15mm Back of Beyond using 'Red Hordes'

[sukhe_bator]

Got in a none too frequent wargame with my son over the weekend... this time we tried out 'Red Hordes', a Russian Civil War HotT variant available free online...
http://web.archive.org/web/20050314172242/www.jenruss.plus.com/mad/rules/RedHordes.html
We opted for a border clash between Bolshevik forces and my Warlord Chinese using my 15mm Back of Beyond forces.

Having used DB* rules for pre-gunpowder games before we were interested to see how it handed more modern warfare. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. After dusting off my copy of HotT, we still fell foul of the usual newbie mistakes like 'whose bound is it?', particularly with the ever shifting initiative rolls, and the rule that slower artillery fires in the opponents bound and not your own was hard to keep in mind with our brains befuddled by the heat of the day. That being said when played by the inexperienced with a little latitute it proved to be a highly enjoyable friendly game.

There are 24 Army points to allocate between troop types averaging at around 12 elements plus a general. Infantry and Cavalry are 2 points per element, Artillery 3, tanks/armoured cars 2-3 pts, and MGs 1-2pts. I am tempted to introduce house rules for variable troop quality in future games along the line of other DBM games.

Using this I came up with an army list for both sides thus;

Bolsheviks

General +
1 Artillery
2 MGs
8 Cavalry
1 Armoured car

Chinese

General+
1 Artillery
2 MGs
4 Infantry
4 Cavalry
1 Light tank

Camps were represented by lorries at each players table edge, and we opted to include limbers for the artillery more for visual effect than anything. We added house rules for guesstimating artillery ranges before rolling to-hits. We gave the A/Cs a 270 degree arc of fire, since they had turrets. They proved to be lumberingly slow and annoying hardpoints difficult to KO, so behaved much as expected. We didn't see how vulnerable they were to artillery fire since we exchanged counterbattery fire for much of the game. I eventually took out the Red A/C with almost point blank and sustained MG fire. We chose not to use the Co-opt subversion rules this time round, but the occasional reinforcements rule worked favourably for the Chinese, though I'm not sure how you'd calculate victory conditions easily. After some humiliatingly indifferent firing the Chinese acquitted themselves admirably in close combat and though our game was more a death match to get to know the rule mechanics better, after half time the tide turned well and truly against the Bolsheviks.

A few shots of the game in progress.
The Chinese force splits in two to traverse the wood



The main Chinese force swings left to punch through the Red centre spearheaded by the A/C ...And the Reds do likewise, committing their main cavalry force and General, supported by their own A/C...