No-Man's Land in Aizuwakamatsu – 24 August 2023

I bought Eric Wood's The Last Samurai Rebellion supplement for The Men Who Would Be Kings some time ago, but never really got round to doing anything with it. Partly it's because I never actually did up any Satsuma Rebellion armies: if I were to do enough to cover the sample forces for the six scenarios at the back, let alone offer additional variation, I would need to do up a little over 200 more figures, which seems like a task best left for another time.

However, it only recently struck me that that doesn't mean the scenarios are somehow rendered useless. While framed around particular happenings of the Satsuma Rebellion, there's nothing so specific about them that means they couldn't be transposed back a decade to the Boshin War. So that got me thinking. After flipping through, I decided that Scenario 4, 'Inspector Ikebata and the Dead Man's Diary', would probably be best as a first dip into it, given that it involves the fewest number of special rules.

The scenario itself is based on two episodes from the siege of Kumamoto during the Satsuma Rebellion. The first saw a detachment of armed policemen made an attempt to sally out against the rebels, only to be pinned down under fire, so more troops from the imperial garrison went out to cover their retreat, leading to the rebels reinforcing, and so on, causing a brief but bloody firefight. The second involved a rebel officer rather unaccountably taunting the imperial army and getting shot for his trouble, while carrying a diary that provided valuable intelligence to the garrison.

On the table, this is represented by effectively dividing the action across two halves of the table. In one half you have a high-quality but poorly-led unit from the defending side which starts out Pinned within range of a forward-deployed unit from the besiegers. In the other half you have the dead man right between the two sides, who must try to move to take the diary back to their own lines. 1 point is scored by the defenders if they are able to move their forward unit off the table by their long edge, while 1 point is scored by the attackers if they destroy the unit or get lucky and kill its officer. 1 point is also scored by whichever side manages to carry the diary back to their own lines by moving a unit off their own long table edge with it. 0 points are scored if the beleaguered unit or the diary are still in no man's land by the end of turn 10.

The unit lists in the supplement don't exactly follow the points valuation that you would expect from modifying profiles in the core rules, which presumably was for reasons of balancing. However, I decided to presume that if you did swap over to the core rules, you would still be all right as long as you employed those consistently and didn't try to mix and match. So, the defenders would have a 6-point unit on-table and pinned, in range of a 5-point unit of the attackers, with Obsolete Rifles if possible. Both sides then get a further 20 points of units to be deployed up to 12" in from the edges.

What remained was coming up with some kind of vaguely historical basis for the scenario. I decided on the brief siege of Aizuwakamatsu Castle in October 1868, with the defenders being a relatively heterogeneous force of Aizu troops up against a small but elite contingent of imperial forces. The forces would be as follows:

Aizu:

• Suzakutai (Vermillion Bird Corps): Regular Infantry (6pts; on-table)
• Byakkotai (White Tiger Corps): Poorly-Armed Regular Infantry who are Poor Shots (4pts)
• Seiryutai (Azure Dragon Corps): Poorly-Armed Elite Regular Infantry (6pts)
• Genbutai (Black Tortoise Corps): Poorly-Armed Regular Infantry (5pts)
• Shinsengumi (New Select Group): Fierce Veteran Tribal Infantry (5pts)

Imperial:

• Satsuma Infantry: Poorly-Armed Regular Infantry (5pts; on-table)
• 2x Chōshū Infantry: Regular Infantry (6pts each for 12 total)
• Tosa Infantry: Regular Infantry who are Sharpshooters (8pts)

The Table

I decided to keep the same dimensions as in the book, which meant a 6 by 4 area. The table you see here is 8 feet wide by 6 deep, so we played using the middle two quarters. The mat is actually 6 by 5 feet, hence the inclusion of some decorative terrain features to mark the actual back-line for both sides.

As described in the scenario book, the terrain is relatively bare. Just in front of the imperial deployment area is a sparse grove that provides cover but does not impede movement, while the Aizu deployment area is marked by four palisades, again providing cover but not counting as obstacles. The forward imperial unit is also occupying such a piece. The dead man is in the centre of a hill, which obstructs firing but does not slow movement either. This means a lot of open terrain to manoeuvre in and fire across.

The deployment was surprisingly close, all told, and this had some rather deleterious effects as I will get into later. The defenders' forward unit starts just outside of short rifle range of the attackers', and the two main forces are deployed up to 1 foot in from their back edges. This means that the armies are a whole 2 feet apart... which is long rifle range for Modern Rifles. Oh dear.

