"Maneuvre and Battle in the Mexican Revolution" Topic

Recently published, by Joe Lee Jannsens, this is the first part of three of the first English language military-technical analysis of the tactics, strategy, and operations of the entire Mexican Revolution. This volume covers 1910 to the end of 1912.

I must get me a copy!

The author being one of your own, I'm sure you statesiders will get there first, and I look forward to reading a review or two.

For details go to CreateSpace.com

Great find, Henry, I may want to secure a copy too if it isn't too expensive.

BTW, I got the Achtung Gringo rules the other day and have had only time to give them a quick skim. But when I can do it justice I will start up a separate thread giving you an idea of what all is in it and my own personal opinions.

It's US$40; IMHO not outrageous for a specialist, limited run, self-published tome.

As a man of much miniature revolutionary experience I'm very keen to read your assessment of AG, mgh.

Henry,

Thank you very much for finding this book! I ordered it today and will post a short review of it after it arrives.

Also, I have enjoyed your commentary on various topics on TMP and with my recent and growing interest in gaming the Mexican Revolution, I am especially grateful for your comments on that topic.

My miniatures gaming has mostly been in the Seven Years War era using the Piquet-Cartouche rules in my regular gaming group. Several members of our group have extensive collections of SYW figures and we enjoy going at it hammer and tongs!

Recently, I have almost finished mounting a couple of thousand 15mm Mexican-American War figures that were painted for me by Fernando Enterprises and we will be commencing a series of games in my group this spring with these figures using the Piquet-Hallowed Ground rules.

Once those games are well underway, I am contemplating starting a project for the Mexican Revolution that will most likely begin as a "map exercise" type of game using empty bases as "counters" and an adaptation of Piquet-Barrage rules. I don't have any Mexican Revolution miniatures yet, and it will be a long while before I do, but I'm eager to begin developing ideas and rules for Mexican Revolution games even if they are played with "counters."

I enjoyed the discussion between you and mghFond on his fine review of the Achtung Gringo rules, and I am hopeful of compiling ideas from various rule sets and commentaries for this new project.

I am curious if you have ever written an essay or historical paper of your perspectives and insights on gaming the Mexican Revolution. If you have, I would be interested in obtaining a copy, and if you haven't had time to do this yet, I hope that you will one day.

Again thank you for your insights and commentary, and I look forward to reading more!

Best regards,
Jan

An article? No, but if there's anything you want to know, just ask.

I look forward to your review. It will either cost me or save me some money.

Henry,

Janssens book arrived late yesterday, and a more complete review will follow, but here are a few initial impressions.

Looks great! Nice and thick, at more than 700 pages, well printed, maps and photos in black and white, maps look good and include campaign movements and tactical deployment for battle.

The text is detailed, for example on the battle for Casas Grande, March 2011: "… the soldiers were outfitted with regulation Mauser rifles, the Rurales with whatever they had in use, the Auxiliaries with Remingtons refitted to shoot 7-mm. ammunition and Winchester .33-30s, the citizens with the same Remingtons and other arms of diverse systems and calibers of their own property, and one Hotchkiss machine gun; the plaza had 105,527 rifle cartridges, some 20,000 belonging to the police, and whatever the citizens had for their own use. … The plaza had for its defense 2 jefes, 13 officers, and 323 individuals of the 18th battalion; 1 officer and 7 men from other units; 2 officers and 27 guards of the 3rd Rural Police Corps, 88 Auxiliaries of Casas Grandes, and some 50 armed volunteer citizens." The hour by hour description of the battle is very detailed and provides an analysis of it all.

The Battle of Ciudad Juarez in May 1911 is described in great detail in 46 pages of text with maps and concluding with an analysis.

My initial impression is that this book is a must-have for my research on adapting the Piquet-Barrage rules and developing battle scenarios for our group's foray into the Mexican Revolution period, and I am looking forward with keen anticipation to the follow-on volumes in the series.

More to follow when I have a chance for in-depth reading.

Jan

That's exactly the sort of fine military detail we need. Is the number of pages devoted to Ciudad Juarez typical or unusual?

The only jarring note I see in your extract is some strange, unmilitary language that suggests Janssen doesn't perhaps have the level of specialist expertise that would be desirable in a work of military history, e.g. '… 323 individuals…', rather than other ranks. I found the same problem with de la Pedraja.

