Comments I’ve seen are that when fired as projectiles, they weighed 88lb of which 66lb (about 30kg) was explosives.

One larger one could apparently fire water heaters or oxygen cylinders. These are said to have weighed as much as 661 pounds, which is about 300kg of explosives.

Both the propellant (loaded, one assumes gingerly, into the weapon before the projectile was placed in it) and the explosive were largely ammonium nitrate based.

Range was comparatively short, with 1500m being achievable but with not a lot of accuracy. Some sources do claim the weapon was reasonably accurate out to 300m. Finally fusing seems to have been remarkably sophisticated or very hit and miss. Apparently a time delay was common. This was undoubtedly useful if the cylinder was supposed to smash through a wall or roof before exploding inside the building.

A 20mm kit is available from the Ukrainian company Ace at https://www.acemodel.com.ua/en/model/683

On the website they have a list of distributors and retailers across the world.

Fitting them into the rules.

Hell by Daylight

For Hell by Daylight with a ground scale of 1 inch = 10 meters, I suggest that out to 30 inches they are no more and no less inaccurate than any other weapon the troops get their hands on. At ranges over than that, assuming the weapon crew can see the target, I would treat it as a direct fired weapon, so it is whether the crew fires unaimed or not. If a crew fire and aim a normal weapon there is a 50% chance of a direct hit. In the case of these weapons I would reduce this to 25%.
If they didn’t aim, or aimed but didn’t get a direct hit, I would go automatically to the Wild and unaimed fire table. Given the amount of explosive you’re throwing about, I would treat the projectile as coming from a Heavy mortar/medium artillery piece.

Hell and Fateful Decisions

For Hell and Fateful Decisions, with a ground scale of 1 inch for 50m, it means the ‘accurate range’ is six inches and maximum is 30 inches.

Firing is always direct, and I would start with the weapon being a d12. (It is a lot of explosive, even if the explosive quality isn’t everything you might hope.) The firers will always count green. This is no slur on them, anybody with the guts to use one of these has my respect. But it is a way of taking into account the ad hoc nature of the weapon. When firing at targets over six inches away the also count the firers as being very badly equipped compared to their targets.

Hell and Uncivil Disorder

For Hell and Uncivil Disorder, the ground scale is pretty much the same as Hell by Daylight. 1 inch = 10 meters. When it comes to the game, I would issue one of these weapons to a commander as ‘an artefact’ which allows the commander to summon a support demon. Treat it as an artillery barrage out to line of sight from the gun crew. However as there’s only one weapon firing moderate the effects.

Once you have worked out where the artillery will arrive, roll on table 1 for the aggression of the demon you get.
A sullen demon attacks as Sullen MGIAT with a 2” diameter.
A Truculent demon attacks as Truculent MGIAT. With a 5” Diameter.
A Psychotic demon attacks as a Psychotic MGIAT with a 10” diameter.

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In case you don’t know Hell by Daylight rules

They are available from Amazon on Kindle for £4 or in paperback for £10

They are also available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/380527/Hell-by-Daylight

Space shipping

I wanted to extend supply lines back into space. So what do I need?

The first question might be, ‘How big a force are we wanting to supply?’ Well according to James F. Dunnigan ‘How to Make War’ (the 1982 edition) there were 1098 Divisions on Earth at the time. So it gives us the size of defence force a well populated world could accumulate. Now of these thousand plus divisions, some were obviously not very good. So it might be that a centralised planetary government might manage with five hundred or so.

If we assume our attacker wants to capture the world in reasonable working order (so not destroying it with asteroid strikes or similar) then the attacker is going to have to ship in a stronger force, but let’s assume they also go for five hundred divisions. Obviously there will be air support for both sides and the defender may even have water based naval elements. But let us stick with 500 divisions.

Now for Kalashnikov Tribal Multi-Battalion rules I took the basic manoeuvre unit to be the battalion, and a division can be a nominal ten battalions. After calculations of stultifying tedium, you can estimate a thousand tons of supply per division per day assuming some movement and combat. When undertaking offensive action it can be 50% higher. I suggest we add 50% on the understanding that not everybody is attacking every day, and you’ll need a safety margin for stuff that has got lost due to enemy action. I’m assuming that there is very little that you can forage, but at the very least I’m going to assume you can drink the water, if you just drop the tablets into the water bottle an hour or so before drinking.

So our 500 division force will need 75,000 tons a day.

So what sort of cargo ships do we have to transport this? I am going to suggest we have something that can transport 20,000 tons and land and take off from the planet surface. Obviously there can be a discussion about this, but I’m keeping it simple.

How far do we have to travel between the planet that is acting as our base of operations, and the world we are invading? Again, I’ll keep it simple. The distance is ‘jump 4’ but there is an uninhabited system our forces have already secured which is ‘jump 2’ from both our point of departure and our destination. So as a jump takes a week, that’s two weeks jumping, and let us say a further week at each end loading and unloading. So a round trip takes four weeks.

So assuming a thirty day month, our force needs 2,250,000 tons a month. (I know that 30 days doesn’t divide nicely into four weeks, but I’d assume we put in the extra two days supplies because of wastage, enemy action, whatever.

This is 112.5 cargo ships dedicated to supply. Thanks to rounding up, at this point we can round down, so just 112. So we’ll have four squadrons, each of 28 ships, arriving each week.

For military ships we need enough ships to maintain control over the world we’re fighting over. Depending on the local ‘geography’ this fleet might not be visible from the surface.

There would also need to be ships close in, providing some fire support, and marshalling and providing security for all these merchant ships unloading.

Then there will probably need to be another fleet to secure the system which our supply fleets use to jump to and from.