The Setup

Leader qualities were decidedly lopsided, thanks to the dice gods showering favour upon my Imperial opponent while withholding it from me. Three of the Imperial units had 5+ Leadership (the number on 2D6 you need to roll to activate), save for one Chōshū infantry which was a 6+. Leader traits were a spread of decent to poor: the Satsuma infantry had a Fine Swordsman (+2D6 in melée), one Chōshū infantry was led by a Cad (the distance for forced retreats is doubled), the other by a Bag of Nerves (has a chance to flee the first time the unit becomes Pinned), and the Tosa sharpshooters had a Sporting Umpire (cannot fire at a Pinned enemy if a non-Pinned enemy is eligible).

By contrast, the defenders' forward unit has to have a poor officer, with Leadership of 7+ and the special Arrogant trait, meaning his unit had its Discipline modifier reduced by 1 and had no Free Action. The remaining Aizu line infantry were all 6+, and the Shinsengumi were a 7+. The White Tigers were led by a Bag of Nerves, and the Shinsengumi – worst of all – had a Shirker (cannot fire or initiate melée until fired upon or attacked). The Azure Dragons had a Musketry Buff (Leadership counts as 5+ for firing) but given that they had Fire as a free action this was worthless. The Black Tortoises managed to get lucky and scored 'He's the Major-General's favourite nephew, you know' (one free unit upgrade) – this I decided would be to swap their Obsolete Rifles for Modern ones, increasing their range to 24".

I got to deploy first and chose to lay my forces out along a broad front, with the Azure Dragons positioned to fire on the Satsuma infantry, the Black Tortoises moving up into the wood, the White Tigers going along the side of the hill, and the Shinsengumi aiming to go up the hill to seize the diary. My opponent decided on a more conservative approach and deployed all three of his units across the middle, reasoning that his 24" rifle range would let him cover more or less the entire vital area of the table.

The initial deployment as viewed from the Aizu side.

The Game

Aizu turn 1: On the left, the Vermillion Birds fail to rally, but the Azure Dragons get a good shot off and kill 2 Satsuma infantry – though fail to Pin. In the centre, the Black Tortoises and White Tigers forge ahead, and on the right, the Shinsengumi get a lucky 6 after activating to move At the Double, getting them 14 inches ahead and thus right on top of the dead man.

Imperial turn 1: Witheirng fire erupts across the line; 10 Aizu men out of 64 lie dead already.

Aizu turn 2: The Vermillion Birds not only fail to rally, but rout outright, forcing Pinning tests on the Azure Dragons and Black Tortoises. The Dragons pass, and manage to take out another Satsuma rifleman, but the Tortoises fail and so miss out on being able to act this turn. The White Tigers rally successfully... sort of (we'll get to that in a bit); the Shinsengumi fail and must retreat 4". 

Imperial turn 2: Yet more fire. Another six Aizu men are killed, and the Azure Dragons are now also Pinned. Not only that, but the Black Tortoises suffer two more Pins due to enemy fire. The White Tigers manage not to take a Pin. For now.

At the start of Shogunate Turn 3 we realised that we had forgotten to test for the Bag of Nerves with the White Tigers back on Turn 1. Deciding that we would retroactively re-Pin the unit if it turned out the Leader had run off (they had rolled a 7, enough to pass with the Leader but not without), I rolled a 4 which meant the Leader had run off and the unit was retroactively re-Pinned. The Azure Dragons and Shinsengumi were able to rally, but the Black Tortoises were not, falling back 3 inches.

Imperial Turn 3: Yet more devastating fire this turn, as the Satsuma infantry and one of their Chōshū allies unloaded into the Azure Dragons and killed five of them – but shockingly failed to cause a Pin. The Black Tortoises were less lucky, taking another Pinned marker after a further two casualties, and the White Tigers, now leaderless, took two losses and another Pinned result.

Aizu Turn 4: The last two Azure Dragons beat a hasty retreat, while the Black Tortoises failed to rally and retired. The White Tigers rallied but could perform no other action. The Shinsengumi were ordered to charge at the Imperial lines as a final diversionary attack... only to fail their activation roll.

Imperial turn 5: The Satsuma infantry advanced while the Chōshū infantry unloaded into the White Tigers and took out another five of them; the Tosa troops, with no enemies in range, opted to remain in place.

Aizu Turn 6: Neither of the Pinned units rallied, and the unpinned units beat a hasty retreat. At this juncture I called it quits.

