"Australian Frontier Wars" Topic

Thanks chap 😉

Looking forward to seeeing your handy work…by the time you get your force going I should have the Smooth and Rifled and Congo variant posted for you to think on…

…that new sydney Wars book looks good to doesn't it…fingers crossed it hits the right note.

Cheers

HW

Good stuff…

This new book appears to cover the same ground (literally, figuratively, and chronologically) as Peter Turbet's 'The First Frontier'(although extended by a year). Hopefully it will have something new to say on the subject.

I'm curious: what do you mean by your final comment, Happy? The title and description leave no doubt that the purpose of the book is precisely the sort of military historical analysis we demand, so what more can we ask for?

I thought I'd see if there are any pre-publication reviews so I did a search. I drew a blank on this book, but did find a review by John Connor of yet another examination of the Tasmanian conflict published last year: 'The Vandemonian War', by Nick Brodie. So… two new books to investigate.

"I'm curious: what do you mean by your final comment, Happy? The title and description leave no doubt that the purpose of the book is precisely the sort of military historical analysis we demand, so what more can we ask for?"

I hope you're right H-M. I Just hope it is as empirical as John Connor's work and if so, it should be very good. I just hope politics is not included and social history is in context…that's my point.

…good tip on Brodie's book…

This is good that a new generation of historians is looking with fresh eyes…

HW

As a man of aboriginal heritage (Worimi) and a wargamer I heartily enjoy looking at your blog and reading your research. You wont find me getting outraged! Whats more you treat both sides with respect and that's all you can ask. As much as modern Australia and the likes of Keith Windshuttle try to deny that there was conflicts on the frontier and my ancestors probably fought on both sides (I am of English/Irish/Aboriginal descent and proud of it all).
Im now thinking about collecting and gaming this myself. Where are you based? Also i cant find the Denisovans on the Eureka website.

FM

They appear to only be on the USA site:

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Hi Field Marshal,

Your comments are most appreciated and welcome. I'm very pleased you have found my ongoing series of interest. Even better that you would consider it a worthy addition to the pantheon of Colonial topics.

I think the expanding record has passed old Keith by and I hope Frontier Conflict, in all its forms, gets wider coverage. For to long IMHO have those days been denied their place in black and white Australian history.

I'm based in Oz and you can get the figures direct from Nic from Eureka. If you contact him give him a poke about adding some more sculpts to this range…

Oh, I'm not sure if you're a member of The Lead Adventure Forum but I am running a thread there in tandem to this one. Your comments above would add to the conversation IMHO and be most welcome.

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Cheers

HW

Gents,

In this last post on the aboriginal way of war we take a detailed look at tactical methods and strategies used. This is the longest of the three posts and should give you a very good understanding of the tactics used by aboriginal warriors.

Everything is included from farm attacks, livestock raids, fire attacks, ambushes, hit-and-run raids, terrorising attacks, subterfuge, etc. Pretty much any type of guerrilla warfare attack there is was in the arsenal of the average aboriginal clan.

We also take a look at some of the limitations of the aboriginals when faced with white settlement and the advances of weapon technology and also some of the most dangerous opponents, detribalised aboriginals turned Native Police.

I Hope you have enjoyed this series on Aboriginal warfare. Whilst it has been a little bit ‘history heavy' I think it was really important for such an under exposed topic to get some sort of cohesive structure around it from a military and gaming perspective.

Hopefully I've provided a good deal of information for prospective Frontier Wars gamers to get an understanding of the factors involved so they may formulate suitable scenarios and potential force types as well.

…we may take a short break after this huge information dump and then provide thoughts and ideas around using Smooth & Rifled for Frontier Wars gaming and then a battle report to follow on…lots more to dig into there.

I hope you will join the discussion…

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Happy Wanderer

Great stuff, interesting read. I'm in Sydney how about you?

Perth…sometimes Sydney

Your balancing moderated tone would be welcome on LAF..

Cheers

:-)

Just waiting on the LAF mods to approve my membership!

@ Field Marshal

;-)

Gents,

With alot of history talk stuff down the pipe we take a look at some gaming….thanks for sticking with me.

Here were are starting with out small skirmish level game scale of play – in this case using Dadi&Piombo's Smooth and Rifled system.

The post includes full army lists for Aboriginal and Colonial forces, including explorers and bushrangers for some added twists. There are also game play sheets which will enable you to jump straight in to the game…all this for the cost of zip…

You can get the rules from the Wargames Vault if you don't have them and want to have a go or follow the link on their home page.
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In the post we look at some reasoning behind a number of my ideas on using S&R and I've included a new "Farm Raid' scenario you can try specific for frothier wars games.

