Return to the River Don. Again.

The playtesting for the RCW rules carries on, with me trying to work out some of the little niggles that aren't sitting right. I'm happy with the main mechanisms, it's just getting the factors and values exactly right. I've been fiddling around with the Will to Combat (WTC) numbers and the armour movement and hit outcomes.

Tuesday saw an initial offer of seven players, but ill health and other things brought it down to four, two on line and two in Shedquarters. We were also trialling a shift to Google Meet from Zoom, which caused some issues at first. 

Phil & Will were the Reds to the right, Patrick and Richard were Whites to the left. Phil & Patrick were in Shedquarters. The Whites have a slight advantage in quality - the Red & White cap units are VERY good, but the Reds have the edge in numbers. Quite a few poorer quality troops in one aspect or the other about on both sides.

With Phil not having use of his left arm still he has developed/is developing a technique for using a tape measure as it is hard to extend it using only one had.  I should probably bring out as couple of conventional rulers for him to use in future.

Soon he had his cavalry up and lining the edge of the wood.

Richard and Patrick had their artillery in place and ready to fire - next turn.

In the interim to protect it they brought up their armoured cars and a unit of infantry, deploying the latter in line.

Undeterred, Phil drove his armoured cars into the middle of the position and opened fire. It put the proverbial Red cat amongst the White pigeons, although they did not inflict a lot of damage. Their bravery inspired their colleagues, who therefore did not need to take NYET/DA! tests for the rest of the turn. One vehicle, however, succeeded in stalling its engine. As a side note, this is the sort of the thing I want to happen more. Armoured cars I'd like to see being used early in the turn to inspire the troops, but I haven't got this quite right. Richard is too frightened of his vehicles blowing up on the current odds so I need to do something to alter the odds and tempt him in whilst still making the players run a little risk

The armoured car random event meant that Phil & Will were able to send their conscripts forwards without the aid of the Cheka.

Patrick wasn't confident enough in his armoured cars and artillery to deal with the Red threat, and sent forwards some conscripts with orders to close assault them.

Patrick also moved his cars up, and pulled one of them off the road, where it immediately got stuck in the mud. However, the concentrated MG fire on the rear Red car succeeded in causing damage to the gear linkage, making it twice as hard to move it.

Some rounds from the field gun caused some conventional damage to the lead Red car.

Returning fire, the lead Red car continued to shoot up the Officer battalion in line, whilst the rear vehicle caused severe damage to the engine of the White car on the road.

Sure he'd done enough softening up, Phil launched his Red Cavalry at the infantry in line. I was less sure about the efficacy of this action.

Despite a lot of bases being damaged because they're an Officer battalion they simply drop from rolling d10s to d8s when firing, which reduces their hit probability by 12.5% from 1/2 to 3/8s. They made the most of it, wiping the horse men out before they made contact.

Patrick then followed up by charging into the wood with his other Officer battalion, driving off the surviving tchanka from the cavalry regiment.

The Reds now tried to shell the infantry line, but were a bit wayward, and caught the White cavalry instead.

Richard immediately took the "run away" option, and bolted from under the bombardment.

Unable to restart the engines, and pummelled at short range, the front Red car burst into flames. 

Having disposed of the tchanka the White caps battalion lined the edge of the wood. In response, Phil put a unit into line, and opened fire.

His fire was devastating. The Whites needed to reorganise, but only had one action left in the turn, so it would need to wait to next turn...meaning winning the initiative would be vital if they survived this turn.

However, before the Whites could win the initiative the Reds stuck in another round of shooting, then charged them in the flank. This picture is posed, as I took it after I'd removed the hit rings...

...because the Whites broke and fled, leaving a lot of bodies behind.

To make matters worse, the Red artillery finally got the range of the White infantry.

The Whites decided that they needed to develop their right flank, and sent some conscripts out to face off the Red conscripts hiding in the wood.

These Red conscripts were the "advance guard" for the rest of their regiment moving up through the trees.

As you can see the Red right wing is forming up defensively as the White cavalry try to work round their flank. The centre is turning towards the Whites, as the second Red car also catches fire.

The disabling of the second Red car meant that the Whites could now move up the road towards the crossing.

We'd been playing for about three hours and got in two full turns. That's a lot less than last week, but with slightly more kit but a pretty much completely new player and some new software.

I have a busy next few days, so I've left the game up for completion next week, possibly with the addition of some reinforcements.

As the saying goes, tune in next week for the finale of this thrilling instalment.