However, just to see what would happen, we tried to see if the Tosa unit could successfully capture the diary (represented here with a little MDF token which I had painted a map onto) in the five turns before the end of the game. The unit managed to roll a 6 on its first At the Double test, moving it into capture range, stopped for a turn as required by the rules, and then passed three successive activation tests and rolled a combined 15 for extra movement, allowing it to get 33" of movement and bringing it safely off the table. As the edge of the table was only 22" away, it could have failed one of those activations and still succeeded had its movement dice still come up the same. But we found that that was definitely cutting it close, and had they failed an activation and/or had more average movement dice, they might not have managed.

The sad state of affairs at the end of the day, with the Tosa force taking the diary and leaving.

Debrief

I think it's fair to say that the Aizu force could have made a better showing. I can think of three main reasons as to why they didn't.

Firstly, bad dice rolling, especially during the setup stage. Having poor Leadership is generally a problem, and in this game the Aizu force was basically one Leadership worse across the board. Even then, though, bad rolls meant that a lot of Pins were taken and, critically, the objective unit on the left routed on turn 2, which meant that at that stage I had to take the diary to force a draw. Unfortunately, whoever goes up to take the diary has to spend two turns under fire, and that means you really want a good Leadership unit that can potentially avoid getting Pinned as a result. I suspect the Black Tortoises could have served as that unit, but the open terrain on this table meant that the hill was the only place the Shinsengumi were useful.

Secondly, a bad plan. I really should have gone all in on one objective or the other and hoped for the best, but by going for a diffuse approach I just exposed myself to a load of simultaneous fire and ended up with most of my troops out of action from the start.

Thirdly, I think the scenario was not necessarily thought out brilliantly. My Imperial opponent was entirely correct to put his riflemen in the middle and just blast away at any of my men who tried to do anything. Flipping through the core scenarios for TMWWBK, most scenarios involve the forces a fair distance apart; those that have opposing units within 24" of each other tend not to have it where the entirety of both forces is exposed to that level of fire. Even for a simple battle setup on a 6 by 4 table, you would still most likely have the armies starting on the edges, meaning you'd still have just under 4 feet of distance at the start of the game. This extra foot of distance per side would be where things like activation failures and variable At the Double movement rates come in to give engagements a bit more fluidity, instead of creating a situation where the side that moves first is the side that gets shot up first. The concepts behind the scenario were fine, but the two sides really ought to have an extra foot of distance between them.

I suspect the problems were less pronounced in the original scenario with the sample forces suggested. In that, the besiegers (Satsuma rebels) are a mostly melée force that have to push forwards, while the defenders (Imperial garrison) have only two unpinned rifle units – plus a poorly-led one that starts Pinned – and one elite melée unit of their own, which would make an assault by six units harder to simply stall by fire. The version we played saw a firepower advantage for the besiegers, making the defenders' relief of the beleaguered unit that much trickier, and also making the capture of the diary near impossible.

I'll have a go at some more of these scenarios in the coming weeks, but I'm beginning to suspect that these were generally balanced around the Rebel side necessarily being mostly melée troops with some rifles while the Imperial force is mostly rifles with maybe some melée, which maybe doesn't quite work for the Boshin War where the latter usually describes both forces.

The Anglo-Indian Intervention Force in Japan, Part Two (Naval Troops)

Following my last post, which covered the Indian infantry on this project, I've now rounded out the naval forces. These make up one of the smaller portions of the overall force, consisting of one unit of Royal Marines, a unit of Naval Brigade, and a gun crew. The plan originally was to do only a small handful of sailors, but earlier this year I decided to do a participation game at the Overlord show in Abingdon based on the 1864 Shimonoseki Expedition.

A photograph by Felice Beato showing one of the British naval brigades – and a few stray Marines in the foreground? – in possession of a Japanese coastal battery at Shimonoseki in 1864.

To do that, I decided I would need two units of Marines, two of British sailors, and one of French. When I started the process, however, I somehow completely failed to do any research into the kit worn at the time, which is why my Naval Brigade are all wearing sennet hats rather than white caps. Similarly, for the Marines I went with troops with shakoes on the basis that those were what I saw in contemporary illustrations, but in retrospect it's become clear that they would have been wearing Kilmarnock forage caps. Oh well, at least it makes them look different!

But truth be told, errors of research were a bit of a running theme with these, and I won't call them my proudest effort as such from the standpoint of historical verisimilitude.