There should be a good deal to mull over in your mind so I hope you enjoy…finally we got to the game!

Cheers

Happy W

…here you go…

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Non-Australian readers should be aware that the local term for a pastoral property running stock (cattle and/or sheep) was and is 'station'; our equivalent of the US term 'ranch'. 'Farm' was and is usually reserved for properties growing crops or running dairy cows.

There's regional variation on that, though. "Station" doesn't seem to have ever taken off here in Tasmania. It's not a common term in Victoria, either.

The term appears to properly refer to the holding of a grazier who holds a pastoral lease to run stock on crown rangelands. That's basically an outback thing, and pretty much always refers to very large properties.

However, I've had trouble tracking down the origins of the term in this context and we have to be careful of modern usage vs colonial context (especially for the early colonial era). Possibly there may be a derivative here from the more general use of the word to denote a depot or posting. The term "convict station" was used to denote a barracks that work gangs used.

Most colonial sources I've seen just refer to the farmer in relation to the property (i.e. "Triffitt's Farm"), though in some cases the farms have actual names like "Ashgrove".

But "Ranch" is right out.

Actually, in the 19th century continentally 'run' was probably a more common colloquial denominator of stock-holding properties than 'station'.

Gents,

Following on from our discussion and release of army lists for use with Smooth & Rifled for the frontier wars we take a close look at a fictional ‘sharp encounter' on the road west of old Sydney town, c.1816.

The battle report highlights aspects of the rules and how Smooth & Rifled can be used for such small actions, barely below a reportable encounter or perhaps a few lines in official report or perhaps a paragraph or two in a private memoir.

For us it gives an indication of how these clever rules handle the platoon leader view of an action or a tribal leader in charge of mob.

Lots of pics, I hope you enjoy.

Regards

Happy Wanderer

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I've already mentioned that the type of complex, sustained ambush encounter described here and the subjects of that ambush (British regulars) severely stretch the historical reality, however overlooking this point for the moment and focussing on the nitty-gritty of the rules mechanisms, allowing for the fact that the extreme dice rolls skewed game effects a couple of observations are that:

1. It's hard to find evidence of the sort of organised and delegated leadership represented in this game. Where it occurred it was more likely to be seen amongst de-tribalised groups than tribal clans. A tribal war party might be 'led' (insofar as that was culturally practicable) by an overall elder or heroic leader, but there would normally be no co-leaders or sub-leaders – despite occasional colonial claims to have identified such combatants.

2. Historically there was no segregation of weapon types by 'unit' (there couldn't be, Aboriginal forces not being organised into units). Differences in weapon usage occurred at the tribal/regional level. It's fine if this is done merely as a gaming convenience, but again departures from historical practice should be highlighted for the benefit of those new to the subject.

3. Given their historically low lethality I think native weapons in this game are much too effective; individual missiles should 'kill' only on a roll of a six, unless the target is already wounded. Also, as I've also mentioned before the other main drawback of native weapons was the ability of a targeted individual to observe a missile's flight and take evasive action if it was thrown from within his visibility arc. In 'Boomerang' such figures get an evasion dice roll, which succeeds more easily for Aborigines (whether warriors or others such as NMP). The roll is only made if a throw 'hits'. This roll isn't allowed if a missile is thrown from outside a target figure's visibility arc. So you can see that it's very hard for warriors to score effective hits on colonials unless the latter are targeted by a lot of missiles, all the better if at least some are thrown from outside the colonials' visibility arc.

Distilling the above, for figures targeted within their visibility arc a traditional missile weapon has to first hit its target. From the Aboriginal perspective the optimal situation for this is a prepared spear-woomera combination, it having much improved range and accuracy over an unprepared spear-woomera combination or a spear relying only on unassisted muscle-power (these are reated the same in 'Boomerang'). A boomerang has the same range as a woomera and a nulla the same range as an unassisted spear. All native missile weapons are treated identically for effect. This is historically plausible, and also greatly facilitates the calculation of the effects of multi-figure warrior 'volleys'.

If a hit is scored an evasion roll is conducted if applicable. If the throw isn't evaded the effect is then diced for, with only a small chance of a single throw incapacitating the target figure. In fact, there's a good chance that the wound will have no effect on the figure's combat performance, although such wounds still count towards the cumulative wound total referred to above.

What all this means is that there are three levels of chance in which a missile thrown from inside a target figure's visibility arc can succeed or fail (either absolutely or relatively), but only two for those thrown from outside the visibility arc. This explains why moving warriors into positions from which their missiles can't be evaded is central to the native player's tactics.

