First, the casualty figures – to help understand the Red Lantern use.
I plan to use my casualty figures to effectively double my Chinese figures – paint half as many units essentially. And I'll use the wounded figures, especially the crawling and sitting figures, for civilians and probably the kneeling for regulars and maybe firearms armed figures (these wounded have rifles). The standing wounded I'll maybe use for either artillery, rockets, and wall guns or maybe higher leaders. This is for the new Blue Moon 15 mm figures. The dead will be used for all the other foot figures, Boxers, Kansu Braves, Tigermen, etc. Not sure which ones for the cavalry – for games outside Peking.
Now, for the Red Lantern figures – the female Boxers – I plan to use those in two separate ways. One is to use them to boost morale of nearby troops and/or as a rally point. This is based on the Boxer belief in the Red Lanterns having special powers. This benefit will only last until the unit is 'destroyed' and then reconstituted when it will still have the other benefit but no longer the morale boost. The other Boxers are less likely to believe in their special powers if they didn't protect themselves, right?
And the other benefit will be as healers allowing other stands to fall back on them and recover though I'm still sorting out that bit. However, one thing I'm certain of. Since all units can reconstitute once the last stand is destroyed and European players, knowing this, will be loath to destroy the last stand of an opposing unit to avoid enemy reinforcements, the Boxer player can simply fall back on the nearest Red Lantern unit and then voluntarily loose that last stand and then reconstitute the unit back to full strength – but still counting the loss of the stand. That avoids the ahistorical 'gamesmanship' of not shooting down that last stand.
Also, Red Lantern units will give better morale and healing benefits as a full unit but can break into sub-units to provide more rally points but at reduced effectiveness.
That pretty much means I'll be using Red Lantern figures in a very historical context. And, no, this isn't to align with any specific set of rules, just an optional rule I'll add to whatever rules I use for my Boxer games.
Feel free to use this for your own games – and share other ideas of how to use Red Lanterns in our games.
surprises her grandmother on her 80th birthday.