Finally there will probably have to be some escorts. I’m assuming ships cannot be intercepted in jump, but when they drop out of jump they could be spread all over the place, or some distance from friendly forces. So the escort is there to provide security under those circumstances. An escort force 1% the numbers of the convoy they’re escorting means we have a dozen (probably smaller) warships just on escort duty. That’s three per convoy.

Now I’m assuming that the escorts are supplied when the ships they are escorting are loaded. I’m also assuming the cargo ships being escorted also carry their own supplies.

But the other fleets engaged in this campaign will need supply, and it seems sensible for their supply ships to be part of your convoys.

Now obviously there are other ways to do this. Worlds with smaller populations, fewer troops, or nearer, can be invaded using smaller forces.

If you attack a world with reliable supporters already on the world makes things so much easier.

But even a force of one division would still need at least two cargo ships if they have to take a month on the round trip.

Note at this point I’ve not even covered transporting the army.

Really I’m just kicking a few ideas out there, the idea is to see what bright ideas others bring to the party. I felt if I supplied a few numbers it would make it easier for others to tear into and produce better numbers of their own.

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In case you don’t know the rules, Kalashnikov Tribal Multi-Battalion rules are available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/504837/Kalashnikov-Tribal-Battalion

They are also available from Amazon for £4 on Kindle or £10 in paperback.

Nam Road trip

This is a scenario for Kalashnikov Tribal Battalion rules. The scenario is simple. The small provincial town, Binh Dinh, is under attack by Viet Cong forces and the ARVN have to put together a relief force to break through and rescue the defenders.

Obviously they expect an ambush. Equally obviously they’re loaded for bear and have done what everything to ensure they’re going to be properly supported. (Other than insisting the Provincial Governor rides in the first truck there’s not a lot else they can do.) The wargames table is shown on the map. It is about six feet by four.

The ARVN are represented by

A 10 strength point battalion of Local forces (thugs) in Binh Dinh. They had a Free World forces adviser (in this case, yes, American) who is there to support them. This will be important later.

The rescue force consists of three Regional force battalions (ad hoc formations made up of locally raised companies). These count as Militia, and are also ten strength points each.

When it comes to logistics, because you have Free World Forces support you do get air and artillery support. So on the wargames table you get 2d6 logistic points per turn. You also start with a reserve of 6 logistic points.

The Viet Cong are represented by

One 10 strength point battalion raised locally and trained. It counts as militia

Two 10 strength point battalions drawn from a Main Force regiment. These too count as militia.

There is a regimental mortar battery held well back. You get 1d4 logistic points per turn (you’re guerrillas, if you expected luxury you picked the wrong trade) but you do have a 6 point reserve. Some of this represents mortar rounds man packed onto the table.

ARVN objective.

Clear the road and stop the town falling.

Viet Cong objective.

This is trickier. You have a choice. (This means your opponent isn’t entirely sure what you’re intending to do.)
You can either, take the town, throwing the defenders out, taking a big PR win, before fading away.

You can put in an attack on the town, mainly to draw the relief force into ambush. Your aim is to do maximum damage on the relief force before fading away.

Playing the game.

In this scenario the Viet Cong decided they would use the two main force units to take the town while the local forces tried to delay the relief force.

Move 1

The ARVN rolled for logistics and got ten points. This means they have 16 to play with. (You don’t have to spend them, you can save them for later)

The relief column is given three logistic points which means it can move up to 36” rather than 3d6. This in fact takes it to where the Viet Cong militia battalion is waiting. We roll for the Viet Cong militia, they are apprehensive. A decision is taken by the Viet Cong not to spend a logistic point to increase their morale. After all apprehensive troops are harder to hit.

Apprehensive or not they roll reasonable dice (10 strength points means they roll ten d10s and need 3 or less to get a hit. They get 2 hits.)

The lead battalion rolls for their motivation, they are enthusiastic. They save on 5 or less. They roll for the two hits and save both of them.

The lead battalion fires back. (10 dice) They hit on 5 or less (being enthusiastic) and get six hits. The ambushing militia save on 6 or less, but because they’re in cover they save on 7 or less. They save all six.

Not desperately competent troops shooting at each other tend not to do a lot of damage.

The Viet Cong roll for logistics and get 4. So they have 10 to play with.

Now let’s look at the attack on Binh Dinh. The two regular battalions start their advance on the town, coming from different sides. As they advance they put the town under fire.

Both battalions are enthusiastic, which is fine. They open fire at the defenders.

Enthusiastic militia hit on 5 or less. So with two battalions that would be 20 dice. But the defenders are dug in so that halves the number of dice. So the attackers roll only 10 dice. They get four hits.

The defending local forces roll for their motivation/morale and are also enthusiastic. Unfortunately they’re thugs and not particularly well trained. They save on 4 or less, which is 5 or less because they have cover (as well as being dug in.) They save two hits, so suffer two.

They also hit on three or less (as opposed to the 5 or less for enthusiastic militia.) So when they return fire (now with eight dice having lost two strength points) they get one hit which the advancing regulars save.

The defenders (or their American adviser) summon an aircraft. That will be 2 logistic points per move when it appears over the table and 1 per move just for having the ability to call it in.

Move 2

The ARVN roll for more logistics, another 10 points. They spent three last move so have 23 to play with.

Things are getting serious. The lead battalion in the relief column assaults out of their lorries to attack the ambushers. The next two battalions debus and spread out, one each side of the road to both check for other enemies and also to outflank the ambush.

The First battalion calls in artillery to assist them. They call in six points of artillery. This burns six points of logistics.

