Bloody Big (Taiping) Battles – A full run of 2nd Hukou

My BBB Taiping project has sadly lain dormant for a long time, but I had long wanted to play out another scenario and got an opportunity this week when Neil, chairman of the Hong Kong Society of Wargamers, expressed an interest in having a go. So, on a sunny Thursday morning we met up at the game room for another run of what is so far the only scenario I've managed to get on the table (albeit not the only one I've drafted).

The essential background was covered during my report on last time, and Chris Pringle, author of BBB himself, playtested the scenario not once, but twice, so I'll skip over the generalities. For this game, I'd take the Qing while Neil took the Taiping; my dad was out for lunch but took over the Taiping left wing when he arrived.

Deployment: nothing too special here, everything just set up as written. Excuse the use of Lake Poyang as an administrative space.

The initial contact: the Qing didn't fracture as quickly as expected, especially thanks to a couple of bad movement rolls on the Taiping right wing.

Not that it would last, of course. Although the inferior quality of the Qing troops is somewhat compensated for by the terrain, there are weak points that a determined Taiping push can open up.

The Qing cavalry counterattack proved somewhat underwhelming. Most of my assault rolls were a bit disappointing and my hopes for at least one or two wins never really panned out.

The sole exception was on my left, where one of my cavalry units destroyed one of the Taiping cavalry formations and then exploited into the next and destroyed that too. This would more or less be my one lucky break of the game. In the meantime, I decided that my three remaining Trained but Fragile units, all reduced to two bases each, would be best served by withdrawing to Hukou for the extra victory point.

Still, by mid-game the Qing position was becoming seriously fragmented and Taiping losses were not mounting remotely enough to pose a problem for them.

A reckoning of the losses – almost wholly Qing – by around mid-game. Don't ask about the calipers.

By the last couple of turns the Qing field force had essentially evaporated and was being hemmed in from all sides by the long-hairs. 

My one vain hope would come from moving my garrison brigades out of Hukou and the neighbouring fort in an attempt to plug the gap, but I was perhaps overly optimistic about the prospect of managing to hold both the levee and the village at Sanli.

Aggressive pointing from the Taiping commander-in-chief.

Yet more pointing, with the second-in-command joining in.

The decision to prioritise the depleted infantry over moving the fort garrison up was a strange one in hindsight. (also I will paint up those dowels to make proper walls at some point, honest!) The D10 on the lake marks the turn counter. 3 were left on the clock and it was hard to see a draw let alone a victory. Still, with some encouragement from my opponent I decided to fight it out with what little I still had.

Why I didn't park my infantry in the village is a question I still ask myself.

Unsurprisingly, the Taiping swept through the valley despite the best efforts of my remaining brigades to keep them at bay.

Despite fire on both sides being mostly quite ineffectual owing to modifiers, my attempt to retake the village was halted before the men even made contact! Curses!

But in one final turn of good fortune, Neil's entire force failed to come into action on Turn 10, which at least saved me the humiliation of complete annihilation. Nevertheless, with just two VP in hand this was a definite loss for the Qing.

Reflections

As the Qing commander I clearly overcommitted to the counterattack at the start and I really ought to have put my cavalry in a position where it could intervene as a whole rather than piecemeal. The Taiping didn't really need to have a plan other than to simply keep forging ahead, whereas a firmer second line of defence might have bought me enough time to make a draw or even a win viable.

Two thoughts did emerge regarding scenario design. One was that perhaps a reduction to 9 turns keeps things more in the balance. The Qing had lost by that turn anyway but as stated before, a decent turn earlier in the game might have pushed it over. The other was that whereas infantry firing against infantry were fairly ineffectual thanks to adding a left shift to all troops with mixed weapons, the right shift against cavalry that all fire inherently gets in BBB cancelled out the penalty and made infantry charging cavalry reasonably viable – a 4-base unit conducting Offensive Fire without any penalties would remove a base on a roll of 11 or 12, which is only 1/12 but still fairly likely when the Qing have six cavalry units in play. Perhaps having it so that mixed-arms troops don't get the right shift helps balance things in favour of cavalry in scenarios with less modern weaponry.