Anyway, at this point it's looking like an essential purchase. I won't make a decision until your final verdict is in, though.

Henry,

Excellent observation on the terminology. In some quick reading I haven't been able to ferret out why Janssens uses "individuals" in that instance. In other places after this instance where he is describing actions by the 18th Battalion, he uses the term "men" and "soldiers." For example, on the next page where descriptions of initial deployments begin, it says: "The machine gun, with its personnel commanded by Lieutenant Pedro Prida of the 3rd Artillery Regiment and an infantry support of twenty men from the 18th Battalion took up positon in the parish church, a dominant point … Ten soldiers reinforced the police guarding the public jail … The Federals also had an aid station in the military infirmary of the plaza, commanded by Doctor Surgeon Major Leopoldo Paullado, having at his disposal some soldiers of the 18th Battalion to serve as orderlies." The footnotes in this part of the text cite Vida de Pascual Orozco, and perhaps the words in the original are ambiguous and more accurately translated as individuals in the first instance and men and soldiers later on, or perhaps there may have been some people counted in the 327 individuals that were not technically men or soldiers, although I haven't found anything in a quick reading as to who these extras may have been, unless the doctor and any medical staff would have been considered outside of the officers, men, and soldiers category leading to a more inclusive word that translates as individuals. Further reading may illuminate this some more.

The Battle of Casas Grande is described in about 11 pages with a few pages leading up to it and more pages after it setting the stage for Ciudad Juarez. The 11 pages include section headings such as: 5:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m., and Analysis. There is also a small but useful map. The descriptions of the action are fairly detailed, for example: "A short while later, the Maderistas pressed a more forceful attack than before through the southeast from the main irrigation ditch; at the same time, they used the ditch to advance toward the north, executing an enveloping movement, while simultaneously bounding westward toward the pueblo in an attempt to gain the next irrigation ditch and from there dominate the positions on the east side with their fire. But the south trench and the positions 7, 4, C, and 5, the later commanded by Sub-lieutenant Raymundo Urcid and C by the civilian volunteer Victorio Varela, opened up fire and contained the Maderistas' progress." This material is all in Chapter Two Outmaneuvering the Federals: January – April 1911.

The next chapter is Chapter Three The Battle of Ciudad Juarez, May 1911, and the 46 pages of description and analysis on this battle is the most for any one battle. The chapter, at 57 pages, also includes remarks on topics such as Federal Army Careerism and a summation of the state of affairs at that point.

Chapters after that generally cover time periods, such as Chapter Four El Plan de Ayala: June – December 1911, Part Two Orozco's Rebellion in five chapters covering January through October 1912, then Part Three Vera Cruz and Mexico City taking the story into 1913 where the as-yet unpublished Volume 2 will pick it up again for the bigger battles in the next time period.

There is excellent detail in background material such as Table 4 Mexican Army Tables of Organization – Tactical Levels that provides data on infantry battalions and cavalry regiments. For example, the lowest infantry unit is a squad of six men with one corporal and five riflemen, a platoon is 13 men with a platoon chief and two squads, etc., up to a battalion of 500+ men with four companies and staff. Table 5 provides an order of battle for the Morelos campaign listing the units, the commanding officers' names, and the numbers of jefes, officers, and troops in each unit; for example: Col Enrique Rivero, 32nd Infantry Battalion, 1 Jefe, 17 Officers, 477 Troops; 1st Captain Adolfo Valle, Machine Gun Battery (6), 3 Officers, 24 Troops, etc., etc., coming to a grand total of 2,885 personnel. Table 6 shows a comparison of Rural Police and Federal Army equivalents for ranks, unit type, and strength; for example a Rural Police company is commanded by a First Officer and has a strength of 76 men while a Federal Army infantry company is commanded by a Captain and has a strength of 125 men, etc.

I am very pleased with what I have seen so far, and this book will be very helpful in configuring the historical units into the Piquet-Barrage game structure and also creating scenarios for individual battles as well as campaigns involving a series of battles. One member of our group is designing a campaign game for our Seven Years War battles and we will likely play that campaign beginning in April, and I can already see the glimmer of an idea on Mexican Revolution campaigns following descriptions in the book.

