Indian Mutiny Rules???

[Atheling]

Hi MikeD,

I got a pretty comprehensive reply from Patrick. As I don't have a copy of the rules as of yet it's a little confusing for me but I do get the gist of it.

Here's the reply in full in the event you're interested and for others too:

I can only offer some ideas that we have explored here and certainly will not attempt to tell you what to do, appreciating that in the end how you choose to use any rules is ultimately up to you alone.

First, please find attached an explanation of the approach to mounting figures as now being done for Gone To See The Elephant for the Mexican-American War contemporaneous with the Sikh Wars.  Giving this a quick read will ground you in the latest thinking and may give you some ideas to consider.

Of course, JC is predicated on removing casualties as single stands, and this practice continues in GTSTE.  However, as you see, the new approach uses the ground scale to determine how many men and horses each stand represents, which thus allows miniatures of all scales to use one standard base size.  Thus no adjustments for ground scale from 15mm to 25mm, etc, are necessary.  Unfortunately, none of this addresses your concerns.

The idea of multiple figure bases in the way they have been used forever in the hobby is not well supported by our new direction.  That is, with the Fire Effects table providing losses in terms of individual stands, taking off a stand of two, three, or four figures would double, triple, or quadruple losses at one time--hardly a desirable practice!

So, what might you do to get away from this, and still keep the basic goals of JC?

First, how many bases/stands would make a good number for your purposes?  Presumably you want to have your various battalions to have the same number of bases for their type.  Do you want to move a, say, 16 figure battalion in four bases? Eight bases?  Of course with, say, 4 figure bases you could still allow variations in battalion strengths by adding or subtracting a base, though 2 figure bases would allow for finer distinctions.

Whatever number you find best suits your need, the problem now becomes how to handle casualties from the existing Fire Tables.  The obvious step would be to halve the losses indicated if using 2 figure bases, and quarter them for four figure bases.  This is more work, but there's no reason not to type up a new Casualty Table with the math already done to save time and work during play.  To simplify things even more--and perhaps to make Fire Effects more dramatic--would be not to keep records of fractional losses, but to simply roll a die to see if any resulting fractional casualty is rounded up or down to the nearest whole base.  That would be a simple "50-50" chance with 2 figures stands, and "1-in-4" with the larger stands.

Okay, you've got a possible route to using a few multi-figure bases for each battalion, but what to do about the Skirmishers/Elite Companies?  Well, it seems you have only two choice here (so far as I can see, anyway).  First,
you continue to keep single figure bases for the Elites in each Battalion as the JC rules already call for.  However, this would seem to make the game more complicated, so perhaps the thing to do is give up keeping track of the Elites of each battalion in a given brigade and assume they will be converged as one skirmishing force for the whole.

That is, if each battalion would have only two figures of Elites (or actually only one, three or four) deploy the total of all in the brigade as a single skirmishing force.   This route would still require having Elites mounted singly, and physically removed from their parent battalions to be deployed to the front of the brigade.  Casualties suffered by these troops would still be taken as single stands.

I know none of these ideas are rocket science, and wouldn't be too surprised if you come up with a more workable system.  Indeed, please share your own ideas!

If you find anything interesting about the idea of using ground scale to determine how many men/horses would be represented by base sizes of your own design, allow me to remind you that all the combatants in the Mutiny (save for the Native Irregulars) worked off the same basic drill book, and the figures of two linear feet per man and six per horse would still apply.  Your choice of ground scale could then greatly reduce the number of bases required for battalions/regiments itself.

For example at the nominal 1"-100' in JC, a 600 man battalion would have a Close Order front of 600' in two ranks.  Thus, a 1" base front would represent 60 men, which just happens to match the size of one company with 10 to the battalion.  But that's 10 stands, more or less what the game has now, so no help to your goal.

However, if you made the ground scale 1"=200', you'd have only five stands of two figures each with 2" frontage (though you could keep the Grenadier and Light Infantry companies each on single figure stands).  By the same token, at 1"=300', there'd only be two stands in the battalion, though each would be 3" stands (though here your Skirmishers begin to fall off the chart).  Mind, in all cases you could place as many or as few figures on each stand as you wished.  Their number would be immaterial since, after all, everything is counted by stand/bases, from fire power to close combat.  Still, though, the casualty, resolve, and other tables would have to be recalculated as reducing fractions from the original "single stand" formulations.