No Retreat from Nyaungchidauk – Burma 1942

In an unusual move for me, I ended up playing an early Burma scenario thanks to having the figures to justify it. Instead of early Commonwealth figures, though, I had come into the possession of (read: bought and painted) some Chinese for Burma (full showcase incoming) and that meant I could have a go at something from the annus horribilis instead of my usual 1944/5 games. So I set about drawing up a scenario based (loosely) on the opening skirmishes before the Battle of Toungoo in March 1942, when the veteran 200th Division held up the Japanese 55th Division for nearly two weeks in what the Japanese official histories later considered some of the hardest fighting of the campaign.

The Scenario

As the Far East supplement for Chain of Command doesn't include the Chinese, I had to do up platoon structures, support lists, and national characteristics myself. In the event neither of the new characteristics I had drawn up saw any action in this scenario, but for disclosure these were:

• First to Fight
• If a Leader uses two Orders to activate a Unit to move into Close Combat, it will be Aggressive.
• If a Chinese unit wins a Close Combat as the Attacker, every second Shock inflicted negates one incoming Shock.
• Chinese troops defeated by 4 or more will fight on rather than surrender if no Leaders remain.
• Know Your Enemy
• When a Japanese force attempts to use a Ruse against a Regular Chinese platoon, the controlling player must pay the CoC Points cost, and then roll 1D6; only on a 4+ will the Ruse be carried out. A Ruse failed in this manner does not use up a purchased Ruse attempt, but the Unit cannot attempt a Ruse again that Phase.
• Concentrated Fire
• Any Regular Chinese LMG team armed with a ZB 26 or Bren gun can use Concentrated Fire as though a Commonwealth unit. (This one got used a fair bit.)

This scenario would be a defence by a standard Chinese platoon (an officer and three 14-man rifle sections, two with an LMG each and one with a pair of grenade dischargers) supported by a single Sd.Kfz 222 armoured car, against a Japanese platoon (officer, sergeant, three 13-man LMG+rifle sections, and a 13-man grenade discharger section, sans the usual automatic red die owing to 55th Div's poor performance historically) with 1D3+3 support points to spend. My dad and I tossed for sides, and I ended up with the Japanese and, rolling low, had the budget for an anti-tank rifle (3pt) and a jitter party (1pt). Owing to the disparity in size between core platoons, the Chinese would have had a +4 or +5pt rating advantage anyway, so instead of giving the Chinese a large bonus in support points I simply gave the Japanese fewer.

The scenario I had come up with was a bit of a mix between the Probe and Attack and Defend scenarios. 

Owing to the fact we had a 5ft deep mat the Japanese baseline was a foot in from the actual edge of the mat. Their two objectives were the opposite ends of the road and rail bridges over the creek, about 18" from their baseline. With the way the cover was set up, the Japanese might get lucky and get two forward JOPs, but in the event I was not and ended up with one forward position on the southern bank and two behind on the table edges.

In order to win, the Japanese would have to control both Objectives at game end, or capture one Objective and exit a unit off the Chinese end of the table, with the caveat that either player could start the Final Countdown as soon as one Objective was taken. Thus, the Japanese would have to be able to either attack both positions in short succession or establish a clear route to the Chinese rear.

The Game

My opening move was to try and make my presence clear by getting an infantry section onto the north bank, where it would benefit from the hard cover of the jungle thicket. The Chinese responded by bringing out their own troops. At the same time, I had my jitter party ready to dash forwards on the left, with the aim of taking that objective early and threatening the right with fresh troops.

Unfortunately, my corporal was wounded early under withering fire from the Chinese armoured car. On the other hand, I was able to bring out my AT rifle in ambush and send my scouts up, and plugged the command gap with my platoon sergeant.

The AT rifle having done little other than annoy the armoured car, it proceeded to then take one casualty and four shock from return fire.

On the other hand, the Chinese had come out with a new section on their right, which dealt a little bit of damage before becoming the unlucky victim of several grenade hits which almost, but didn't quite, wipe out the LMG team in the hut.

Still, the armoured car managed to annihilate the remainder of the AT rifle team and put an end to any real hope of eliminating the Chinese armour. If I was going to win it would most likely be through taking the other Objective and not breaking before time ran out. I did have enough CoC Points banked up to be able to start the clock if I seized the rail bridgehead, so that was now my new plan..

Unfortunately, my mad dash on the right met yet more withering autocannon fire. I had taken no shock, but all of my attempts to climb up the riverbank were thwarted by bad rolls.

Then the third and final Chinese section came out, and put an end to any realistic hope of forging ahead on the right flank.