I'm very pleased with the book so far, and looking forward to in-depth reading in the days ahead!

Jan

An entire chapter on Ciudad Juarez, important though it was, as against five chapters on the Orozco Rebellion, does seem a little unbalanced, but the sort of detail you cite is the best in any English language book yet published, so I might have to just accept the patchy coverage.

It looks as though the Zapatista campaigns once again don't get much attention; a pity, because the only place where a detailed account of them in English has yet appeared was on the Mex Rev Researchers Yahoo Group, thanks to the untiring efforts of Smokey Koelsch. Unfortunately, he had to cease his on-this-day postings due to health issues, leaving the story incomplete.

As regards a campaign, I suggest the most fun is to be had if you base it loosely on 1913 – 14, and as per reality start with all players representing either a politician or a bandit jefe with a small following in his own province, who then have to compete to become Jefe Primo by enlarging their forces, driving the federales out of the province, and then being the first to reach and capture Mexico City.

With CLA all revolutionary forces except state rurales and militia are initially treated as irregulars, and once a player clears his province and 1914 arrives after an agreed number of campaign turns (representing the winter 1913-14 training lull), he can upgrade to regulars T2M3 (or the AG equivalent, the exception being the Zapatistas, who remain irregulars for the entire campaign)) and begin to march on Mexico City using the railways. Any player who hasn't cleared his province can still upgrade, but not yet leave his home province.

There's a lot more of course, and this is certainly a stylised simplification of the reality, but it does capture the flavour of the most important campaigns of the revolution.

A little more detail on the campaign concept:

The idea is that it is, in true Chris Peers style, mapless.

A player clears his 'province' by capturing all the major towns, which for the sake of simplicity is the same for all players (you can decide the number for yourself, but four or five works well). One of the towns is the state capital, capturing which should provide extra benefits, such as an upsurge in recruits, weapons and ammo, and revenue, and a roll for each other town still held by the federales to see whether they abandon it.

Other factors can be worked in for flavour, e.g. there should be a risk of irregulars who penetrate the defences of a town being affected by drunkenness and going on a pillaging rampage, the chance being potentially modified by the leader's character. If he's a disciplinarian like Villa it should be reduced, and if he's an unreformed bandit like Tomas Urbina it should be increased.

In all games, whether part of a campaign or not, you can represent irregulars by using only figures in civilian clothing within a unit. Upgraded units could contain a mixture of figures in uniform and civilian costume. Fully uniformed revolutionary units represent troops who've had a second upgrade to T3M3, because you're playing the inter-revolutionary conflicts of 1915, or in a campaign, if your army has hired a foreign mercenary to train your men. If playing the later phases of the revolution from 1916 onwards, when the Carrancista army was of a similar character to Huerta's (mostly conscript), most government troops would be rated the same as federales as T3M2 (T3 representing formal unit structures and professional officers).

Henry,

Thank you very much for your campaign ideas, I really like those, and I'll work them into our approach for campaign games! I especially like the mapless campaign idea to get right to the table top action! And I'm looking forward with keen anticipation to becoming a Jefe Primo!

On the five chapters on Orozco's Rebellion, these total 191 pages, and none of the battle descriptions are as detailed in every particular as for the Battle of Ciudad Juarez, although there seems to be good detail that would be sufficient for designing scenarios with maps, orders of battle, details of the action that will provide insights on table top terrain features and also strength determinations for adapting the historical units into the Piquet-Barrage rules system. A few typical examples among many: the Battle of Conejos is covered in six pages with a map, Second Rellano is 12 pages with a map, and First Rellano is 8 pages with a map. First Rellano confirmed the wisdom of my starting this project as a "map exercise" type of table top game rather than full up with figures, because in addition to purchasing a whole slew of new figures, I would also be into the model train market!!

As you surmised, the coverage of Zapata's actions is sparse, these are mentioned in summary, but there is little detail equivalent to the descriptions of actions in the northern theater. I'll be signing up for the Yahoo group, and I also wanted to ask if John Womack's book on Zapata would be something that I might add to my collection. I already have Alan Knight's two-volume work that is excellent for understanding the ebb and flow from a high level, but I'm more interested now in the battle details for setting up wargames. If Womack covers Zapata's main battles in some wargaming detail, I'd likely go for it, but if it is short on those kinds of detail, I'll probably let that one go by at least for now, even though it has many favorable reviews.

