Monday 16 August 2010

DBACrimea1 - Breakout from Calamita Bay

Poor old Turkey...

The Allied Army has landed at Calamita Bay.  Lord Cardigan is placed in command of the advanced force with orders to push forward & protect the beachead.  A sizeable Russian force has orders to attack the beach, game on!

For these particular games, we'll be using an article from Wargames Illustrated, it has basic troop types & factors.  It is only a small article, but it was a nice change & reflects troop characteristics of the time.

WI 101 Crimea DBA'd

 For our little game we went with the armies that appeared in the two previous posts.  The British would go with a 12 element army, while the Russians would have more elements but of a lesser troop quality.  That would mean that the Russians would have 6 breakpoint, the British 4.

Breakout from Calamita Bay initial set-up
The Russians would start with ALL their elements on the table.  The Brits would have only Cardigan & some of the Light Cavalry Brigade, the Rifle Brigade & Highlanders.  Other units would arrive as PiPs would allow each turn later.


The Russians! Main Infantry force in column on the road.


Cardigan leads forward the British Hussars & Light Dragoons.
The Rifles move quickly through the village.
The Russians would attack the village in force.
The Highlanders arrive!
Cardigan deploys the Light Cavalry.
In go the Russians...painfully slowly...
BOOM! The British Horse Artillery takes out some Cossacks.
Russian firepower forces back the Rifles!
The firefight was intense... A British loss
The battle for the village, the Russians press hard.
The British Horse Artillery strike again!
Cardigan prepares for a charge!
The Rifles prove their quality.
The Russians smash into the Highlanders.
With Even results....
CCCHHHHAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGEE!!!!!
The Highlanders battle through.. helped by a poor Russian die roll
The Russians are winning the battle for the village though.
The British Cavalry are on a roll!
Victory for the British as another Russian Infantry is put to the sword...
Final positions...

RaHoo for the British!  The forces move on from Calamita Bay..   A nice little game, the troop characteristics worked well, the Russians were slow but tough fighters.  Pity that the Russian Artillery didn't get involved, they were out of range & in the end PiPs never went to them.  The British Horse Artillery was brilliant, the Cossacks were poor, something to take into the next games.

8 comments:

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

I loved both the posts about the two armies and the one about the first of what I hope will be several Crimean War battles!

All the best,

Bob

MrF said...

Cheers Bob. Yes hopefully we'll get a few more games done. The French are up next.

Cheers
MrF

John Meunier said...

Great report and pictures.

It really shows the range of the DBA game mechanics to reflect special situations and characteristics.

The lancer rule is particularly interesting.

Anonymous said...

As usual Mr F. you've caught the right mood again. I always love your reports (even in the Crimea isn't one of my favourites) and I especially like your graphics. Super!

Steve

Chris J said...

Hi,

I've been enjoying your blog very much. Regarding the Crimea, have you modified the rules to reflect the fact that the British fired rifle-muskets, while the Russians still used smoothbores? (Their skirmishers did have rifle-muskets, but there was only 1 battalion per corps, which amounts to virtually nil.) Inferior weaponry is one reason why they kept losing, but I suspect changing the ranges like this would put the game completely out of reach for the Russians. That would certainly be no fun, which is the whole point of it to begin with!

Your armies look great. Financial constraints are forcing me to do this in plastic, but fortunately there are a plethora of nice plastic figures right now!

Best regards,

Chris Johnson

MrF said...

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.

Chris, I suspect the very low fire factor for the Russian troops in the Crimea DBA'd rules covers what you have said. It was however a bit of a shock them having a very high melee factor, especially when in the last game Jack's Russians piled into my Highlanders! I'll take care for the next one. Ze French vs oh those Russians - coming soon!! Good luck in your project.

Chris J said...

My apologies if this is rehashing something you've gone over many times in the past, but I'm wondering what the skulls mean--is this where a stand was eliminated?

Chris

MrF said...

Yes mate, it does. We used to add the skull graphic during editing the photos. It became easier just printing out a card version & then placing it before taking the pic.

Cheers
MrF