In the centre I had managed to mostly neutralise the Chinese infantry on my left thanks to my grenade dischargers, but I was dangerously low on morale (my sergeant also having taken a wound) and the deployment of my final rifle section was little more than a last-ditch Hail Amaterasu.

And indeed, concentrated fire from multiple axes wiped out my first rifle section and collapsed Japanese morale to 0.

Conclusions

A good showing for the first engagement by the Chinese. For my part I probably ought to have opted to send my first rifle section further to the right and thus gained more protection near the railway embankment as well as being less vulnerable to fire from the LMG in the hut, which wouldn't have had the angle to get them. That said probably my most successful action of the entire game was the pair of grenades I got through the window, so it wasn't a complete loss.

I'm a little unsure if the AT rifle was a bad investment relative to something heavier like a 37mm gun at the same cost. 3AP against 2 armour on the armoured car should have offered decent odds had I got more than one shot off, but the lack of a gun shield or a Junior Leader able to rally off shock combined to make the weapon team a lot squishier than its 5-man size would initially suggest.

The scenario itself actually seemed like a design that could work as a more general setup, but it might warrant another test or two. Something to consider for the future, I think.

General Roundup for Early August

It's been a fairly hectic period with a lot of games for me, so rather than spending lots of time writing lots of detailed battle reports I thought I'd just go over everything I've done since the last post.

18 July: Test of Honour

With my dad back from overseas we had a couple of games of ToH, with me taking a samurai+ashigaru force and him taking warrior monks; the first round was just the base game and then we did it again with the Sengoku expanded rules, with me taking some ronin allies and him some ninjas. Both scenarios were the Control mission from the core rules.

Final result was 1-all; I conceded the first game after he slew all my characters, but the second game featured a staggering number of fumbled rolls in the second half, and despite heavier losses I won through controlling more objectives.

21 July: Traitor's Toll

Gareth joined us for a round of Traitor's Toll with the main plot being the Phantom; a thief of uncertain identity masquerading as one of the civilians.

The game went better than our last goes for the guards, although not without a few twists and turns as our squads repeatedly failed to arrest secondary suspects while the Phantom ran loose among the populace.

25 July: Chain of Command

Timmy and I went back to the jungle for this one, with an aggressive Japanese manoeuvre on their left blunted by some good dice rolling on the British side. A more concentrated attack on the lead British section likely would have achieved greater results than the split effort between the infantry and the MG nest (though the latter was dispersed on the second Japanese assault.

Not the most exciting game but one that reminded us of how important it was to keep the jungle rules in mind.

28 July: Chain of Command

Rather than clear the table I left it in place while I oversaw Gareth as the Japanese versus my dad as the British. A rare moment of hesitation from Gareth led to his prematurely calling in a mortar barrage that not only hit some of his own troops, but also left him with little room to manoeuvre on his left. An ill-advised dash into the open on his right flank led to that unit being shot from behind, and so badly outmatched when it attempted to charge that it simply broke and fled without fighting.

1 August: Test of Honour

For that fortnight's club afternoon James and I went at it with our respective forces, with me bringing my usual Onna-Bugeisha while he had a bandit and ronin force. We had two runs of the Ambush scenario, both of which ended with one of us conceding after heavy losses. Special mention goes to one of James' (evil, dastardly) ronin units which used exactly the same figures as one of my (noble, upstanding) onna-bugeisha groups!

2 August: Big Chain of Command

Timmy wanted another go at a jungle scenario but this time using the Deep Battle setup for Big Chain of Command, so I prepared a scenario using the full 8x6' table. Three British platoons would face two Japanese platoons and attempt to take the buildings astride the road running down the middle.

The first phase saw my British moving aggressively, though not tremendously so, up towards the river and almost in position to seize the first phase line on the crossroads. In the event it was an armoured car that took the phase line, after what were frankly quite avoidable losses on the part of the infantry.

Although one section had been badly mauled in an attempted counterattack by assault, Timmy held on with his current forces and began bringing out his bunkers, a bit of a problem as I had assumed he'd use them near the end of the battle and had kitted out my third platoon accordingly. Instead platoon #2 was going to have to go into the lion's maw with much less supporting firepower.

Nevertheless, a tenacious advance allowed me to post some grenades into the aperture of one bunker and completely wipe out its defenders, while a mortar barrage locked down most of his force.