Although there are numerous ways to represent the technicalities and use of frontier weapon systems on the tabletop, I don't think a rule set can claim to be accurately capturing the essence of frontier combat dynamics if any of the factors described above are abstracted in game play.

One more point:

You say that the rules don't allow warriors to throw missiles as a group. This doesn't reflect the historical record, in which reports of 'showers' of missiles are common – especially in the case of ambushes. Most commonly these coordinated volleys occurred at the start of an encounter, after which missile throws would degenerate into less coordinated, more individualistic attacks.

Gents,

I've been pushing a fair bit down the pipeline so I'm offering up a number of suggestions for your own investigation. I've use most of these sources and many others not listed in my blog posts thus far.

Lots to look at and plenty to read – needless to say, only scratching the surface if one is prepared to dig a little more.

There is all the background information you need for skirmish gaming the Frontier Wars in these titles and I hope you investigate further as it is well worth it.

…happy reading!

HW

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Scratching the surface indeed: I've alerted TMPers to all these and lots more books besides in past posts going back many years.

'Six Australian Battlefields' should be approached with caution. It was one of the first titles dealing with frontier conflict that I acquired, before I became aware of more reliable sources. Its authors weren't trained historians, or even professional writers; evidenced by its sloppy historiography and sensationalist tone.

Started work on my Tasmanians, converted from Perry Zulus (the one being shot I kept the Zulu head for the pose as it has a nice open mouth. The other two heads are spare Bega ones due for a new putty hairdo):

Also put together the officer, sergeant and soldier from the Perry Napoleonic infantry command sprue. They're stock figures, though I'll modify the shakos to be in line with mid-1820's. Will probably paint them up as 57th boys, elements of whom were stationed in VDL from 1825-30.

"'Six Australian Battlefields' should be approached with caution."

Yes – quite biased which I 'warned' readers of; but I still found it an enjoyable read whilst skipping over bits and pieces here and there where things moved away from better military and background history.

@mrinku

Excellent work chap! Painted with warpaint they will look the part. It'd be great to just have a set of heads for these bodies which would really set them off…looks like you are going to green stuff up some hair, so that should do it.

"57th boys, elements of whom were stationed in VDL from 1825-30."
;-)

Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to seeing your results.

HW

As with any conflict, anyone wanting to form a clear picture of the nature and dynamics of combat on the colonial Australian frontier should read as many first-hand accounts by those who participated as possible. This will require patience and perseverance, such accounts being relatively scarce and fragmentary compared to other conflicts, and dispersed thinly in the literature – but it is possible.

Gents,

We've focused heavily on the Australian indigenous native forces in the posts describing the Australian Frontier Wars. Now we turn our attention to look at the British Army in its service in Australia. The three part series will look at the early, mid and later years where the British army first became involved (1788) until the final operations c.1870.

From a figure perspective you will find your Peninsular Brit, or shako, bell topped and forage capped figures all being able to be pressed into service somewhere along the line…grab some tribals and fight in out down under for something different ;-)

I hope you enjoy a look at a slightly different ‘backwater' British army, though not untypical of many such colonial detachments throughout the empire.

Enjoy

Happy W

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Nice :)

Here's the brave lads with greenstuff. I'll gravel the bases today and get some painting done tomorrow (local public holiday for Hobart Regatta).

Good job on the green stuff..very nice in fact.

These are looking good…

;-)

Basecoat done as hoped for. Photo quality is meh, but I found Vallejo Red Leather a good match for the red ochre they used a lot.

Thinking now I might leave my soldiers as straight 1815 Napoleonics for use in a Bushranger Crisis situation. That's a very interesting episode in the VDL history, very suitable for a warband/gang skirmish campaign. You could realistically have Bushranger, Settler and Aboriginal mobs in a free-for-all (feuds happened, so settler vs settler isn't impossible). Convict workgangs and soldiers would round it out, though they may be better as occasional allies.

Ummm… settler v settler is historically very dubious, mrinku. I've never read of settlers as such trading shots. The nearest incidents I've found are a squatter dispute from the mainland in which their stockmen fought it out with stock-whips, and a few instances of drunken QLD and NT gold rush town dwellers shooting it out in the late 19th century; nothing at all from Tasmania, though.

Also, as I've again mentioned previously, soldiers on bush patrol duty against bushrangers in Tasmania wore a specially concocted outfit made of kangaroo skin. The only available clue to its appearance is that it inspired bushrangers to adopt it, and some idea of their costume can be derived from the black and white drawing of Michael Howe that appears in 'Remote Garrison' and which is reproduced in the article in Happy's latest blog post – but he wears a hybrid outfit, which includes only elements of 'bush dress', such as his waistcoat and cap, his jacket being made of fustian. We can only guess at the cut of the kangaroo skin jacket, but perhaps it was of a similar style. Soldiers would probably have worn their normal light order equipment over this dress.