So, you asked, and I've answered.  If by any accident something here is of any help, please let me know--I might be as surprised as you are!

In any event, please let me know what your thoughts are.  If they seem to be of potential help to other, I might want to share them with others, too.TVAG

Cheers,
Darrell.

[Juan]

I´m going to test "The Sands of Sudan" when I have enough figures for an small game. I think its game mechanisms are very interesting and there are options for flank companies, patrols, etc.

[Atheling]

I´m going to test "The Sands of Sudan" when I have enough figures for an small game. I think its game mechanisms are very interesting and there are options for flank companies, patrols, etc.

That sounds like a plan if there is multi-basing of the mini's?? 

Darrell.

[mdomino]

Thanks. Patrick Wilson is always very helpful. However, his explanation is the reason I long ago abandoned any hope of using John Company. It wants to be a big battle set of rules using single basing. The QRS is about 8 pages of modifiers and charts. The native irregular horse units are large- 20-30 individually mounted figures. I can't see it playing at anything other than a snail's pace. Nice book though.
Mike D

[Atheling]

Thanks. Patrick Wilson is always very helpful. However, his explanation is the reason I long ago abandoned any hope of using John Company. It wants to be a big battle set of rules using single basing. The QRS is about 8 pages of modifiers and charts. The native irregular horse units are large- 20-30 individually mounted figures. I can't see it playing at anything other than a snail's pace. Nice book though.
Mike D

Oh, looks like I'm going to be buying the Devil's wind again at Salute then! 

I'll try and figure something out re: throwing skirmishers forward from there.....

Darrell.

[sjwalker51]

I think mdomino has it about right regarding JC: the rulebook is worth getting for the background material and other ideas it has within, but the rules are very 1980's in their style, quite clunky with lots of charts and modifiers, and single figure removal that reminds me of WRG 6th edition.

But I've always thought that, if you used casualty markers of some sort to track the figure loss, there's no reason why you shouldn't use multiple bases.

I adapted 'Sharp Practice' mechanisms for my 15mm Sudan games (with one stand of 4 figures representing 80-100 men) and plan to do the same for 28mm Mutiny games, probably at a 1:10 scale - and will include rules for skirmishing light companies and battalions. The typical battalion will therefore be composed of 24-48 figures, on stands of 6-8 figures, and there will be a casualty counter to record both figure losses and 'Shock' (disorder) for each battalion.

[mdomino]

I've been thinking about this for years, since I started collecting IM figures from Foundry. The thing with the Mutiny is the Brits were often severely outnumbered, yet managed to win again and again. How do you model that in a set of rules? Limit the mutineers in their number of commanders, limited actions, poor morale? If you do it by morale, the mutineers are probably unplayable, as their morale will be so poor they will be incapable of acting and so fragile as to rout on first contact. Yes, they did have severe limitations in their command structure, but had several good field commanders.
Sepoy handles this question by suggesting the GM play the mutineers, as they will rarely win. There is essentially no command structure for the mutineers. Depending on how large your mutineer force is, you roll some dice and the total is the number of units who may act on that turn. Keeps the mutineers from being able to coordinate their actions. The Brits have a command structure with plenty of commanders. This system is only suggested for Havelock's march on Cawnpore. The Cawnpore campaign also limits the Brits to their original strengths. Lose too many stands and you lose the campaign. While I do like that, I'm not sure the overall rules are for me, and the Battle of Cawnpore requires a lot of native troops. It would look grand.
I played several test games with the Devil's Wind when it came out, as I was pretty excited to see some new rules. Again, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I don't think it has much flavor. There are no rules laid out for how you move the troops- very much a home written or club set. It is more difficult for formed foot to shoot cavalry than other troops? This is why cavalry stayed away from formed troops in this period- concentrated musket fire. Just little things like that in the rules. Not deal breakers and could be changed. Maybe I should look at them again.
I welcome other thoughts about different rule sets.
Mike D

[Leigh Metford]

I still think Black Powder with no brigade commanders and only an army commander for the mutineers is the simplest, most historically accurate way to represent the command inertia which was the main cause of their repeated defeats. You can still vary the quality of that commander, but even the best rating won't overcome the inherent C & C sluggishness of a single-commander army.   

