The first play test for the Boxer Rebellion game using TSATF rules went fairly well today, especially considering the announcement for this game was made only a couple of weeks ago on the NHMGS Yahoo Group . In fact, I wasn't exactly clear on who and what armies would be involved; as it turned out I'm the only one with a Japanese army - so that was good. Chris B. is pretty much in charge of this game, and Herbie is supplying mass-quantities of Chinese and some cool terrain. Bruce (who played in my Sharp Practice game a couple of months ago) showed up with some impressive terrain as well as figures. I must say these guys really are into the Boxer Rebellion - and have done extensive research on it.
After spending some time figuring out what kind of scenario to play, the terrain was set up and we broke down units amongst the six players (three Chinese - three damn Legations!). I ran my freshly painted Japanese infantry and cavalry, and two cannon. Bruce loaned me some spare figures as stand-ins to crew the guns. The Japanese were broken down into four units - one 10-man cavalry unit, one 15-man infantry unit, one artillery unit, and one combined 15-man infantry and artillery unit. Oh, and Herbie loaned me a really cool mounted general - a Copplestone Chinese general. I'm going to get one of these guys and paint him up as a Japanese general.
Here are some pictures with captions that I hope I didn't mislabel.
We ended the game after several turns, and having a pretty good idea how the game should be set up for Enfilade. Herbie has a lot more Chinese troops that weren't used, so maybe having several Chinese strongholds as objectives might be a good scenario. Also, allowing the imperialist troops to come on the table at more points may be a good option. All in all, it was a good game - not only did I get the troops I just painted on the table, but I also got to use them in a rule set I had never tried before. I look forward to another round or two of this.
Being NHMGS games day at The Game Matrix today, there were a couple of other historical games going on; Bruce M. running a FoG game with Chinese, and Kevin S. running his Maximillian in Mexico game. Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in the Boxer game I only managed to take a photo of Kevin's game - Bruce had already finished his game.
Looks like you had a great game. I like the way you have done the action report with captions on the photos. I am going to have to try that.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Paul
Paul:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the nice comment; BTW, I've learned (the hard way) that I am sometimes too quick in deleting images after captioning them; I've found errors in the captions and had already deleted the image. If you do try it, you may want to keep the images for a little while - after taking a second look to ensure the captioning is correct. :)! Dean
How do you like playing "TS&TF". A friend lent me his copy (from 1992) and they look like fun.
ReplyDeleteGreat looking Japanese Calvary!
It was a fairly fast-playing game; the rules seemed easy to understand - just needed to consult the charts as this was my first game. I think I understand why they use D20s for firing, but I would prefer D6's for everything - instead of must for movement. In the future, I plan to use The Great War rules for this period also. Dean
ReplyDeleteGreat AAR!
ReplyDeleteI concur w/Paul's compliment about the way you caption your photos.
If your concerned about deleting photos too quickly, I was told you should make copies of all your pics and do all your special effects on the copies. This way if you spot an error during the editing process, you have the original to fix it.
Ted