They are attacking an enemy in cover. As enthusiastic militia they need 5 or less. They still have 10 strength points so roll 10 dice plus another six for the artillery. (Note if it seems a bit strange calling down artillery when you’re this close to the enemy, remember that battalions are drawn up in width and depth. We’re not talking a bayonet charge on a single trenchline. )

They get seven hits. Their target saves on 7 or less and suffers 2 casualties. The defending target fires/fights back on 3 or less and now only rolls 8 dice. They get two hits of which one is saved. The ambushers have lost and fall back d6 inches. Defenders can give ground to save casualties so fall back another two inches as well. An inch per casualty saved. Thus by the end of their turn they’ve ‘lost’ nobody. The fact they rolled two fewer dice is probably the unit frantically reorganising.

In Binh Dinh

The ARVN move first in a turn, so the defenders fire at the advancing battalions. First they spend a logistics point to get one of their casualties back (a combination of first aid and reorganising. Defenders can do this when in their defences, others need to be not under fire.). So they roll 9 dice and get four hits.

The advancing militia save of a 6 (plus one for cover) and save two hits and elect to put them both on the same battalion.

The air strike comes in. The aircraft (A flying MGIAT which stands for ‘my God it’s a tank) rolls 10 dice. These hit on 10s so there’s ten hits of which all but four are saved. The aircraft decides to just attack one of the battalions. In this it is pure chance that it picks the already weakened one.

The battalion it fired at fires back at it. It has one strength point in three can shoot and gets two hits on the plane. (Remember it isn’t a plane, it is ten strength points worth of planes. Obviously a couple of them have developed issues and had to return to base.

The other attacking battalion fires at the defenders. Rolls 10 dice which is halved for the defenders being dug in, to five, and gets three hits. The defenders make two saves. So they lose another.

Now in the Viet Cong turn they get 3 more logistic points. They have 13 to play with. They decide to dump twelve onto the defenders of Binh Dinh and both battalions will charge in.

One battalion has no casualties so doesn’t need any sort of morale test. The other has lost six strength points, it does. It has a morale of 5. It has to roll less than or equal to 5 on a d10, but gets the following added to its die roll.

+1 because it’s not in cover (attempting to get into close combat), +1 because it’s under fire, +1 for each casualty after the 4^th, so +2

That is a total of +4

They roll 9 which with +4 takes them to 13 so well and truly over 5. Instead of attacking it falls back, pinned.

The other battalion gets 10 dice, plus a further 12 from the artillery support. Whilst 22 dice seem like a lot, they’re halved because of the defenders being dug in. They hit on 5 and the defenders save on 6, increased to 7 because of the cover. The attackers get five hits of which three are saved. The weakened defenders are now six strength points strong. But they call in artillery. This is where they are lucky they have the American. When it comes to getting artillery Thugs only have a 50% change of getting it. But the American, being regular, gets it automatically. So he calls in 10 points of artillery. Enthusiastic thugs defending hit on 6, so their artillery also does. They get eight hits. The attacking battalion saves four but takes four casualties and gets thrown back.

So at the end of the second move

The ARVN have taken one casualty on the relief force and four from the gallant defenders. They have 2 logistic points left after burning through their stockpile with artillery and air support.

The Viet Cong ambushers avoided casualties by judiciously breaking contact (not quite running away.)

The attackers suffered badly, losing ten strength points on the two attacking battalions.

They have 1 logistic point left. They can use that to recover a casualty from the two attacking units who will now retreat.

Obviously the action could continue. One battalion in the relief force could try and keep in touch with the ambushers, the other two can get back in the trucks and get to Binh Dinh.

But at Binh Dinh the attackers are too weakened to put in another attack and are going to fade quietly away.

So winners and losers? Rather than compare casualties I tend to compare Viet Cong casualties with Logistic points spent by the ARVN.

This is nine casualties to twenty-four logistic points. I must admit that I reckon that if the logistics points used is more than three times the casualties then it is probably a Viet Cong victory. If much less than two times the casualties it is a Viet Cong defeat.

Thoughts

This was a very small game really, just to run through the rules and give people a feel for them. If you’ve played Kalashnikov Tribal or Hell and Uncivil Disorder you’ll be familiar with some of the basic mechanisms.

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If you fancy a look at Kalashnikov Tribal Multi-Battalion they’re available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/504837/Kalashnikov-Tribal-Battalion

It is also available from Amazon, in paperback for £10 or on Kindle for £4.

Modern Warfare. A matter of Scale

Back in November to December 1943 there was the Second Battle of Kiev. The Russian forces attacked across the Dnieper, liberated Kiev and reached Berdychiv which is perhaps 300km west of Kiev before being thrown back.

The interesting detail about this action is that the Soviet forces consisted of an estimated 730,000 men, 7,000 guns and mortars, 675 tanks and assault guns, and 700 combat aircraft. The German defenders (many of whom were brought up from behind the front), were perhaps a quarter of a million strong.

It is difficult to be precise about just how broad a front the Soviets attacked over, but Lyutizh, where the first blow fell, is only 30km from Kiev. So the front was perhaps no more than 50km and could have been less.

Looking at the fighting in the Ukraine now, there are various estimates for the number of Russian troops deployed in the Ukraine, along a thousand kilometre front, and the figure is probably somewhere around half a million. So compared to 1943, the Russian forces are spread so thin that it is almost surprising that they can even find each other.

Obviously there are reasons for this. Firstly Russia is not as big a country as the Soviet Union. Russia has a smaller population that Bangladesh and its population is only about sixteen million larger than Mexico. At 144 million the Russian population is far less than that of the Soviet Union in 1990 which was about 290 million.

So we very much have an empty battlefield. The fact that we only see comparatively small armoured forces attacking does owe a lot to the nature of warfare at the moment, but it also owes a lot to the fact that there are only comparatively small armoured forces.