Royal Marine Light Infantry

I forget where I came across the apparent use of the White Ensign on land, but it would postdate the 1864 period that I had originally painted these figures for. The uniform is sort of off, too, as the shako is the taller 'Albert' withdrawn in 1855 rather than the 'French-style' one I was trying to mimic. Still, you likely wouldn't be able to tell at a distance. Moreover, they are possibly the only troops wearing the correct tunic for 1868, that being the 1863 tunic with the pointed cuffs and loopy bits, rather than the 1856 tunic with rectangular elements that most of my infantry figures have (and which I mimicked for the Indian regiments).

In total, there are 18 men and 6 command figures, which means two Groups plus command and support for Sharp Practice, or two full units for The Men Who Would be Kings.

The figures are from Perry's BIF range, being their Canadian militia with the aforesaid mixed kit.

Naval Brigade

As previously noted, the sennet hats were an unfortunate error. One of the officers here also is wearing an 1877 Foreign Service Helmet, which again, oopsie. But what makes these fun, besides just being a different colour, is the presence of cutlass bayonets, which I think look appropriately vicious. As with the Marines, there's enough for either two Sharp Practice Groups, or two TMWWBK units.

Figures are primarily Perry, drawn from their Victoria's Little Wars range for the men, and both the VLW and Sudan ranges for the officers. There's also one chap in late 1850s garb from Foundry's Mutiny range.

Naval Gun Crew

There are two crews here, one from Foundry's Mutiny range who are operating the 32-pounder naval gun, and then some figures for a Perry Sudan Gatling gun. I got the Gatling – despite being an anachronistic model – for the forces of Nagaoka, who did have two of them, but I've since bought a more period-accurate model that I'll do up eventually, probably.

The Full Lineup

What next?

Well, that now ticks off another entry on the list. I have a few more artillery elements to do, including some, er, recent orders, so I'll hold off on marking those as complete until they really truly are complete. In the meantime that will mean forging ahead again on the infantry.

1. Indian Infantry (complete)
2. Naval Forces (complete)
3. Artillery (mostly complete)
4. British Infantry (1 of 5 battalions complete)
5. Cavalry (not started yet)
6. Support Figures (a few done)

And Incidentally...

Overlord made it into the local papers – with my game in the header image!

The Anglo-Indian Intervention Force in Japan, Part One (Indian Infantry)

For reasons I can no longer really work out, I decided, just as I was starting to build up some decently sized Japanese forces for the 1868-9 Boshin War, that a fun additional project would be doing some British and French expeditionary forces. Should I ever finish the British one, it alone will probably number almost as much as both my Imperial and Shogunate armies put together. Logically of course, that means the latter two ought to be enlarged...

Questionable decisions aside, it's something that I've made fits and starts on in the last year, and that I now feel I ought to make a more determined push on. So, this first post will document the one complete element of these forces so far, that being the Indian infantry, and hopefully that spurs me on to get the rest of these finished in the coming months.

The decision to field Indian troops in this force was made for three reasons. Firstly, why not? Secondly, the hypothetical structure of my expeditionary force was based on a slightly reduced version of the force that made up the British expeditionary force to Peking in 1860, in which each of the four brigades consisted of two British battalions and one Indian. The difference would be that I would have three brigades instead. Thirdly, there were actually Indian troops in Japan for a brief spell in 1864. At the height of the antiforeign crisis during the Chōshū attempt to blockade the Straits of Shimonoseki, two companies of the 29th Bombay Native Infantry (formerly the 2nd Bombay Baluch Regiment) were dispatched to Yokohama to bolster the garrison there, until being withdrawn later that year.

Felice Beato's photograph of the Yokohama garrison at its peak in 1864; the Baluch companies are just right of the centreline in the foreground. 

Slide taken from this video by Prof. Thomas French, who has done a number of talks over the last few years about the British garrison at Yokohama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=944XNCyF6-U

That being said, I actually found out about the Baluchis quite late in the process, so these ended up being a 'bonus' battalion alongside the others. 

It would be gratifying to say I had a particularly good plan for these, but I really didn't. Each unit consists of 16 men, one British Officer, one Native Officer, one NCO, and one musician, for a total of 20. That gives enough for two Groups for Sharp Practice, but is not quite enough to do two units for TMMWBK. (Oops!)

