Dan Mersey's latest offering has seen games coming thick and fast recently and a chance to get plenty of toys on the table having seen how well the rules handled the Boxer Rebellion, why not give the Russo-Japanese War an outing.
Picking one of the scenario's from book, the Japanese were tasked with holding the village against the numerically superior Russian forces.
We rolled for the officer quality before hand and encoutered a mixed bag of officer material, from your bravest to quite frankly the worst officer on the planet.
The following units and stats were deployed on the table.
When picking the troop types made the bulk of the Russians poor shots to represent their difference in quality to the Japanese, but to enable them to gain additional troops on the table and figured weight of fire power should give them the edge in pinning units.
The view from the Russian lines, a scattering of light woods perfect to mask the slower moving infantry but also some open terrain to use the cossacks to flank the village.
18 Points does not get you a lot, espically when one one of your Officers is bloody terrible. Two units of Infantry and the HMG deploy within the outlying terrain.
The Japanese hold the fence line, with their free action of simply firing not a bad spot to be in.
The Russian Steam roller deploys on to the table, including a unit companded by the Tsar's Nephew.
Russian Cavalry sweep round the Japanse Eastern flank but are pinned back before they can charge home.
Very frustratingly for the Russian Commander everytime the Cavalry rally the other unit is pinned making the chances of formal charge very slim, slowly the Cossacks are emptied from their saddles.
Meanwhile in the Japanese Centre the Infantry are coming under Artillery and small arms fire and whilst casualties are light, the Officer is so poor none of his men listen to him when ordered to rally and they start to fall back.
Switiching to skirmish mode the Russians manage to pin the Japanese defenders giving the Cavalry a chance to edge to within charge range if they could only rally.
With the Japanese infantry falling back, the cavalry rally and charge into the retreating HMG team, wiping it out, which pins the remaining Japanese defenders, who fail their rally test and fall back again.
The Cavalry firmly with the initiative now press on, crashing into the Infantry falling back on the road and rest as they say is history....
Victory for the Russian Bear.
Post game thoughts.
The forces at first simply did not look enough, but in fact the points are more than enough to play through in 3 hours and give a fun encounter for both sides.
Having regulars on both sides makes your tactical positioning important and increasingly over recent games the Officer quality is the key to turning a battle, ask the Japanese commander who was hoping his CO would actually get killed.
The cavalry for once played a key role at first I thought they would be no treat but good use of the skirmish mode to pin the defenders and then charge home was a great tactic to win the scenario.