When the barrage cleared, however, I was still down a lot of men, and Timmy swapped in his reserve platoon to land the killing blow against my battered force.

Nevertheless, to do that he had needed to deploy all of his supporting assets, and although I did lose my armoured car, the left flank saw my Sherman (not pictured) and a sniper in the woods knock out the MG nest and anti-tank gun on his right, while the barrage more or less destroyed all of the heavy weapons on his left. When my second platoon broke, thus bringing my third in, Timmy decided his remaining force was unlikely to succeed against a fresh platoon supported by an intact tank, and we called it a day.

4 August: Test of Honour

Gareth wanted something a bit lighter after quite a lot of CoC, so I brought Test of Honour out again, with me taking an ashigaru+samurai force against warrior monks. I raised the budget to either 36 or 40 points (I forget which) so that each side had four characters instead of the usual three, although on the deeper table it turned out (to be expected, really) that characters with their extra movement simply expose themselves to attack much earlier, so most of the game turned out to be duelling between our respective big men. I won this one by a hair's breadth after Gareth's commander kept rolling dismally on what ought to have been easy hits.

6 August: Chain of Command

Albert and Stuart, two friends of James', were in town for part of last week, and with James unable to get off work he asked if my dad and I could organise a few games for them. We ended up playing six games across four different sets of rules, which was simultaneously quite impressive and a bit exhausting by the end, but still a good way to show off the game room and our respective collections. The first game was Chain of Command, using the Probe scenario which is my usual intro to new (or in this case new-ish) players. I'd supervise Albert leading the Japanese attackers while my dad advised Stuart on defending as the British.

An aggressive Japanese move on the left was initially blunted when it made a hasty attack against prepared defenders, but the combined effect of the PIAT failing to destroy the Japanese tankette, the Japanese grenade dischargers basically levelling the British lead section in the hut, and severe attrition against their second section meant that although the game did eventually reach the Final Countdown, their morale broke before the clock ran out.

7 August: Twilight of Divine Right

On Friday morning we used Twilight of Divine Right and my dad's 10mm Thirty Years War figures to put on the Battle of Ameixial in 1663, during the Portuguese Restoration War. Albert took the Portuguese while Stuart took the Spanish while we advised from the sidelines. The Portuguese and their English allies had a similar amount of infantry (11 regiments vs 10) but substantially fewer cavalry (7 vs 11), but with an overall quality advantage, and would need to drive the Spanish off the hill.

Some exceptionally bad luck for the Portuguese cavalry wing began causing serious concern, and the Spanish resolutely refused to roll low on their morale checks for several turns while managing to sneak a single cavalry unit around the Portuguese right flank and begin rolling it up. Although we didn't fight through to a definite conclusion it had come to be fairly obvious that a Portuguese loss was a matter of when rather than if.

7 August: Test of Honour

With more time in the afternoon, I put on two games of Test of Honour, one against Albert and one against Stuart. In both games I took a samurai+ashigaru force and my opponent had warrior monks (I think I'm starting to spot a pattern...).

Game 1 went rather poorly for Albert, who ended up losing all of his characters very early, but he was avenged by Stuart who inflicted a resounding defeat on me.

8 August: Sharp Practice

On Saturday morning it was initially just me and Albert, with me taking the forces of the Shogunate and him the restorationist coalition for a game set in the 1868 Boshin War, using figures I don't think I've brought out in over a year. I had set up the terrain intentionally looking to create some major chokepoints that both of us would have trouble manoeuvring through effectively, although I may have gone a bit overboard.

Game 1 saw me take some pretty bad losses on my skirmishers, but a strong first volley from my main body led Albert to concede before things got worse for him. James had arrived at this point and suggested we could go again, but he took the Imperial force this time as Albert had to leave soon and would just observe until his cutoff time.

This time the result was a bit more even, as both of us took morale losses as our respective left flanks overcame the enemy's right. Both of us lost our skirmishers early, and my hoped-for decisive blow with my Shingsengumi shock troops was not so much blunted as completely swatted aside by a volley from James' riflemen. However, the duel between my main body and his smaller line had started earlier, and a couple of good rounds of fire at effective range broke both of his Groups and wounded his force commander, causing his morale to collapse from 6 to 0 in a single turn.

Summary

I won't lie, fifteen games in just over three weeks does take a toll on you, and grateful as I am that my summer has been open enough to allow that to happen, I sort of want a break...