6th Bengal Native (Light) Infantry

It seems to be somewhat of a received wisdom that the British Indian Army broadly wore khaki uniforms after the uprisings of 1857-8 with scarlet reserved for dress uniforms, but in fact scarlet undress remained common for the Bengal Army outside of the Punjab regiments, which specifically chose drab. The 6th BNLI, formerly the 43rd Light Infantry, were among the non-mutineer regiments, and part of the ordinary Bengal army, hence the red. I didn't have good access to uniform guides for the infantry, so what I did here was relatively speculative based on what I could find of turban and facing colours; I was also faced (throughout) with ambiguity over the use of gilt piping by officers, but decided in favour of it for aesthetics' sake. I am happy to be told I am wrong, but will not be repainting these at this time.

All of the Indians are from Artizan's 2nd Anglo-Afghan War range, but with liberal use of Green Stuff to bulk out the puttees into trousers. The British Officer is from Foundry's Indian Mutiny range, without alteration.

10th Bengal Native Infantry

As with the 6th, the 10th were the descendants of a loyalist regiment, the 65th. There seems to be some ambiguity on the turban which ultimately led me to pick the lengthways white stripes on a red base, but it may be that in this earlier period, they had the same sort of turban as the 6th (yellow stripes on blue base) while having yellow facings. Nevertheless, I picked the red and white for distinctiveness.

Also as with the 6th, the Indians are all converted Artizan figures. The British Officer is from the same pack of Indian Mutiny characters as the one for the 6th, but modified from a spiked cavalry helmet to an air-tube type.

45th (Rattray's Sikh) Bengal Native Infantry

The inclusion of a Sikh regiment seemed warranted, and I very nearly went for the 23rd, a Pioneer regiment. I decided, however, that I didn't feel like doing up a load of tools as part of the conversion process, and, inspired by a rendition of them I saw on Will's Toy Soldier Blog, I instead did up a unit of the 45th based on a photo of them in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, during which they wore field service khaki tunics but kept their dress trousers and turbans. It is at this point that I ought to acknowledge that it was only after I finished the Indian infantry that I discovered that their trousers ought to be very dark blue rather than black, but I thought it was not worth going back over them again at this point.

As with the two Jat regiments above, Native Officers and enlisted men are by Artizan; the British Officer is from Foundry. The NCO comes from the pack of Sikh and Askari NCOs in Foundry's Darkest Africa range, hence the anachronistic Martini.

29th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry (or 2nd Bombay Baluch Regiment)

As noted, the Baluchis were somewhat of an afterthought and ultimately a bit of a bodge, but I think they came together nicely. The thing that really distinguishes them is of course their green and red kit, which I think adds a nice extra splash of colour.

The men are somewhat modified Sikh Sepoys from Empress' Indian Mutiny range (possibly formerly Iron Duke?), while the command figures are the Jacob's Rifles command pack by Perry – with added trouser legs! I did consider the Foundry Baluchis, but I decided that I wanted a bit more dynamism and figure variety, and that the Empress Sikhs were close enough, if a little more thickly-bearded than Baluchis of the time would have been. (Note that these are specifically IMBC64BNI rather than 5/6/7/21.)

The Full Lineup

What next?

The way I have conceived of these forces, I have decided to divide them into six relatively sensible and manageable chunks, at varying stages of completion. They are arranged here in the order in which I intend to finish them:

1. Indian Infantry (complete)
2. Naval Forces (mostly complete)
3. Artillery (mostly complete)
4. British Infantry (1 of 5 battalions complete)
5. Cavalry (not started yet)
6. Support Figures (a few done)

On that basis, I'd say I'm about half done with all this. What remains to be done are a couple of naval officers, four more units of infantry (totalling 88 men – three units of 24 and one of 16); four units of cavalry (I forget my exact numbers for these but that'll be between 36 and 48 figures); an extra horse artillery crew; and a variety of odd supporting figures. My plan, ideally, is to finish before the end of the year. This should be viable, but I tend to be pretty slow with cavalry, so let's see how it goes. I also feel like I need a few more field-calibre guns (don't ask why but I decided I wanted a huge siege train and sort of forgot the lighter pieces) so that may also impose a delay. But. It is all getting there.

Welcome!

Hello! This will be the blog where I post about various wargaming things that I get up to. At the moment I'm juggling three projects, all in 28mm:

1. The Boshin War of 1868-9, also known as the Japanese Civil War;
2. An 1860s British force for alternate history scenarios relating to the above; and
3. Feudal Japanese forces.

These are helpfully quite interlinked, but chances are something completely different will start intruding soon enough.