Square Bashing the RCW

For our latest Back of Beyond game we tried the Square Bashing rules from Peter Pig using our Russian Civil War armies.  

This is after the initial set up phase with movement beginning on the right as the Red Sailors advance. There is a quite involved set up where the type of battle is determined, the terrain and objectives are placed, and units can start off table.   Also see Storm of Steel's review and game reports for more on how they work.

The Reds quickly crossed the open steppe into the woods around the villages seizing several objectives.

The Grand Manor was undefended but a White Officer battalion held the village beyond with Cossacks in support.

 

 

The Red sailors rushed forward bravely but came face to face with a British supplied tank! 

The AFSR heavy guns proved much more effective than the Reds,  The Red cavalry, caught in the open, suffered particularly badly.

With reinforcements arriving from the rear the Whites quickly organised a counter attack and re-captured the crossroads and surrounding village.

Bruised, but not yet broken, the Red sailors regrouped for another charge with their own armour in support.

On the left the Red Guards took the grassy knoll and then successfully defended it against an assault by Drozdovsky officers, with Cossacks and an AC in support. Their heroic stand was a pivotal moment of the battle.

Meanwhile, in the centre, the rest of the Bolshevik infantry had held out under intense artillery fire for several turns.  Throwing back a desperate attack by the massed White infantry to secure the woodlands.

The Kronstadt boys’ second assault pushed the White tank out of the village and damaged it. This left them tantalizingly short of the Crossroads they had briefly held but netted them a useful 5 victory points at the end of the game.  

Finally, on the right flank, the remnants of the  Proletarian horse, with supporting field guns firing over open sights, managed to stand against a last ditch white cavalry charge.

After the tally it was a minor victory for the Bolsheviks and the Volunteer army fell back to lick their wounds.

White Propaganda Posters

These are some propaganda posters I have collected for the Russian Civil War period.  I'll start with the Russian Whites.

More to follow...

RCW Flags

Some Russian Civil war Era Flags that I think they were originally downloaded from this web site: https://krigsspil.dk/download/rcw/ which is now gone.

 

Uploaded for this LAF post here: https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=144313.0

 

October Hammer

As it is October it seems like there should be some Russian Civil war content.  October Hammer are a set of fast paced rules for the Russian Revolution based on the Nordic Weasel Trench Hammer system.

Nordic Weasel Games produce a lot of niche and innovative projects, in a sort of stream of consciousness from the fertile brain of designer Ivan Sorensen.  Definitely worth a look.

Here are some notes from our first game(s) using October Hammer.  It was back at the beginning of the year but it's taken me ages to get around to posting anything.  The pictures were from this and later OH games if my memory serves.

In our first game we had four players and me as umpire but that quickly broke down into two games either side of the bridge objective and river line.  The Whites using the Volunteer army list as a basis attacked and had a slight advantage in quality versus the Red Army’s slight advantage in numbers but most troops were using standard stats.

On the east bank the Whites manoeuvred impressively to form a powerful attack that was horribly gunned down by maxim fire.  Brutal!  On the west bank the Whites advanced in better cover and with an armoured car in support and took out most of the Red Rifle units and MGs in the centre.  Neither side really got any cavalry into action and the Armoured Cars seemed rather dominating but we made lots of mistakes so I’ve no idea if that’s a fair judgement.  We didn't use the ACs in the later games.

I generally liked the mechanics, although they took a bit of getting used to.  The shooting is quite variable with units sometimes wiped away in very short order and at others clinging on for ages.  The game is not very attritional or predictable.  

The order choices make a big difference and there is seldom an obvious pick, making the gameplay fun but luck a heavy element.  Some parts of the rules could do with a bit more defining.  e.g. With artillery we were unsure if they could move and fire or withdraw/redeploy and at what rates and with what effects from terrain.  We forced shooting at the closest target after the first game, as some of the ganging up seemed gamey.  We also used half speed in bad going instead of -2″ as it was more intuitive.  You could tweak the stats a bit to reflect unit quality and special RCW circumstances.  e.g. RCW MGs were often short of ammo and either unreliable or badly manned, so universal -2 on the hit number is maybe too good.  Although, several were knocked out in our games, so that might not be necessary.  

On ranges we used 24″ for rifles 36″ for MGs and 60″ for field guns as the maximum.  We were playing on roughly 8’x6′ each side of the river, so it made sense given the large playing area.  We also only used the leader casualties within 12″ but mostly forgot to roll anyway.

So, on balance a good fun game with potential for tweaking to taste.  As a general note, I liked the quite elegant mechanics and the rules are good value for what you get even if a little incomplete.  They could also be adapted easily with ideas from other variants in the series.

We played a few more games after this first one and all were fast and furious.  I'm still unsure what set will end up as our go-to RCW/BoB rules, partly due to the large armies we've now amassed, but October Hammer was fun and original.   So, I don't regret this foray at all and would gladly play this or other Nordic Weasel games in the future. 

I made some unit cards for the games we played.  Shamelessly copying the great design from the Great War resource page on the Jozi's Tin Man blog. See specifically here for the cards.  I have uploaded my versions here in case they are of use to anyone else.

The cards were made on a great free vector graphics program called Inkscape.  I have included a copy of the files in PDF and the original SVG format, so you can print them or edit them.  The SVG format isn't previewing correctly in my Google account but the files open okay in Inkscape for me. Jozi used paperclips to mark the hits but we just used markers on the cards or white board pens on laminated cards.

Volunteer Army vs Reds Part II

This week we concluded the battle we started last week with the AFSR and Red Army fighting hard for a town in Southern Russia.

The main fighting in the centre saw White Officer companies try to capture and hold the town against a horde of Peasants and Workers with Regular Red Army and some Cheka in Support.  The Whites held the houses but were blasted with rifles, machine guns and artillery from all sides.

On the east flank the Whites crossed the fields and pushed onto the ridge line with cavalry and armoured cars in support to drive the Reds back into the village.

Meanwhile on the Western side of the battle a Red Flank attack swept down on a small hill held by a group of Volunteer Army sailors.

The Sailors fought hard and even stood agaist the cavalry charge but were eventually shot down to a man.

Back in the east the Whites had taken out the Red Arnoured that anchored their line and were pushing on.

The Reds hastily reform in the village to stop the Counter-revolutionary advance in its tracks.

The battle raged in the centre with the Green Dacha finally falling to the victorius reds.  Just long enough for the Cheka to get lots of loot and run off back to party HQ.  While the the heroic martyrs of the revolution litter the blood soaked ground.

Sadly for the Tsarist cause the cavalry did arrive but were pinned down by artillery and maxim fire and didn't really help.

Is this just a set back on the road to victory or has the tide turned on Denikin's depleted forces?