A small skirmish on the NWF

[Furt]

Had a good game of Triumph & Tragedy set in the NWF, loosely based on the TSATF scenario "the Patrol". The idea is that a British patrol must repair a sabotaged telegraph cable within a small village while the dastardly Pathans come down from the hills and cause them havoc. Unfortunately I had to guess on the exact numbers of Pathans compared to British and rightly ballsed it up! The Brits made short work of the Pathans and were never truly threatened. To add injury to insult the Bengal cavalry reinforcements arrived on turn 1, the ancient Pathan cannon exploded on the first shot and when a furious mob of tribesmen finally did swarm the British screw gun, the wily Lieutenant chose to detonate the explosives he had hidden there, denying them the satisfaction. All in all a fun game with need of some tweaks to make it more playable.

The initial setup


The British in the village


The most forward barricade


The Guides and the Engineers


The screw gun


Lieutenant Sir Simon Carfax


The Pathans!


The hills are swarming (with not enough) Pathans


The (barely missed) cavalry arrive!


An archaic gun is rolled into place - it looks unlikely they'll get to fire it


The opening shots of the game. The Pathans suffered heavily from the great rolls and masses of suppression delivered by the Brits


Redeploying British after their scouts determined that this side of the table was bare of hidden Pathans


The Bengal lancers turn to face a hidden threat...


...that includes a Pathan sharpshooter


The Pathans fire is less effective...


...and the cannon explodes on it's inaugural shot


The Pathans swarm the village where the Brits have fallen back


But there is still too many defending!


The Pathans are caught in a killing zone where the Guides and screw gun come to bare


A hidden unit of swordsmen make a fanatical charge for the screw gun but...


the British have the last laugh as they detonate explosives that they had hidden there!

We fell back comfortably into playing T&T and only got caught up with the Suppression rules a bit, which after reading again after playing, won't prove an issue next time. I would strongly reduce the amount of units the Brits have next time along with the amount of good cover I provided them in the village. The Pathan's range advantage with their jezails could not be taken advantage of due to the table size, so would probably reduce the footprint of the village as well. The 2 Guide units were both Elite and they proved very effective in combat, so would probably drop them to Veteran. It was just nice to get these figures on the table and have a good laugh - "Pot that fella with the turban would you".

[OSHIROmodels]

Splendid show Frank, good to see you going at it again 

Maybe have the Pathans coming on from two sides to split the British defence?

cheers

James

[jamesmanto]

Excellent looking game.
The rest is just details

[Miantanomo]

Great game and well painted Brits!

[Furt]

Thanks gents. 

Maybe have the Pathans coming on from two sides to split the British defence?

It's true the bulk of the Pathans came from one end, but there were 2 hidden Pathan units lurking on the sides. These were meant to pose more of a threat than they actually did, as I wanted the Brits to have to consider a possible attack from 3 directions. In retrospect a pincer attack and hidden units might work.

[guitarheroandy]

Great looking game!

You could also try 'recycling' dead Pathans, e.g. every 16 dead Pathans create a new unit that dices for deployment, with a maximum number of 'recycles' randomly decided before the game - this works best if you have an umpire who decides this - keeps both players guessing then. Reasonably historical too, as the British would have had no idea about numbers facing them and even the tribal leaders wouldn't be 100% sure who else would turn up to join in the 'fun'...

[Malamute]

Wonderful stuff. I always love looking at your games. Its all the little details in the set up. Marvellous!

[Dr DeAth]

Jolly nice game, and an interesting scenario to boot - maybe hidden movement for the Pathans, or let them deploy a few units in close to the British before the start, representing them sneaking up on Brits before launching an attack?

[Harry Faversham]

No wonder the British triumphed, Perfidious Albion at it's sneakiest, in my 'umble opinion. Rigging the Screw gun to blow up in the Pathans's faces... just isn't cricket, is that, old chap!

[Driscoles]

Heyyyy.....looks great...Very nice table, great miniatures.
The British are dangerous in a good defensive position.
You may try the scenario again with little modifications and maybe the event cards ?
Thanks for sharing the game report.
Cheers
Björn

[Marine0846]

Great report.
Love the terrain.

[d phipps]

Such beautiful miniatures! It is great to see them in action. 

[S_P]

Lovely game report.

[Furt]

Thanks for all the compliments guys. A lot of great advice to getting these Pathans to pull their weight! The Brits won't stand a chance next time!

[FifteensAway]

But, where, oh, where, is the water carrier practicing his bugle calls!?   

Threw me with the first image of the red British buildings - rather weird, I thought - until I looked closer and realized you'd colorized things.  And a good thing, too, because I didn't care for the 'river' in that same image!   

Clearly, the scenario (from the rules) was inspired by a certain well known movie.