Counter-revolution in Samarkand, Part I

In the early hours of a February morning in 1918, a train of scruffy soldiers pulls into a Bolshevik controlled station outside the ancient city of Samarkand.

This is scenario one, The Mutineers Attack!, from the excellent Red Dawn Rises! supplement for Setting the east Ablaze! rules.  It is certainly dramatic, judging by all the exclamations!

The scenarios in the book are great and inspired by Peter Hopkirk's equally excellent book on the Russian revolution in central Asia.

 

  

We used the third edition of the rules, by the only slightly less excellent Steve Langan, for this game.

 

This is what happened according to the official history.  

The sleepy guards are not expecting trouble but the soldiers disembark fully armed and ready to fight.

 

"MUTINY!" The Mensheviks have turned their former allies against the revolution and they are now fighting for the Whites!  
 

 

The small garrison of red guards run for the relative safety of the coal bunker. 

 

 

"Fire on the traitors, comrades!"

The Bolshevik gunners spring to their work and shells begin to land with pinpoint precision.

 

Chaos reigns in the mutineer ranks.  Their armoured car crashes off the ramp and immediately breaks down.

Some of them run and hide in the railway shed.

Others in the trees.

Captain Pernov pushes his men through a window into the hastily vacated station.

"More shells comrades.  Keep firing…Oh!" The Bolo field gun runs low on ammo. 

But all is not yet lost for the Reds, as their AA gun pours murderous fire into the station killing more of the mutineers.

 

What this defence needs is an inspiring and handsome proletarian hero. 

 

Fortunately, as the Red guards regroup in the coal bunker, they are joined by commissar Totzek after he heroically sneaked out the back of the hotel.  These dogged revolutionaries will be difficult to shift from behind those solid walls.

 

Wait! Stop! Where are you going?  Seduced by more Menshevik lies the guardsmen defect.

It’s okay thinks Totzek to himself, "I will persuade the mutineers over to me, with my deep understanding of class consciousness and dialectical materialism".  "Oh!  That didn’t go well."

 

"It'll be okay.  I’m sure nobody else heard me mess that up, and will therefore abandon me as a result. Oh!"  The Red AA gun also defects to the Whites.

 

Time to run for it.  [Ed: I don't have any pictures of the chase that followed, so you'll just have to imagine a cross between Dr Zhivago, Benny Hill, and the Keystone Cops, all to the soundtrack of Yakkerty Sax.]

Totzek makes it to the field gun and his last remaining comrades.  Who, fortunately, seem to have found some more ammunition.  Making every shell count they blast their former compatriots and send them running but Pernov rallies his men and begins the assault again.

The inept mutineers, driven on by Captain Pernov, struggle up the slope to storm the last Bolshevik redoubt but are thrown back by the stubborn defence.  Totzek empties his pistol into their ranks, killing another mutineer.

 

 

However, the numbers are overwhelming and our scene fades to black as poignant music plays and a battle damaged red flag waves gently in the breeze … 

 

... but what a twist!  The body of the commissar cannot be found! ...

Siberia 1919

Somewhere on the Russian Civil War's eastern front the White Siberian Army of Admiral Kolchak clashes with Comrade Trotsky's Red Army for control of a vital railway line.

With the Red Guard railway workers defending the station buildings other Red Army forces have dug in on a nearby ridge.

Meanwhile the forces of the reactionary counter-revolution advance from the east.

Comrade Pavlov, commanding the Bolshevik positions, rushes his reserves forward to aid in the defence of the station and the redoubts on the ridge line.

 

Cossacks and White officers attack the station but are held up by the fierce resistance of the railway workers in the station master's dacha.

Eventually the Red Guards surrender but are all massacred by the victorius Whites.  This is a war with no half measures.

At close of play, intense shelling has driven the Communist Peasant battalion from the ridge and the Whites are pushing on from their victory on the flank.  A unit of internationalist Magyars rushes forward to try to hold the line.

This battle is fictional and while the uniforms are suitable for 1919, the armies are probably more fitting for 1918 in the Railway War period.  We used Setting the East Ablaze 2.0 rules with the following armies. 

Reds

Comrade Pavlov +1 Leader

Red Army Communist Peasant Battalion
10 figs C3 M3 Rifles, Bombs and 1 LMG
Kulomzino Railway Worker Red Guards
10 figs C4 M3 Rifles, Bombs
Moscow Factory Worker Red Guards
10 figs C4 M3 Rifles, Bombs
Tobolsk Food Requisition Detachment
10 figs C4 M4 Rifles, Bombs
Magyar Internationalists
10 figs C3 M3 Rifles Bombs

Tashkent Cavalry Detachment
10 figs C3 M3 Lances, Rifles, Bombs

Artillery Battery 2 x Field Gun C4 M3
1 HMG C3 M3
1 Austin AC C3 M3

Whites

Colonel Verzhbitsky +1 Leader

Omsk Officer detachment
10 figs C3 M3 Ferocious, Rifles, Bombs, 1 LMG
Irtysh Officer detachment
10 figs C3 M3 Ferocious, Rifles, Bombs, 1 LMG
Kurgan Officer detachment
10 figs C3 M3 Ferocious, Rifles, Bombs, 1 LMG
Ishim  Officer detachment
10 figs C3 M3 Ferocious, Rifles, Bombs, 1 LMG

Orenburg Cossack Detachment
10 figs C2 M3 Lances, Rifles, Bombs

Artillery Battery 2 x Field Gun C3 M3
1 HMG C3 M3
1 Austin AC C3 M3