"Questions on Steve Winter Last Outpost Rules" Topic

Hello,

I'm hoping to scare up someone (perhaps even Steve Winter!) who either played in or is familiar with "The Last Outpost" game & rules depicted on the venerable Colonial Angle website:

link

The rules are posted there, as is a game report (from Cold Wars 2000), and I've been wanting to try this game out myself for years, but have been puzzling over some points that just aren't clear to me. So, I'm finally taking this step to see if someone out there in the collective mind of TMP is familiar enough to answer the following:

1. The rules state that the natives start with 120 figures. So far, so good, and that there are 24 "casualty markers" that might be involved, which "resurrect" 5 figure each. However, the rules are silent about whether you start with 120 natives for each assault, and whether or not casualty counters are regenerated or not. The game description says that there were 200 natives in the first assault. It doesn't specify how many were in the second assault, but says that the natives passed morale and fought until they were entirely wiped out. It says that the third assault had 180 natives. This would seem to suggest regeneration (but how the two assaults could have been more than 120 figures is unclear). It says that there was no fourth assault, but had there been one, it would only have had 114 natives, a drastic difference, and less than the starting 120, which indicates some carry over.

Questions: Why would there only have been 114 natives figures in the fourth assault as opposed to 120? How could the first two assaults have been more than 120 figures?

2. The battle report says that the first assault failed when native morale broke at 25% of the total number of figures. It also says, though, that the third assault had more discrete morale results, with some "waves" failing and others fighting on.

Questions: Is the native morale based on the entire assault or by individual wave or group? Do subsequent waves launched against the same wall section combine with earlier ones for morale purposes? If they combine, how do you calculate the overall percentage?

3. "Casualty figures" in general. Given that these only replace lost figures, the actual native figure count would seem to still be limited to 120 figures.

Questions: How do you actually take "casualty counters" into effect when determining morale? What does it mean when it says that resurrected figures are placed at the "back" of their original wave (wouldn't that, technically, make them another wave if they start "off table"?) If they're still in the "off table" approaches, do they count for morale purposes for the on-table wave?

Well, for anyone who is still reading, thanks. And if anyone has played these rules and has any insights, I would be appreciative of your input.

Best,
Ed M

Steve Winter just signed up today, so he won't be able to comment until Monday. If you can wait that long, he'll be happy to answer your questions.

Since this topic will roll off the bottom of the page by then, would you mind reposting on Monday?

Thanks, Don! Will do.

Best,
Ed M

Bump (as suggested)

Ed;

I'm pleased to hear someone is still interested in these rules.

I'll start by tackling what seems to be at the heart of your confusion -- casualty markers.

First, "casualty marker" is a terrible name that I regret using, because they don't mark casualties at all. From here on, I'm going to call them replacement tokens.

I use them because I have only 120 dervish figures, which isn't enough for the game. So, one replacement token = five figures. If an assault goes off in my game (where I have just 120 figures) and it consists of 155 dervishes, then that assault will go in with 120 miniature dervishes and seven replacement tokens (155 – 120 = 35; 35 / 5 = 7). Replacement tokens move just like other miniatures, but each one represents five figures. For simplicity, I keep them at the back of the wave, and whenever five casualties have been removed from the front, I remove one replacement token and replace it with five dervishes from that wave's dead pool. That's all there is to it. A replacement token is nothing more than a stand-in for five dervish figures that I don't have.

Second, the difference between assaults and waves. All the dervishes involved in an assault turn make up one "assault." Those figures are divided into separate "waves," with each wave directed at a different portion of the compound.

Each assault begins with 120 dervishes. Successful sniping gets you more, in groups of five (or single replacement tokens).

Morale is always checked by waves, not for the assault as a whole.

1. IIRC, the hypothetical fourth wave in the example game would have had 114 figures instead of 120 because that's all we had with us that day for some reason. Since it was turn 12, the Mahdist player had no time to increase his force with sniping.

2. The first assault retired on the basis of one morale check because the whole thing was concentrated in a single wave. If the assault had been split into several smaller waves to attack different portions of the compound, each would have checked morale individually.

I think that covers your questions, but feel free to ask for clarifications if anything is still murky.

Steve

Thanks, Steve!

The clarification on the casualty markers does, indeed, make the rest fall into place.

I had filled in the blanks pretty much along the lines you indicate, but those were guesses--the 114 figure count at the end was the one thing that tossed any system I came up with into confusion, though. Simple answers are sometimes the hardest to see.

Thanks for taking the time to address my questions. I intend to run this for my group sometime this year, only I'll be doing it with Afghans v Brits.

By the way, I still check into the Colonial Angle for inspiration--it's an "evergreen" website as far as I'm concerned!

Best,
Ed M

I wish I had the time to add to the website again, but life seems to only be putting more demands on my time and not taking any away. Enjoy the game!

Steve