So assuming that the fighting in the Ukraine does have some relevance to how warfare is going, how can we model it convincingly? After all we are no longer looking at ‘colonial policing’ or ‘counter insurgency’.

My hope is to produce a scenario which gives a feel for how things happen.

Assault on an irrelevant village.

Set up your wargames table. It should have some cover, hedge lines, copses, a thin scattering of buildings, mainly ruined. The buildings should be along the defenders table edge. They should have decent fields of fire available. There should be one road running up the middle of the table from the attacker’s table edge to the village.

The defenders.

The defenders can then mark ten defensive positions on the table. Mark them on a map, but roll a d6 for each position. On a 1 the position is placed on the table, this one has been discovered. It is assumed that the positions are trenchs with overhead cover available. They perhaps include the cellar of a nearby house. It is assumed that the area in front of the defences is liberally scattered with mines.

Assuming a wargames table about six to eight feet wide, the defenders should have 6+d6 figures available on the table. They can be split into small fire teams of three or four men. All men will have assault rifles, and each fire team will have a machine gun and one law. If it does not have a machine gun it can have an RPG with no real shortage of ammunition.

The defending player can hold figures back off the table, they can start moving forward in the first move, which is when the attacker’s first figures arrive on table. These defenders can then move to their defensive positions.

The defenders troops should be regarded as competent and of reasonable morale.

The other defenders

Supporting your figures on the table are drone units, artillery, infantry dug in elsewhere with longer range antitank missiles and similar. There may even be a hull down tank covering the road with its gun. These are all effectively ‘off table.’ They are also totally out of your control.

The attackers.

The size of the attacking force is up to the attacking player. But the larger the force, the further back it will have to concentrate to avoid just being taken out even before it starts off.

The rule of thumb is simple. The basic unit in the force is a vehicle with a squad of 2d6 infantry.

You can decide whether your vehicles are tanks, APCs or unarmoured vehicles. Up to five of the vehicles can be tanks. Each tank has the infantry riding on the top. The rest, roll for the number of the infantry in it. If more than ten, then the squad is large but rides in an unarmoured lorry. If the number rolled in the squad is fewer than five, they ride in an unarmoured ‘golf cart’.

Your infantry all have assault rifles. Each squad has one man with a machine gun. The vehicles are to provide your heavy weapon support. Roll a d6 for each squad. On a 1,2,3,4,5 they are green, otherwise they are competent.

The attacker also has a pre-assault barrage. This can include glide bombs and indirect artillery fire. The attacking player will put a marker on the table where they want the two glide bombs to hit. They also put two markers on the table for the artillery barrage. One can be 152mm, the other Grad rocket launchers. The attacker then leaves whilst the umpire and/or the defender work out what has happened.

For glide bombs, metaphorically split the table into nine areas. Roll a d10. This will give you the area the glide bomb has hit. On a 10 the bomb never hit the table. Then split the area you’ve hit into ten, again roll a d10 to see which of the 9 areas it hit. If you get a 10, then the bomb was a dud or just never arrived. If there is a fortification or building in the small area it hit, then just remove it and replace it with a crater. If there were any troops in there, they’ve gone as well.

For 152mm artillery, to allow for poorer quality of ammunition, barrel wear etc, the artillery deviates 6d6 in a random direction. For the grad don’t have deviation. Just double the area of impact, if any figures are in the area of impact, roll a d6 for each group. On odd they are close enough to a rocked for it to matter, on even, the rockets burst too far away from them to be a problem. That being done, calculate casualties for both the 152mm and the grad as normal.

The attackers approach march

The number of vehicles that you have decides the length of your approach march. It’s basically six moves, but for each vehicle over six, the march is one extra move.

Each move roll a d6 for each vehicle. If a vehicle rolls a 1, it is destroyed (or at least out of action). It has hit a mine, been struck by a drone, or targeted by artillery, antitank missiles or a tank gun. If the vehicle does roll a 1, it and its passengers are left behind.

When you have finished your approach march, the surviving vehicles arrive on the edge of the wargames table, on the road.

On table movement

Once vehicles have arrived on the table, each turn they move roll a d6, or a d10 if they are following the road. On a 1 or 2, they hit a mine. Assume they are at the very least immobilised. What else happens depends on the rules you are using.

If the leading vehicle has mine rollers or equivalent, then vehicles following it will not hit mines. It might, but if it does, roll a d6 and on a 1 or 2 it is immobilised.

The attacker can have pre-programmed artillery support when they are on the table but it will be delivered with the same accuracy that we saw previously.

If the attacker is bogged down, or has lost all his figures, he can claim a halt and mount another attack using exactly the same system.

This assault can be preceded by the same artillery and glide bomb barrage as preceded the first assault.

Defender reinforcements

If the attacker calls for a second assault, in the halt the defender may get reinforcements.

Roll d6+6. Replace those figures that are lost and gain half the difference between the original force and the potential reinforcements. So if the initial force was seven figures, you lost two and this time you rolled 10 you automatically get the two figures back. But the difference between 10 and 7 is 3 which halved is 2, so you get two extra figures.

All expending laws and RPG rounds are replaced

If the defender gets a 5,6 on a dice they get a ‘wandering monster’. Toss a coin. On an odd number you get a Bradley or other infantry fighting vehicle, on an even number a tank. It will attack any enemy infantry who are still on the table waiting for reinforcements. The ‘wandering monster’ will not remain on the vehicle more than four moves (at the end of the fourth move, just remove it, wherever on the table it happens to be, it does not have to drive off) and it will leave before the next assault.

