The Wessex Wargamers Winchester participation game – Get to the Compound! – won the second place award for Best Participation game at Warfare 2016. Congratulations to Colin, Caesar, Alan, Andy and everyone else who helped to playtest or play the game on the two days at Warfare this year.
We can now reveal the results of Turn One of the Back of Beyond campaign.
Brigadier (Retd.) Cholmondely Warner of the British Museum Expedition and Wei Phat Mac, the Chinese Warlord, both won their battles so will now advance one step closer to Urga and are, therefore, five steps away from the campaign objective.
The Wessex Wargamers Winchester participation game at Warfare this weekend is Get to the Compound! – an automotive post-apocalyptic car chase using the Gaslands rules. The team have put together a fast moving game which really captures the action, with players manoeuvring to blast each other’s vehicles to scrap metal, while racing to get to the end of the track in true Mad Max style. The game will also be running tomorrow, so why not drop by and take part.
This year Wessex Wargamers Winchester will be running yet another participation game at the Warfare show in Reading on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November.
The game is currently being play tested to destruction, which is quite appropriate as the theme is an automotive post-apocalypse race across the wastelands, using a range of converted toy cars and a new set of rules currently in development, which you will be able to find out much more about at the show.
Please drop by and say hello to Colin, Alan, Andy and Caesar, who will be running the game over the two days. There will also be the opportunity to take part, so why not give it a go!
WORKERS! PEASANTS! COMRADES!
The recent cowardly and unprovoked attack by imperialist counter revolutionary forces on the Third Workers and Peasants Shock Brigade must not sway us from our duty to spread the message of proletarian revolution to the downtrodden masses of Mongolia!
It is a mere inconsequential set back that we face in our inevitable and irrepressible onward progress to Urga. There we will be able to provide fraternal support to our Mongolian brothers and sisters, as they struggle to overcome the decadent repressive bourgeois counter revolutionary forces of imperialist aggression that have so recently sabotaged our efforts.
It is clear that these saboteurs must have infiltrated our ranks and caused our tanks to blow up and our aircraft to crash in flames! Only such an underhand and cowardly wrecking can explain the outcome of our battle with the British Museum and it’s so called archaeological expedition, a shabby camouflage for an imperialist counter revolutionary intervention no less!
Fear not Comrades, for I have telegrammed a full report of this dastardly attack to our central party apparatus, in which I have requested armoured train reinforcements to replace our losses and to bring the full might of proletarian justice to bear on these capitalist agents of reactionary repression.
Onward to Victory!
Comrade Colonel Igor Tubugerov
(big words by People’s Commissar Nasti Tchestikov)
As previously reported by Wei Phat Mac himself no less, this was a decisive victory for the Chinese Warlord and his fanatically loyal rag tag army. It started well for the eponymous generalissimo, with a Special Character, the shady arms dealer Herbert Maximoff, providing a captured Red Army Austin armoured car as a temporary reinforcement for the Chinese.
This enabled the Chinese Warlord to deploy his army in a pincer formation, using the armoured cars to protect his flanks whilst advancing in the centre with his cavalry and infantry, holding the elite Dare to Die and Assault troops in reserve. The Japanese responded by deploying their infantry and cavalry in extended line using a combined arms approach, covered by an armoured car, supporting artillery and heavy machine guns.
In the initial turns, the centre ground became the scene of a hard fought fire fight, with the Japanese infantry and cavalry advancing to meet the Chinese forces. Both sides suffered crippling casualties in the exchange of rifle and machine gun fire, although the Japanese seemed to take the brunt of the damage. Before long the action descended in to a series of hand to hand melees, with the cavalry and infantry of both sides engaged in a slogging match to decide the day.
In the end, the hand to hand close combat took a massive toll on both the Chinese and the Japanese forces but the weight of fire from the Chinese armoured cars, the stubbornness of the Chinese foot troops in the melee and the cumulative losses on the Japanese side led to the Chinese sweeping the field. The Imperial Japanese commander, General Sushi Miyagi, ordered a fighting retreat and the disciplined remnants of his once proud army disengaged to fight another day.