Thanks again for all those great campaign ideas!!

Jan

Con mucho gusto, senor!

I doubt that, as a general history, Womack's book contains the sort of information we require, but never having seen I could well be wrong.

More campaign detail:

As I said, players need to build and professionalise their forces as they go (Zapatistas don't have the latter option). Victory in battle should lead to a roll for new recruits, with the magnitude of the victory determining the number of dice rolled. Conversely, defeat should lead to an equivalent roll for desertions.

Of course, the Federales aren't going to be mere passive observers to all this: they should have the ability to launch attacks to recapture fallen provinces and towns, but as historically this should be limited; a matter of making crucial decisions about where to commit scarce and dwindling manpower and other military assets – unless a miracle happens in your campaign and they succeed in crushing the revolution early on (and realistically, this should be very hard for them to achieve, the difficulty increasing as the campaign progresses).

There should be a big emphasis on the leaders and their personalities, as the Mex Rev was primarily a struggle between gigantic egos. I've already suggested a couple of ways they can be worked into the game, but I'm sure you can think of others.

It's unrealistic to allow the revolutionary players the option of fighting amongst themselves. Historically, prior to the Villa/Carranza split of late 1914, the only inter-revolutionary conflict was between the Villistas and small guerilla bands of anarchists in Chihuaha that had very little effect on the main campaign. If you do want to include it, there should be a very low probability early in the campaign, with the chance gradually increasing with each campaign turn, and the Federales should be weakened accordingly for game balance.

Adopting best Spaghetti western Mexican accent: 'Tyou should know senor, there can be only one Jefe Primo'.

I'll be interested to read what you come up with, so I hope you'll feel sufficiently inspired to report it here.

Henry,

More great ideas on how to organize and conduct the campaign, muchas gracias mi amigo! The leaders certainly had gigantic egos and were ruthless on top of all that, not many surviving to old age, even being assassinated after retirement!

I took a look at Contemptible Little Armies and the associated army lists website advertisements over the weekend, and I am thinking about purchasing the download version for possibly picking up some ideas that might be adaptable into Piquet-Barrage. I didn't see an CLA army list topic for Mexican Revolution and was wondering if you developed your own list from the information in the rule book and the other lists?

Piquet-Barrage covers a wide range of WWI armies plus Russo-Japanese War, Russian Civil War, and Russo-Polish War, also Piquet-Din of Battle covers 19th Century Colonial Warfare for 1845 – 1914 including the Boer War. Neither of these covers the Mexican Revolution specifically, but I should be able to work out the characteristics of Mexican Revolution forces through comparison with those in the Piquet books, plus I'm in a local game group with the author of these two Piquet historical supplement books, and he has some interest and knowledge of the Revolution, so I should be able to characterize the Revolution forces on Firepower/Close Assault/Morale combat values (4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 sided dice) and also on unit quality (Raw, Green, Trained, Experienced, and Veteran). The Piquet system also provides for a battle readiness quality for each unit on the day of the battle as Battle Weary, Ready, Eager, or Determined which can move the combat values along the scale depending on a 20-sided die roll, pretty low chance of Determined or Battle Weary, larger chances for Ready or Eager.

I can see the Campaign success or failure feeding into this system, for example, the Federals lose a battle, and there is a near term follow-up battle that might increase the chances of a Battle Weary result when determining Federal battle readiness quality, such as -2 or something like that to the d20 die roll. The opposite effect might apply to the winner of a battle, the next battle might have a +2 to the d20 die roll, making it more likely for an Eager or Determined. Also, experience in battle, win or lose, and the winter training lull, might provide for a unit to grow through the unit quality from Raw to Green to Trained …

You've given me plenty of food for thought, and Contemptible Little Armies might provide some additional insights into developing a Piquet game on the Revolution. Thank you again for all your advice!