Winning and losing.
Seriously, if the attacker does manage to kick the defender off the table that is quite an achievement. At the same time, life can be difficult for the defender as well. To hold all the ground, or to take all the ground, is a genuine achievement.

♥♥♥

I haven’t really mentioned wargames rules. I rather felt I dumped enough on you and wanted to leave you some vague sense of familiarity. But should you fancy a change, have you tried Hell by Daylight.

Available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/380527/Hell-by-Daylight

Or from Amazon, £4 on Kindle or £10 in paperback

Just another courier company

There’s a lot to be said in favour of using couriers. Obviously most people haven’t time to physically deliver everything to everybody. Also the couriers are set up to do this. They have economies of scale, and boast well trained, well equipped, and enthusiastic personnel, with a ‘can do’ attitude. Hence courier deliver can make an interesting and comparatively economical solo campaign.

Oh and if you like the walker, it’s available from Iliada Game Studio at
https://www.iliadagamestudio.com/product-page/h-a-m-a-l

Now I’m not sure whether it’s just me, but I always seem to have an awful lot of unfinished projects around. At a certain point during a project, I read another book, or see some different figures, and suddenly I’m setting off down an entirely different road. The 15mm army of Carthage is forgotten, instead I’m hastily gathering figures for a Portuguese campaign along the east coast of Africa.

So eventually, even I realised I was going to have to do things differently. So it struck me I wanted a project that I could start small and grow. But the cunning plan ensures that at pretty well any point in the project, I had the figures, the terrain, the rules, to play a game. So I didn’t need to paint a thousand figures before I can even start.

So the courier idea struck me as this sort of project. But you have to be clever. There are various stages.

1) So what’s the setting?

This is entirely up to you, it can be anywhere in recorded history, or far into the future. You could have the courier with a handful of pack donkeys delivering various items to Bronze Age villagers, or a ‘submarine’ delivering supplies to domed settlements set deep in a methane ocean. So really it’s up to you. Ideally you might be able to use some of the stuff you already have, but more importantly it gives you an excuse to buy small amounts of cool stuff you’ve always wanted.

2) And a map?

One simple way to do this is to put a place name into google maps. Chose somewhere you don’t know, and then when you’ve found that on the map, find somewhere really obscure near by you’ve never heard off. Let the map take you down to village level.
When you’ve done that and found an area that is interesting, that you fancy running your couriers through, then screen shot the map. Either keep the original terrain, or tweak the map and add your own terrain. You could even change the names.

With regard to the size of places, the simple way is to roll a d6. This gives you a fair bit of randomness. Alternatively you can tweak things. Take a pack of cards and keep all the aces, (which are 1s) twos, and threes. Then put in one 4, one 5, and one 6. So that is fifteen destinations. Place them at random on the villages or whatever on your map. This is the size of the destination.

There’s a simple rule of thumb. Assuming we’re keeping things small, a community which gets a 1 will have 1 parcel for you to collect and deliver, will have one household, with two adults who can defend the settlement if needed. A community with a 2 will have 2 parcels for you to collect and deliver, will have two households, with four adults who can defend the settlement if needed. This increases, pro rata.

Obviously if you’re doing something in 6mm with larger forces, the community with a 1 will have ten households, the community with 2 will have 20 households.

For movement, a move gets you from one community to the next. (Except in bad weather.)

3) And what needs delivering and collection.

I’ve mentioned about that villages will have 1 parcel or whatever for you to collect. So when you arrive in a village roll two d12 of different colours for each parcel. One colour is the direction you’ve just come from, the other is the way you’re going. The biggest dice decides the direction. The score on the dice is the number of communities the parcel has to travel. If when working out where the parcel is going you come to a ‘fork in the road’ toss a coin to see which way the parcel needs to go. If the two d12s have the same score, there isn’t a parcel.

4) Parcel size and payment.

I’ve kept the parcels vague. In the Bronze Age example, it could be a simple cheese. In a more modern example it could be a standard NATO 1000mm x 1200mm wood construction pallet with a carrying capacity of 1.814 tonnes.

But each parcel pays one point per community to get to its destination. So if the parcel has to travel three communities, it’ll pay 3 points. Note that you can do detours, but the parcel doesn’t pay for them.

5) Costs

Costs are per move. It’s OK if you’re doing a community a move but can get expensive in bad weather.

At its simplest a transport unit can carry four parcels and has two handlers. So it might be two men, each leading two pack donkeys, or a truck that can handle four NATO pallets and has a driver and mate.

Each man costs one point per community they travel (Salary and supplies) whilst every move toss a coin. On tails, the truck/donkeys/whatever cost you 1 point. It’s simpler than saying half a point per move and allows for freak unexpected expense.

Extra costs might be guards. The men included in the transport unit are assumed to be armed, whether with a stout stick or an energy carbine depends on the background. It might be that you feel the need to hire extra guards. You’ll pay one point per point of combat power.

6) Increasing your number of transport units.

If you have four points spare you can put it down as a ‘deposit’ for another transport unit. It can join your current transport unit and both will work together.

7 Increasing trade.
There are two ways to do this.

a) Because you’re providing more transport, production and trade grow. Each time you increase the number of your transport units, toss a coin for each community. On a heads it doubles the number of parcels it wants to move.

b) Now you’re playing with the big boys. You can expand your area of operations. Take your pack of cards again. This time you want to keep all the aces, (which are 1s) as well as 2 twos, 2 threes, 2 fours and 2 sixes, and one seven. Then put in one Jack, one Queen, and one King. Keep out the King and Queen, then shuffle the cards and deal randomly into two piles. Add the King to one pile and the Queen to the other. Then extend your map in two directions, and populate them using one pile of cards per direction.

