Colonial Campiagns - Senluo Temple October 18th 1899 - Mud & Blood Playtest

Having set my sights on re-fighting all of the encounters in the Boxer Rebellion Colonial Campaign Series, I was fortunate enough to find a willing opponent to play test the rule tweaks to Mud & Blood, to give it a greater Boxer feel, Thursday night saw the first out of the new improved Boxer Rebellion forces.....

The Scenario.

The Boxers led by Zhu Hong-Deng were camped at the Senlou Temple after defeating Jiang Kai a local magistrate, A force of 500 Imperial troops were tasked with clearing the Boxer Grounds before the Boxers could gather additional support.

The layout above provides an over view of the table to be fought over.
The Imperial Chinese may deploy one mounted unit and one Infantry unit within 12" of the Northern side of the Bridge, the Boxers can deploy no closer than 24" from the Bridge or 18" from the village.

The Boxer Forces consisted of.
10 Units of Boxers with a scattering of muskets

2 Antiquated Cannon.
7 Big men ranging from Status I to III

Chinese Imperial Forces consisted of.
1 Unit of Cavalry
4 Infantry Sections
7 Big men also ranging from I to III

Reinforcements
1 Unit of Cavalry
 
The Boxers win if they can rout 4 Imperial units areas and control key features on the board, notably the two T junctions, the village and the Bridge.
If Zhu Hong-deng is killed the Boxers automatically lose.
 

Turn one saw the Imperial Army deploy on the first T junction, I chose to deploy my Boxer Artillery on the hill over looking the village to provide artillery support for the Boxer blinds on the flanks.

Turn two, the Imperials push ahead but are soon under fire from the Boxer artillery, the blinds unmask and are already within a short distance from the Imperial Cavalry and are closing in on the 1st Imperial unit.

The Boxers force the Imperials from the T junction, but start in incur casaulties from the massed ranks of rifle fire, the Boxers seek cover from the paddy fields whilst in the centre the first Imperial Infantry unit can be seen in the tree line having repulsed an initial Boxer attack.

The Boxers push forward but are hindered by an early Sniffter card which allows the Imperials to unleash a bloody volley adding sufficient shock to slow the advance to a crawl.
However the bulk of the Boxer units are now revealed urged on by the Status III leader Hong-Deng.

 

The final turn, the Boxers are pressing the Imperials who have fallen back from the T Junction, which secured the Boxers a victory point, however in the process they have lost 3 Big Men falling to the now formed massed ranks of Imperials.

The Boxers fall back leaving the table to the Imperial forces.

The rule changes played really well, however we agreed that the Boxers need a couple of extra Rally cards to represent their religious fervor, the artillery did not need to roll to hit, rather just the impact, this might need tweaking as it was taking chunks out of any unit that entered into open ground.

The movement trays proved a real asset, however I need to add some additional banners for the Boxers to make their Big Men stand out.

Looking forward to kicking this campaign off in the coming weeks.