My main project for our gaming group at the moment is to finish getting ready for a huge dust-up on the Mexican-American War using the Piquet-Hallowed Ground rules. I have a couple of thousand 15mm figures for this project and all I have left to do is finish mounting about half of my Mexican cavalry on their stands (two figures per stand), mount the Mexican artillery on their stands, and then put together a few player aid sheets, and then after we get this one on the table, I'll be able to turn up the flame on the Revolution project! Going to be an interesting year!

I enjoy preparing After Action Reports, and I'll definitely post progress reports and results here to keep you up to date on how we're doing!

Jan

I bought the Back of Beyond supplement for guidance because the intensity and character of conflict in Central Asia were/would have been broadly similar to those of the Mex Rev, and it's proved very useful – and indeed some ideas are directly transferrable.

I've used the lists in the BoB book, in combination with my reading of the limited number of English language military historical sources, to rate the various combatant types, and produce some basic lists. For example, a northern revolutionary army may have one bodyguard unit: Regular Cavalry T3M4 (see below), and if Villista, it can be the Dorados, who have the special rule 'Effective Mounted Fire', which unlike other regular mounted units, gives them the ability to fire while mounted (without negative modifiers) if stationary that turn.

As regards rating troops, CLA uses two primary categories expressed as numerical values from 2 to 5: training (T) and morale (M), supplemented by special ratings applicable to some troops only, depending on their historical performance (Close Order, Ferocious, Marksmen, Stubborn and Irregular). Irregular troops don't get a training rating, only morale, but are distinguished from regulars by special combat rules and modifiers that make them more brittle, but also harder to hit in rough terrain. Finally, some army lists contain special rules like the one above to reflect unique qualities or deviations from the norm.

In practical game-play terms, the training characteristic simply tells you how many inches apart figures may be deployed on the table – so in a charmingly elegant manner it represents both a unit's ability to disperse in the field, and the degree of independence of its sub-units (although they're abstracted as the individual figures rather than being discretely depicted).

What I like about CLA is its unashamed 'this is a game of toy soldiers' attitude, which somehow seems to particularly suit the Mex Rev, with its rag-tag, improvisd armies and comic-opera personalities, its simplicity and speed of play (even with individually based figures), and the fact that it's unit-level neutral, so you use the same units to depict anything from a company to a brigade; important when you want to play a conflict in which battles started out at brigade-size, then grew to division-size, then (if you play the inter-revolutionary struggles of 1915) expanded to corps-size, without having to hugely expand your armies and table over time and get bogged down with too many units.

I await your reports with eager anticipation.

One point I missed in the 16/1 post is that federal regulars are also rated as stubborn; they generally fought better in defence than when attacking. This applies to the troops only; many a town was lost to the Federales when their commander lost his nerve and ordered a retreat. The chances of this happening increased in direct proportion to the proximity of the US border.

Henry,

More great insights into gaming the Mexican Revolution! I like the "Effective Mounted Fire" rule for the Dorados, and that is the sort of thing that your research will prove invaluable in developing our ideas for battles and campaigns for the Revolution! For example in Piquet-Barrage, an Experienced Cavalry unit armed with rifles sort of translates to T3M4, and if it were rolled up on a d20 as Eager for that battle (one step below the highest rating of Determined) it would use a 10-sided dice for firing, but with a "Down 3" penalty for firing mounted, with down 3 being down 3 dice sizes, so 10 to 8 to 6 to 4, yikes! The target always rolls a d6 so a d4 against a d6 isn't so good … but using the Effective Mounted Fire rule for the Dorados would keep the d10 against the d6 and a much better chance for the Dorados to inflict real damage on the target. And if really lucky rolling a 10 on the d10 against a 1 on the d6, would pretty much wipe out a target unit and send any remnants routing off the table and unralliable.

After reading your comments, I decided to purchase CLA and BoB, and since some of our group have collections of WWI Western Front troops, I went ahead with the European supplement and since there was only one more for the Mid-East, I went all in for the whole set! I really like the rule set, and can see some similarities in CLA with concepts in Piquet-Barrage and also some with Bolt Action, a WWII skirmish rule set that I have played and enjoyed. There are a lot of differences too, but there are concepts in the CLA series that will translate well to our Piquet games and improve our overall approach.