[huevans]

@ mdomino:

How about a pre game dice roll or some such mechanism to assign values to each Pandy unit - i.e "passive", "motivated", enraged"?

Do the same for each Mutineer commander and severely limit their ability to C&C their troops. You could get a system where most of the units will defend themselves, some will retreat if approached by British troops and some will haphazardly fight in an organized and effective way when commanded.

In terms of the tactical mechanics, I am guessing that British troops' firing and maneuver is similar to experienced ACW troops. Add factors for high motivation and inspirational leaders. Given the desire for revenge and the lack of ability of their opponents, British morale should be very high. But I would also use fatigue and heat exhaustion modifiers.

[mdomino]

Sepoy does model that pretty well, in that the mutineers will do a lot of backpedaling when in range of the enfields. Units that can't act (based on the die roll) can still fire if in range or fight if attacked. Any large scale attack will be pretty disorganized. The Brit army is smaller, well-armed, motivated, and well-led. They can tear up a bunch of mutineer units, but there are a lot of those. Has rules for heat exhaustion (John Company can generate the weather for the specific part of the sub-continent).
I haven't played Black Powder, but I do have a copy. A modified Battles for Empire might also work. I like how the morale/movement charts create a wave like movement of native troops.
Mike D

[Atheling]

Gents,

I still think Black Powder with no brigade commanders and only an army commander for the mutineers is the simplest, most historically accurate way to represent the command inertia which was the main cause of their repeated defeats. You can still vary the quality of that commander, but even the best rating won't overcome the inherent C & C sluggishness of a single-commander army.   

That sounds like it has potential when conbined with the following suggestion:

@ mdomino:

How about a pre game dice roll or some such mechanism to assign values to each Pandy unit - i.e "passive", "motivated", enraged"?

Do the same for each Mutineer commander and severely limit their ability to C&C their troops. You could get a system where most of the units will defend themselves, some will retreat if approached by British troops and some will haphazardly fight in an organized and effective way when commanded.

Worth a try.... I'll ask at the club and see if anyone else has or plans to collect for the Indian Mutiny.

Darrell.

[Atheling]

Sepoy does model that pretty well, in that the mutineers will do a lot of backpedaling when in range of the enfields. Units that can't act (based on the die roll) can still fire if in range or fight if attacked. Any large scale attack will be pretty disorganized. The Brit army is smaller, well-armed, motivated, and well-led. They can tear up a bunch of mutineer units, but there are a lot of those. Has rules for heat exhaustion (John Company can generate the weather for the specific part of the sub-continent).

So no harm in my buying Sepoy at Salute if i can find a copy.....

I haven't played Black Powder, but I do have a copy. A modified Battles for Empire might also work. I like how the morale/movement charts create a wave like movement of native troops.
Mike D

MikeD, I've only played a couple of games but it's easy to pick up. We, at the Durham Club have played a few games of what we call Powdered Barker(!) which was a lot more complicated as you can omagine it being a hybrid of WRg and BP!!   

Darrell.

[Atheling]

Just to cap the thread off, I did manage to get a copy of The Devils Wind from Dave /T at the Durham show but as of yet have not had the enough mini's painted to try the rules out.

I'll report back when I have

Darrell.

[GordonKhartoum]

Darrell

just to "de-cap" the thread briefly.

In my copy there are lots of inconsistencies between the main body of the rules and the summary / playsheet.

I don't have it to hand so can't point out specifics.

We found it simple enough to decide which version suited our game best.

I don't know whether there was a second print run or an errata but would be worth checking for one.

Good set once you iron out the wrinkles.

Mike

[Atheling]

Thanks for the update Mike  .

I'll be on the lookout for errata.

Darrell.

Darrell

just to "de-cap" the thread briefly.

In my copy there are lots of inconsistencies between the main body of the rules and the summary / playsheet.

I don't have it to hand so can't point out specifics.

We found it simple enough to decide which version suited our game best.

I don't know whether there was a second print run or an errata but would be worth checking for one.

Good set once you iron out the wrinkles.

Mike