Friday 17 July 2020

Night raid at Stolinchnaya : RCW

Catching up again from a battle played a couple of weeks ago. This time a Russian Civil War encounter, I have found with these virtual games the addition of some slightly more complex objectives or scenario rules helps keep the enthusiasm. So I set this battle as a night raid, the Reds are seeking to break across the River at the small village of Stolinchnaya. The Whites have posted two units overnight the three potential crossing the river only being crossable at those designated points. The Reds do not know what forces or the quality of the forces on picket duty. The Reds will come on with designated tokens for each unit these will only be revealed, if they shoot or can be spotted. Spotting mechanism using a D6  under 6” automatic no body is that quiet !, under 9” a roll of 1 or 2 , up to  12” 1, 2 or 3 increasing at increments of 3” up to 21” where a 6 is needed. Simple but it seemed effective and worked. No units still in hiding can be shot at or assaulted. The overall objective for the reds is to get across the river an establish a legitimate legitimate Bridgehead. Initially we started with the idea of 6 or 7 turns but the slow cautious sneaky advance of the reds meant we extended to allow them to make best use of the cover they had from the darkness.

The two crossings and the pickets were randomly selected and as it happens the bridge in the centre was undefended !
The Reds advance, their commander has written down each unit on a piece paper (Old school !)
The White reserves are only allowed to come onto the battlefield when the first Red unit is spotted and the alarm raised, luckily this occurred turn two, the whites have brought a new weapon in the form of a Whippet Tank
The Whites advance at speed and include some Cossack cavalry
Oddly the first unit to be spotted in the Red Commander , but perhaps not surprising as he is carrying a great big red flag, other Red units have already made it under darkness to the bridge but still they have not been revealed
This means the whites have little idea where the push is going to come or which crossing is likely to be the focus of any assault
Finally an armoured car is revealed tracking along the river bank
On the right the Reds have finally decided to assault even though they don’t know what to expect over the river
Lucky for them it turns out to be a unit of local partisans , they do however catch the Reds in the river with a strong volley before being assaulted and driven off
In the centre the Reds are across the river still with out being spotted
......and are across the river and into the church yard on the left, not looking good for the whites
...however, the Reds on the right have been cut down by machine gun fire
And there is a chance the Cossacks might be able to clear the church yard
They charge in at full pelt driving the first unit away
But are then cut down themselves, the ‘white’ infantry charge in on the unit of Sailors
And after a hard struggle force them back in to the river..a glimmer of hope ?
But the whites have no answer to the armoured car which is hidden from the White artillery by the church until it is too late and onto the road
The only option is to try a speculative and highly dubious assault on the vehicle when this fails and the White Commander is killed the whites know the game is up and withdraw.

A victory to the reds, although we judged it only a minor victory as they had paid a very high price. As always a fun game. The night raid/spotting mechanism worked really well giving a different feel as the two side were very close together when the action kicked off. I am looking at getting some more RCW figures painted and have recently been adding shoulder boards to convert some Reds to Whites ! I also need more colourful banners and am working on these as well having finally found some decent flags on the internet.

One more game to catch up on....hope you are all keeping well :)

21 comments:

  1. A nice action with the tension nicely captured, the Whippet looks great on the table.

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    1. Thanks Norm as to be expected the tank is not overpowering effectively being an armoured machine gun carrier.

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  2. Splendid as usual Matt and that Whippet looks just the ticket. It was not all white on the night it appears.

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    1. Thanks Phil I'm not sure how the reds squeezed it, they got off to a very slow start, the darkness mechanism worked quite well at this scale so will be trying this again in the future

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  3. Looks great, Matt! This period certainly has a lot of interesting looking vehicles.

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    1. Thanks Jonathan....and yes part of the attraction of the period is the quirky nature of the vehicles, which allows a wargamer to collect in quite a whimsical way. The idea of the project was always to keep the battles fairly small effectively large skirmish level where the tanks and bigger guns are merely advising colour, although the Austin armoured car is proving quite deadly in games so far.

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  4. Cracking game Matt, I really love the look of this period - so many interesting units and vehicles.

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    1. Thanks Michael ......a fun period to collect and paint but my it is complex !

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  5. Smashing game! Splendid table! A real joy to follow through. Re your earlier post, the Whippet looks fine doesn't it?

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    1. Thanks David very kind, yes I think in situ the whippet looks fine and certainly from the 3 foot distance of the wargamer passes muster.

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  6. Looks good Matt, BA certainly plays well, semi-solo and as I have found can easily be tweaked for multiple scales and periods.
    Cheers
    Stu

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    1. Thanks Stuart I have been meaning to write down some small amendments we use so I don’t forget them, but never seem to have the time ?

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  7. A splendid looking game...
    And a great little scenario... I may have steal that for a future game...

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Thank Aly, would be a pleasure to see you play it out in a different set up, I think we will....in fact you have already given me the idea 👍

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  8. Great AAR! 😀 How are you doing the virtual set up? Is it still a tablet on a stick in a fixed position?

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    1. Thanks Stew, yes I have kept the technical setup simple with zoom and using my iPad as the camera. Seems to work ok in a fixed position as long as the table isn’t too big so I keep them to 4x4 feet. Obviously not ideal but way better than no gaming at all.

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  9. Impressive gaming again, Matt! Some of the locals here are very much into RCW too.

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    1. Thanks Dean.....a very interesting period, more colourful than you think, and full of ‘flavour’ as it wasn’t overly technological.

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  10. Splendid looking game, the whippet looks ace!
    Best Iain

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