Piquet scales for different size units somewhat similar to CLA, with the same figures and stand mounting representing different sizes. The Din of Battle supplement on the colonial period scales from squad to company to battalion, using the same stand sizes and just adjusting what the distance and time scales represent. The Barrage supplement is currently for company size units (a unit is four stands with 3 figures per stand to represent a company), although the designer is experimenting with upscaling this to battalion level so that the same four stands with 3 figures per stand can now represent a battalion. I am in a regular gaming group with the Din of Battle and Barrage designer and we have playtested the battalion scale Barrage game with success. I'm hoping that my Mexican Revolution adaptation will also scale from company to battalion, although many of the battles could be played well with the company scale. A fairly large, but not too large Piquet game would have about 20 units per side, and 20 companies would cover many of the battles, especially in the early battles in the provinces as the Revolutionaries begin their campaigns.

Piquet also includes command quality and I'm sure that we'll be able to work in the cautionary nature of some of the commanders. Commanders have five different ratings from abysmal to superior plus Piquet uses a sequence card deck to reveal the next available action, for example just when you're ready for your infantry to advance into close combat, the cavalry move card may come up, or the artillery barrage hits card comes up, so you have to improvise on the fly a little and go with the flow. Or you may find that you fired with good effect and then all of a sudden new attackers charge in and you're fresh out of ammo because you haven't turned your reload card since your great volley! Then there's the "idling" cards for especially cautious armies, a lot of the sequence deck can be these cards for cautious armies, and just when you're ready to launch an assault you get three or four idle cards in a row … best laid plans! I'm hoping that the battle accounts in Jannsens' book will provide some additional insights into these aspects of the game.

I've joined the Mexican Revolution Research Yahoo group, and there is a wealth of material on there to ponder!

Thanks very much again for all your advice and I'm looking forward to getting a game going as soon as I can and then reporting back on it. Could be a few months though, as my wife and I are going to Europe for a vacation soon, and then as soon as we have returned I'll be having a planned cardiac medical procedure and all that pretty much accounts for February … then it's back in the saddle for the Revolution!

Jan

Well here I am again at long last. We have been traveling a lot this year and every hour not coming or going has been more or less fully consumed by a celestial navigation course, leaving little time to work on my reading pile. But with the grueling two-week celestial navigation final exam finally behind me, I had a chance to completely read Volume I of Maneuver and Battle in the Mexican Revolution from cover-to-cover in word-by-word detail.

I'm pleased to report that the book has fulfilled my expectations and is a highly prized addition to my collection. It is unique in its coverage of the military aspects of the Mexican Revolution in English and is magnificent in telling the story in amazing detail. I am looking forward with keen anticipation to the next two volumes!

The wealth of detailed tables of organization, orders of battle, battle descriptions, operational maneuver to battle descriptions, useful maps, and operational and tactical analyses of the actions are just what I need for my project on developing a table top wargame applying the Piquet-Barrage rules to a series of battle games on the early years of the Mexican Revolution, as aided by insights from Henry Martini's commentary above and the Contemptible Little Army game rules.

Everything I was looking for is in the book with the exception of Zapata's earliest activities. Huerta's later campaign against Zapata in Morelos and also into Puebla in August and September 1911 is well covered in detail including an order of battle table for the federal units involved counted to an exact number of jefes, officers, and troops for each of the 11 units with a total of 2,885 men for the command. Also, there is a description of Zapata's subsequent raid into Mexico State reaching as far as Milpa Alta.

I was curious though about Zapata's earlier operations against Cuautla in May 1911 around the same time as the decisive operations against Ciudad Juarez in the north. I contacted Dr. Janssens through the email address listed in the book, and he graciously provided an overview that he translated and summarized for me from Volume I of Gildardo Magaña's Emiliano Zapata y el Agrarismo en México, a five-volume work in Spanish that Dr. Janssen's mentions as probably the most authoritative on the Zapatista movement. This overview will be very helpful in starting to flesh out that scenario for our game series!

I highly recommend Dr. Janssens' book to anyone with an interest in the military aspects of the Mexican Revolution, especially if you are looking for a book in English. There is an extensive bibliography of archival, primary, secondary, and other sources, mostly in Spanish, for those who wish to delve more deeply into the books behind the book. The book covers the subject in detail, and provides the kind of information that will be especially useful to wargamers.

And now onward to my wargaming projects!

Jan