A humdinger indeed and a great start to the campaign!
Governor Wei Phat Mac and his loyal troops today showed what a poorly armed but well led and motivated body of soldiers could achieve.
The chinese went forward on all fronts and attacked the Japanese at every opportunity, indeed they showed aggressiveness almost to the point of foolhardiness, using the japanese tactics against themselves and continuing to attack in waves of troops against supposedly professional soldiers.
With calvary and armoured cars on both flanks they crushed the enemy who continually moved his heavy ordnance to try and counter the pincer but ultimately got destroyed having inflicted minimal losses on the chinese.
Of special note was calvaryman Cho who single handedly swept around the enemy rear and only due to his tired horses stumble at the final moment of close quarter fighting with the japanese general did he lose his life as he fell on to the enemies blade, thus failing to deliver his own killing stroke.
These attacks were cheered on by Wei Phat Mac and his sword waving friend Eric Wong whose colleage knelt at his feet in awe of the troops bravery.
Tonite Wei and his closest aides and colleagues enjoy the fruit of their victory drinking good scotch whisky and enjoying the company of some Japanese concubines found in the enemy camp,
The first game in the Back of Beyond club campaign turned out to be a complete debacle for the Third Workers and Peasants Shock Brigade and its commander, Comrade Colonel Igor Tubugerov. Although accompanied by Vladimir Proletarski, the ace Soviet secret agent and rabble rouser, the Bolsheviks got off to a bad start by failing to win over the enemy’s Mongol cavalry contingent to the revolutionary cause.
The British Museum Archaeological Expedition then proceeded to run rings around the Reds and shot them to pieces, using a combination of machine gun armed improvised vehicles, a heavy armoured car, an HMG and a mountain gun, whilst the Bolsheviks ran for the nearest cover in the woods. The Red’s Schneider tank and fighter aircraft were knocked out early in the game leaving the infantry scrambling into the treeline under a hail of machine gun bullets.
Meanwhile, the British Museum expedition party enjoyed a lovely picnic in their own neck of the woods, with Brigadier Cholmondely-Warner providing a very decent lapsang souchong to accompany the scones. The picnic was disturbed at one point by a low flying Bolshevik aircraft but this was dealt with by Ms Muggins of the Asian Antiquities Department, using her Lewis gun. This was the only taste of action for the British expedition team itself, so they settled down to their refreshments and politely ignored the awful din.
In the end the Reds were cut off and surrounded by Mongol cavalry, Chinese coolies and the advancing British improvised armoured vehicles, which seemed to be virtually invulnerable to the machine gun fire and artillery shells of the Bolshevik defenders. At the end of Turn Four, Comrade Colonel Igor Tubugerov decided to do exactly that, with a full retreat from the field of battle before the whole army was bagged by Cholmondely-Warner’s tea party.
I’m sure that a slightly different and ideologically correct version of events will be presented by the Third Workers and Peasants Shock Brigade mobile propaganda concert party at some point very soon?
It’s the first turn of the Back of Beyond multiplayer club campaign and tomorrow will see two of the three battles that are taking place this turn, fought out at Badger Farm Community Centre between the rival opposing forces.
The first game will involve the Third Peasants and Workers Shock Brigade under Comrade Colonel Igor Tubugerov, taking on the stiff upper lipped English gentlemen and ladies of the British Museum Archaeological Expedition, under the unflappable leadership of Brigadier (Retd.) H.W.A. Cholmondely Warner. Who knows what will happen?
The second game is a more conventional clash between the Imperial Japanese Army flying column of General Sushi Miyagi and the rag tag but fanatical army of Chinese Warlord, His Excellency Wei Phat Mac. This promises to be a bit of a hum dinger, especially as both sides will be bringing some ‘interesting’ and effective units to battle and quite a lot of supporting ironmongery.
A full after action report for both of these momentous military matters will no doubt follow, once the dust has well and truly settled.