Combat Power

A transport unit has two points of combat power. The driver and his mate, or the two men leading donkeys, are worth half a point each. After all they’re not warriors. The transport, be it two donkeys worth half a point each (ever been bitten by a donkey) or a heavy weapon mounted on the truck, has a combat value of one. So that makes a total of two.

A warrior/fighter/guard has a combat value of one. Whether he’s got a proper sword and shield and even a javelin, or an assault rifle and a flak jacket again depends on the background.

An enhanced warrior has a combat value of three. This might be a mounted bowman with horse, armour and a sword, or an RPG team of two men.

A nightmare on wheels, has a combat value of five. At one end it’s a chariot with a driver and a veteran archer with a composite bow, both wearing armour. Or it’s some sort of Mad Max Technical complete with fire blasting guitar player.

Problems

There are various issues which can cause your otherwise inspired business plan to fail.

1) Bandits. They will hit you between communities. Roll a d20 and you’ll get a bandit on a 1. For the strength of the bandits roll a d6.

1,2 they have the same combat power as you.

3,4 they have 50% more combat power than you.

5,6 they have double your combat power.

Toss a coin. On a heads you spot them and can avoid them but it means going back the way you came.

2) Protection racket. They will hit you in a community. When you enter a community, roll a d10 and you’ll get a protection racket on a 1. Toss a coin, on tails they have half your combat power, on heads they have the same combat power.

They expect to be paid to leave you alone. They expect one point per transport unit.

If you fight them and lose, they take the lot. If you win toss a coin. Heads, no consequences, tails, for the next three moves you roll for bandits on a d6, not a d20.

3) Competition.

Each ten moves roll a d6 and you get a competitor on a 1.

You’re not the only person in this game. Another transport unit starts operating in the area. It makes more sense if you run that one as well. It might increase trade (See 7a) but you get bandits on a d10 and protection rackets on a d8. If a third competitor arrives, obviously trade can increase but you get bandits on a d8 and protection rackets on a d6. If one of the competing businesses is defeated or ceases trading, then trade stays as it is but the die you need to roll for bandits and protection rackets reverts.

The move after you pass through a community roll a d6 for each potential party, there is a 1 in six chance of there being another parcel wanting collection. For each subsequent turn the chance per parcel increases. So with a community with three potential parties you or another courier visited three turns ago you’d roll three d6 and would get a parcel of each roll of three or less.

4) Taxes and tolls.

These are similar to protection rackets only they’re legal. Any community over 3 might impose a toll. When you enter one of these communities, roll a d20 and if you roll less than or equal to the number of the community it has started charging a toll. The toll is one point per transport unit. Once a community has started charging a toll it will always charge a toll.

Avoiding the toll.

You can bypass the community but obviously you cannot collect or deliver to it.

You can bribe officials. This costs one point (no matter how many transport units) and is successful unless you roll a 1 on a d6. If you fail you are charged double the toll as a penalty.

5) Weather conditions

Roll a d10. On a 1 the weather is bad and it takes you two moves to move between communities. (Remember to pay people for the extra move between communities.) This might be torrential rain turning the road into mud, sand storms, blizzards or a storm in the warp as is appropriate in your background.

If you’ve had a spell of bad weather, when you set out from the next community, roll a d6. On a 1 or 2 the weather continues.

6) Value for money

Once per session of playing this roll a d10, on a 1 you get value for money.

Somebody is doing something with the money they take in tolls. For each point you’ve spent on tolls you can reroll one dice for bandits or protection rackets. Deduct each point spent bribing officials from the points spent on tolls. If the final number is negative, reduce the size of dice you roll to get bandits or protection rackets.

Replacing losses.

If you lose a transport unit

You can put down the points from your savings to get another one.

You can borrow money from the bankers to get another one. They expect one point per transport unit every five turns. One you have paid the banker back eight points, the transport unit is finally yours.

Looting the defeated.

If you defeat a bandit or protection racket you obviously acquire ‘stuff’. This stuff and be sold for half the combat value in points. So defeat two bandits with 1 combat power each and that’s two combat power. So you cash their kit in for 1 point. Note that if somebody escapes off the table you don’t get their stuff.

Scale

Obviously I have started small, and probably at a skirmish level. There is nothing to stop you deciding that a transport unit is several vehicles, and that communities are increased proportionately. Bandits and protection rackets would also increase proportionately.

♥♥♥♥

Another book I did as a campaign you could ‘grow into’ is Hellfire in the City. £2.50 from Wargame Vault in pdf, or from Amazon, £2.50 on kindle or £6.50 in paperback

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/417977/Hellfire-in-the-City

Istan

All empires fall, and each seems to fall in its own peculiar manner. Yet sometimes you see similarities between one fall and another. With the third British Empire we had experience gained when losing the two previous ones, so did it differently. But others lack our experience.

It’s fascinating to look at the fall of Imperial Russia. As somebody who has always been into ancient wargaming, I confess to being struck with the similarities between the fall of that empire and the Seleucid Empire. For the Russians you had the collapse and shrinking of the empire after WW1. It then expanded to its greatest extent under Stalin, before collapsing again until it stabilised as the Russian Federation and Putin seems to be trying to rebuild it.

Compare this to the Seleucids where their empire, founded largely be Seleucus out of the wars of the successors of Alexander the Great. It started coming apart but was glued back together by Antiochus III (also called the Great) who pretty much restored it. Unfortunately he fell out with the Romans and things started to come apart. Antiochus IVth then started to rebuild it but with his death after his army had failed to recover Persepolis things got distinctly ropey and the empire was never again the power that it had been.

