Conference of Wargamers 2025 - Part 2

Up bright and early Sunday morning so I can have a leisurely breakfast before running my China game. As mentioned in the previous post I had broken the back of setting up, and just needed to set out the figures.

Alan Paull and Peter Grizzell played the British, with Ian & Nigel Drury playing the Chinese. Unusually for one of my games they are on the same side, rather than knocking seven bells out of each other as only brothers can do. I put out the Chinese artillery for them and the gate guards, but otherwise gave them a free hand. Ian had the Red Mandarin, who defends the West Gate, and Nigel the Blue Mandarin who has the half of the City with the bastion.

Alan took Bartley's brigade to attack the West Gate, and Peter had Schoedde's to attack the bastion.

As you can see on the left I'd laid out the Mah Jong and Rummikub tiles in order so I could grab what I needed quickly, rather than scrabble about in the bag.

The Palace is controlled by the Green Mandarin, who is in overall command. He is protected by a jingal team and a whole load of Tiger Men. Any attempt to call on him for aid will be greeted by the remarks that he is with his concubine, smoking an opium pipe and is not to be disturbed.

The Chinese are deployed. A headless Ian sits back and contemplates the cunning nature of his deployments. He needs to be reminded that competence at military command is not necessarily a plus as far as his career in the Chinese civil service is concerned.

Turn one, and Peter launches an immediate assault on the bastion. He is supporting the attack with artillery from the hill top, and has moved up his other unit of sepoys to cover the ladder parties.

Alan has moved up to the gates, his sappers are to the fore, inspecting the gate.

The attack on the bastion takes a curious turn. The European Regiment refuses to attack, so the burden is shouldered by a sepoy battalion. The jingal units fire in a desultory fashion, before fleeing. The sepoys are up and over the wall before you know it.

The Naval party with artillery support overshoot the landing point, losing their bearings amidst the mass of canal side buildings*. Ian reinforces the gate bastion, and complains that I won't let him fire his artillery at targets the other side of the buildings up against the walls.

Alan now had to ponder how much of his explosives to use to blow the gate in. He needs to roll a number between 10 and 14 (he doesn't know exactly what) and he has 8 dice to use. How many should he use and how many should he hold back against future events?

Nigel is consulting the handy formation cheat sheet I drew up on a flip chart whilst he works out how to respond to the bastion attack. His artillery has held off the supporting sepoys, who are suffering badly.

So badly, in fact, that they fall back on the boats.

Photo (c) Ian Drury

At the other end of the table, Alan had men commandeering any native boats he could find to cross the canal.

Photo (c) Ian Drury

Alan chose to use all eight of his demolition dice on the main gate. Needing 12, he rolled 30. This blew in the main gate and inflicted 9 points of damage on the inner gate**. "What inner gate is that?" he asked. "The one at the back of the gate tower" was the reply. "Oh damn. Where's my artillery?"

Peter's sepoys were pushing into the bastion, facing some unexpectedly stiff resistance.

The European regiment finally got their ladders up and went over the wall.

The sepoys led from the front by M-G Schoedde broke the Chinese musketeers, and engaged the supporting spearmen. With their MV now halved, the sepoys would need some luck to break out of the bastion.

Pete's Europeans encountered some unusually tough resistance and their initial assault was repulsed.

Photo (c) Ian Drury

Alan has got the naval gun onto the bridge, whilst his group of Jolly Tars exchange fire with the jingals on the wall.

Alas at the point we ran out of time in the session. Two hours wasn't enough, especially after Pete had some bad luck with his European regiment. Alan had also had issues with his naval boat and gun who overshot the required mooring. And his Marines with the ladder, who seemed to have mislaid their oars and never got to the action.

The players all enjoyed themselves, they said. We could could have run for another hour, as most/all of the players hadn't signed up for a game in the next session (there were talks on). However, someone had asked if they could use the room after me, so I shut it down and started to pack up. I was slightly miffed when it turned out the room wasn't required after all.

That was it for my games over the weekend. I sat and had a series of interesting conversations about history, games and related subjects, which I think will be useful.

Then an excellent roast pork lunch, a brief WD AGM and then back in the car for the drive home, accompanied by the cricket commentary. 

Difficult to improve on any of that.

*This did actually happen.

** 30 points of explosion minus 12 for the gate leaves 18 points. Historically the outer gate was blown off its hinges and through the inner gate that was open already. The unrevealed rule was that any points over the strength of the first gate were halved and applied to the inner gate. Hence 9 points of damage.