On Sunday we fought the first half of the Crimean War campaign from BBEB. With four players, we completed two battles in 5 hours, including take-down and set-up time between games.
This is a report of the first game: Kurudere, 4 August 1854.
I am sure there are plenty of TMP-ers who have made a much deeper study of the Crimean War than I had before I started the BBB/BBEB project. But I'm fairly confident that there will equally be more than a few readers whose reaction will be the same as mine, namely that this was one of the biggest battles I'd never heard of. I was glad to discover it, as not only was it a substantial and decisive action, full of local colour and flavour, it also offers interesting possibilities as a game.
Apart from the Karayal mountain on one flank, it's a pretty empty battlefield, and it was more about smashing the enemy army than about taking or holding particular terrain features. However, "kill the enemy" is not great as an objective, since it doesn't give the game any structure. The scenario therefore makes the ruined villages of Poldervan and Kurudere into objectives, along with the Karayal, to make it a "hold the line" mission which is a reasonable approximation of the situation of the heavily outnumbered Russians. Given the Russian concern for their many sick and wounded, their hospital is an objective as well, with the wrinkle that once lost to the Turks, it cannot be recaptured …
Scenario map:
CRI1 Crimean War Kurudere map by
bbbchrisp, on Flickr
The Turkish defeat owed a lot to their poorly executed night approach in two widely separated columns, resulting in defeat in detail. The scenario allows this possibility without absolutely prescribing it. It provides variable arrival times for the second column if the Turkish players choose to try a night approach, but also gives them the option of a day approach, with modified deployments and victory conditions to reflect the fact the Russians would see them coming.
Troop and command ratings are very important. If it was just about numbers of troops, 35,000+ Turks would crush the 20,000 or so Russians. But the Turks are rated as Passive and mostly Fragile, and have no Generals at all. This makes them quite a frustrating force to command, but in this case it really is appropriate, and balances the game correctly.
With a quarter of the troops on this very open table being cavalry, and with almost everyone using muskets rather than rifles, this is a very different game from most late C19 battles. Lots of movement!
The Russian line:
3 Looking south along the Russian line by
bbbchrisp, on Flickr
So how did the game go? Turn 1 was glorious for the Russians. The Turkish players chose the historical night march option. They quickly set up a nice gun line on the Karayal mountain, but their raw infantry then failed to move up in support. Consequently, when the Russian dragoons got good movement dice, they were able to pounce on the artillery from the flank and roll up the entire gun line.
Turn 2 was less propitious for the Czar. The Turks got the 50-50 roll they needed to avoid late arrival, and the first scouts of Veli Pasha's column appeared on the northern flank. Veli's Kurdish irregulars overran some careless Russian batteries, before Russian cavalry crushed them. On the Karayal, though, the dragoons exploited their success and destroyed the Turks' most precious infantry unit, the French-trained and rifle-armed Istanbul chasseurs.
Turn 3 saw the mass of Veli Pasha's column arrive. Defying their passivity and poor command, good movement dice brought them swiftly and ominously close to the objective village of Poldervan.
With all troops now on the table, 5 turns of ding-dong fighting ensued. In the south, the Russians and Turks charged each other repeatedly from various directions. Though they came very close, the Russians never quite managed to clear the Turks off the mountain entirely. That objective therefore remained in Turkish hands.
Meanwhile a large body of regular Turkish süvari (cavalry) circled round behind the Karayal to threaten the Russian rear. The Belevski infantry regiment moved to meet them, and they clashed on the Karakuzi hill. This produced a really bloody fight which left both units exhausted, but kept the süvari from reaching the hospital.
The decisive action happened on the northern flank. Poldervan changed hands four times, being finally retaken by Russian grenadiers whom the Turks could not dislodge. But in their efforts to push Veli Pasha back, the Russians had overextended away from their initial positions. On the last turn this left a gap on their right flank, and no units near enough to close it. One Turkish cavalry regiment was just able to roll high enough movement dice to reach the Russian hospital. A single Russian artillery unit had a long range shot to prevent the massacre. Could they do it? No!
Russian artillery's dice not good enough to save the wounded:
10 Disaster for the Russians as the Suvari overrun the hospital by
bbbchrisp, on Flickr
This was a real nailbiter. Initially it had looked as though the Russians might defeat the Turks in detail, but gradually the tide turned. On Turn 8 all three results – win, lose or draw – remained possible until the last few dice. In the end, by taking the hospital and clinging on to the Karayal, the Turks were able to claim 2 objectives and victory.
The Turkish victory had a campaign consequence for the next battle: the Turkish division at The Alma is emboldened and loses its Passive rating. Of which more, perhaps, in the next battle report.
Chris
Bloody Big BATTLES!
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