Interestingly the two empires have something else in common. Whilst extending over great distances, their centres of power, population and focus were very much in the west. In the Seleucid Empire the core was Northern Syria and Babylonia. For Russia, the importance of Moscow and Petersburg mean they dominate as a quick glance at the population map above will show.

Another issue is that both empires seem to be focussed on their western boundaries when their true interests might indicate they looked more to their underpopulated easts.

But for the wargames campaign, the fall of empire is an interesting time. At the moment I suspect that for a lot of people, Russia is looking weak. If you just look at the case of Armenia. The forces of Azerbaijan overran Nagorno-Karabakh they did this in defiance of Russian support for Armenia. Indeed they cheerfully targeted Russian forces. They didn’t care. The calculation Azerbaijan seems to have made is that, ‘if we have Turkey supporting us, Russia is too weak and too overcommitted to do anything about it.’

So let us base your campaign on a nameless ‘Istan’ somewhere along Russia’s southern border. You were part of the Soviet Union. After the breakup you might well be at least nominally independent. But in your eyes, Russia has clung on to territory that is ‘rightfully’ yours. Stalin probably carved it off, or perhaps the Tsar did.

So your aim is to get that territory back, and at the same time be recognised as completely independent.

So let us have a Russian Power Projection Track.

120 to 144. Everything is normal. It’s a three day special operation, nothing to see here.

100 to 120. Of course we are not having problems. But half the units in the disputed territory are removed and replaced with conscripts.

80 to 100. Our borders are secure. All air defence assets not integral to infantry formations at brigade level or below are removed and sent west.

60 to 80. Russian mobilisation proceeds apace. All regular units are sent to Ukraine, and are replaced with two brigades of recently raised conscripts.

40 to 60. Fifty percent of all tanks and infantry vehicles are withdrawn from the area and are sent west.

20 to 40. All air assets are withdrawn from Russian area and are sent west.

0 to 20. All regulars are removed and the area is patrolled by lightly armed police units with no artillery and few heavy weapons.

Note that if you have a Russian score of 100, (for example) you are not sure just which band Russia is in. If you invade when it is exactly 100, toss a coin to decide. ‘We Demand Rigidly Defined Areas of Doubt and Uncertainty!’

Every strategic move (which is every month) roll 2d6+1d4 and deduct that from the Russian total.

The Chinese Power Projection Track

The treaty of Aigun, signed in 1858 between Russia and China handed over large areas of Manchuria from China to Russia and has been denounced since as one of the ‘Unequal Treaties’ that China intends to overturn. At some point it’s entirely possible that the Chinese government might decide that Taiwan can remain on the backburner, and instead they can quietly recover Manchuria and other territories they claim in eastern Russia. From their point of view it would solve many of their strategic problems giving them access to their own gas and oil. Also it is unlikely that the Americans or anybody else would step in to stop them. Indeed it’s difficult to see how anybody could step in.

So every strategic move, draw one card from a convention pack of cards for the Chinese. Add the value of the card drawn to a running total. So Ace equals 1, and a King = 13.

When the Chinese total is higher than the total on the Russian Power Projection track, the Chinese quietly move to annex considerable chunks of eastern Russia. This takes d6 months and at the end of the process, the game is over. If, by that time, you have conquered the area you wanted, and have made a strategic partnership with Turkey, you’ve won. If not, you are doomed to fade from being a Russian dominated buffer state to being a Chinese dominated buffer state.

Signs of collapse.

Each strategic move roll percentage dice. If you roll higher than the total on the Russian Power Projection track then the Russian oil industry has collapsed to a level where they may not even be supplying their home market. The Chinese are immediately dealt one extra card.

Strategic partners

This I’ve simplified, and rolled everything together in Turkey. Each move roll a d4 and once the total reaches 24 you have achieved a strategic partnership with Turkey.

If you buy equipment from Turkey you can roll a d6 instead. To achieve this, you as the wargamer have to buy models of Turkish produced equipment for your force.

Balance

There is a delicate balance here. If you work it out on your fingers, the dice rolls are knocking an average of 9 points a strategic move off the total on the Russian Power Projection track. Also with three dice you’ll never knock off less than three.

But the Chinese total is growing one card at a time. This is an average of 6.54. But then the Chinese have a chance of getting an extra card.

Now the optimum time for you to invade is probably when the total on the Russian Power Projection track is below 80. So that is probably eight moves. But in the same period the Chinese probably get 9 cards and that averages 58.6. So if you strike too soon, the Russians might be a bit tough, if you wait too long, then the Chinese are already moving and you’re struggling to make your mark.

Your campaign

I would suggest you look at the general area on Google Maps and just pick somewhere to be your theatre of operations.
Mark out the area on your map.

Forces.

It really depends what you have. But I would suggest that at the start they are about equal. So if you have three ‘brigades’ of Russian troops with proper support, you would have a similar force as the gallant defenders of your Istan.

Initially Russian forces with be regulars with reasonably modern equipment. But conscripts will have older tanks and older APCs. You on the other hand will start off with the equivalent of reasonably modern Russian and/or Chinese equipment and if you buy some Turkish stuff you get to field that instead.

Playing the campaign solo.
The Russian forces will dig in, try and form a coherent front and just try and stop your advance and win time. They won’t have the sort of support needed to produce their own Surovikin line, but they will have enough mines and diggers to fortify strong points and the approaches to towns. Perhaps a third of the front can be to that level.

♥♥♥♥

If you are looking for rules to play out the battles, then you might want to try Hell and Fateful Decisions.
Available from Amazon in paperback for £10 or on Kindle for £4.

Or from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4.

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/465582/Hell-and-Fateful-Decisions

The idea behind this set of rules, aimed at smaller scale figures, is relatively simple. It is to place the player in the position of Battalion Commander. They’re designed to be played with 6mm figures but obviously work for 2mm, 6mm, 10mm, and I know people who’ve used them with multiple based 15mm figures.
Because of this the rules have been designed to limit the fine detail that the player has to handle. In a combat the Battalion Commander is not going to worry about the positioning of squad automatic weapons and the handling of platoon assets. Lieutenants are paid to worry about that for him. However, the distribution of Battalion heavy weapons and the co-ordination of support units attached to the Battalion from the Division is very much his responsibility.
The rules include sections on solo play, ‘shaping the battlefield’ and they also attempt to cover drone warfare. The problem I faced in updating these rules is that warfare is undergoing a period of rapid evolution. The battlefield is a very different place to what it was when these rules were first published thirty years ago.
On the positive side, these rules also include the remarkably popular Kalashnikov Tribal rule set, which took very little updating, because incompetence is reassuringly timeless.

Customer Service

Alasya smiled at the young waiter who had brought across her coffee. He had been brisk and efficient but had still managed an old world courtesy that was rare. From his accent she assumed he was recruited from Psi Albia, the registered home world of the Icon of Space.

She had chosen her position carefully. It was on the mezzanine deck overlooking the main passenger lounge. If she wished she could keep an eye on all those leaving and entering below, but due to the positioning of a rather elegant potted palm, she was not easy to see.

As the waiter made his way back to the small bar, Alasya did wonder what he made of her. She had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she had climbed the stairs. A short thickset lady in her fifties wearing a heavy tweed skirt that came just below her knee, and a matching jacket.

She smiled at herself, sipped the coffee appreciatively and picked up her bag from beside her chair. Opening it she took out the novel. It was a comfortingly thick fantasy of manners classic by the author Tarin Aslan. Found on a popup second hand bookstall in Touchdown Spaceport, it was one of the few things she had brought with her from the planet. That and the high-powered energy pistol that nestled snuggly next to the pouch which contained her embroidery. She took another sip of her coffee, wiggled her shoulders a little to sink more deeply into the chair and opened her book.

***

Alasya was forced to admit that Aslan was on top of his form. She didn’t notice the ship’s officer until he arrived on the mezzanine deck. She looked up from her book and smiled at him. He bowed slightly, and when she gestured to the chair on the other side of the table he sat down.

“To what do I owe the honour of this visit, I trust my papers are in order?”

That won her a smile. “Madam, I have rarely seen papers so bland and innocuous.”

“I hadn’t realised that my utter irrelevance would of itself bring me to your attention. I apologise for falling below the high standards of notoriety that the Icon of Space expects from its passengers.”

“It wasn’t your papers that attracted our attention. It is the fact that you arrived with one comparatively small bag. Whilst you did check a laser carbine in with our purser, within your bag you still have a blaster pistol of impressive efficacy. Our captain is a man of delicate sensitivities, with an instinctive nervousness when forced to contemplate the topic of pirates and hijackers. Thus he asked me, Johann, as security officer, to discuss the matter with you.”

Alasya opened her bag, allowing the officer to see the pistol. “The reason is simple. I am, by profession, a security consultant. There are times when I might feel my life is threatened?”

“But you handed over your laser carbine.”
“That is a sign of my failure.”

The officer looked surprised, “Failure?”

“Yes. On the good jobs, I am a security consultant, wear a skirt and carry the pistol discreetly. When my luck runs out and work is short I am a mercenary, wear fatigues and carry the carbine.” She allowed herself to smile, “Generally wearing a skirt and carrying the pistol pays better and frankly it can be safer.”
“I understand.” The officer glanced at the bag. “Are you expecting to be attacked on this trip?”
“I am between jobs.”
“Then given the fragile nervous state of our captain, would you make life easy for an underpaid security officer and let me look after the pistol for you?”

She reached into the bag and passed him the weapon, butt first. “And if I am attacked then I shall hitch up my skirts and flee at my best speed in an attempt to find you.”

“Here on the Icon of Space, company policy frowns upon those who try to assassinate our clientele.” He grew more serious. “So you are between commissions”

“Yes. I would be grateful for any suggestions as to where work could be found. In my last job I was rather out of the loop.”

The officer leaned back in his chair, the pistol on his lap. “Of the worlds we normally visit, Beruna is boisterous at times but in reality it’s both peaceful and civilised. Vordania Secundas might have work for you, but it’s more bodyguard stuff as politics can be a bit rough. Adhira is always hiring but I suspect you wouldn’t like it. Their government is a bit too authoritarian for my taste and they have trouble with a wide range of ‘subversives’.”
Alasya was sure she could hear the inverted commas.

The officer continued. “There’s always Derin Su. A lot of companies, no proper government, and all sorts of interests keeping the pot well stirred.”

♥♥♥♥

Apparently people expected there to be more to the last episode I published, so I’ve had to work out what on earth has been happening!

This story mentions Touchdown. In case you don’t know it, it’s mentioned in the novel, ‘In on a Chance’. Available from Amazon on Kindle for £3.50 or £11.00 in paperback
There isn’t a prize for the person who finds Alasya 🙂

It’s also available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £3.50

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/370706/In-On-a-Chance

And Ali across at Iliada Game Studio is working on some 3D printed figures to go with the world of Derin Su (and all sorts of other places)

You can see his stls here

https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/12750/IliadaGameStudio/subcategory/29755_44973/STLs

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The Game

Move 1

Move 2

Turn 3

Move 4

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Fitting them into the rules.

Hell by Daylight

Hell and Fateful Decisions

Hell and Uncivil Disorder

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Assault on an irrelevant village.

The defenders.

The other defenders

The attackers.

The attackers approach march

On table movement

Defender reinforcements

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