Some settlers helped the bushrangers and plenty of farmers were convicted of stock rustling against each other; that has potential for conflict, though trading shots may be going a bit far, as you say. It's one thing to take a chap to court for stealing a sheep, another to face the noose for taking it too far. That could inform the rules of play, though – no reason why a settler/settler game has to involve shooting. You could have the Jillett boys taking on the Paterson lads with fists to settle matters. Drink may be involved (and it would be a poor Australian frontier skirmish game if alcohol rules were not included…).

If they find themselves up against natives or bushrangers, they'll get the guns out.

Of course; if bar room brawls are acceptable fodder for Old West games (e.g scenario in LotOW) why not represent 19th century antipodean fisticuffs.

In colonial Australia the purloining of other people's sheep and cattle was known as duffing.

"Thinking now I might leave my soldiers as straight 1815 Napoleonics for use in a Bushranger Crisis situation"

Until we see kangaroo skin 28mm sculpts then Nap Brits it is…no one makes kangaroo skin Napoleonic Brits🙄!

The Brigade Games Nap Brits have a nice nap sack campaign type look that would be good "less than tidy" redcoats. You can see one in the pic on my latest post.

By the by…if you're looking for belltop ragged looking British types then Oronico Miniatures British Legion might be a good fit…

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"it would be a poor Australian frontier skirmish game if alcohol rules were not included"

I like it!

I keep flip flopping on the soldiers. The golden age of the Van Dieman's Land bushrangers was about 1817-1826, which does mean early bell top shakos (unfortunately not the 1828 pattern you get for BAL, though that's fine for the Black War period).

Fortunately I'm not committed to Nap figures yet, so those various odd metals might be handy.

There were a couple of wars where the right hat was worn (First Ashanti, First Burma), and paintings therof match up with drawings from VDL of the period. Fortunately it's a VERY easy conversion, being an uncurved inverted cone.

And yeah, I know I can make things far easier on myself for going with forage caps etc. :)

Well Happy, perhaps there's something out there that would adequately substitute for those wanting to try a 'best guess' option. Certainly in the past I've suggested that selected Alamo Texians would be a good starting point for Tasmanian bushrangers, so with some conversion work (such as adding bits of kit from a plastic Napoleonics set?) reasonably convincing British regulars in 'bush dress' might be achievable. Alternatively, and in the absence of precise information on the appearance of this style of costume, as you suggest ordinary campaign dress is probably acceptable.

On the subject of the influence of alcohol, several years ago I wrote some colonial Australia mods for LotOW, and one of the factions I did some work on was 'Rowdies', designed to represent the unruly elements to be found in frontier and goldfields towns where the upholders of law and order were absent, inefficient, or too few. Members of this faction are always assumed to be intoxicated.

Gents,

In this post we look at the British army in the mid years in Australia ie the 1820s to the 1830s. This period involved the expansion of a number of military operations, significantly in Tasmania where major counter insurgency style operations were undertaken in a a veritable guerrilla war.

This period represents the high point of British army military activities in the new colony with significant operations in New South Wales from Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) in the south to the border of the soon to be state of Queensland and South Australia.

Operations out west continue in southern Western Australia and flirtations in the 'Top End' off the coast of northern Australia (near modern day Darwin).

…lots to read on the Brit army down under…

Enjoy

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Very good one!

In this last post on the British army we take the service years of the 1840s up to the 1870. This includes the 'great rebellion' of the Eureka Stockade where redcoats stormed the defences writing themselves into the history books.

Progressively operations against the aboriginal population reduced as local forces and native police assumed the roles of ‘civil defence' and local Australian military organisations started to appear.

…so we end the hard history again and return to the gaming side of things in our next post. I hope you've picked up a few new perspectives on the British army in Australia in the 19th century.

Cheers

Happy W

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Private soldier 12th Regiment of Foot 1854

Ok Gents,

..we're off doing something different.

Outback!…a Congo style themed game of exploration set in Australia.

The following post will give you all the details you need to mount an expedition into the Australian hinterland in the manner of Flinders, Blaxland, Eyre, Leichhardt, off course Burke and Wills and so many of the other explorers of Australia…this is rich gaming territory for the avid Aussie adventurer.

We'll take a look at unique characters that can play their part with a complete adaptation of the existing Congo game to allow you to jump in boots and all without anything else to do but read on…its all there for you…

So grab a cuppa and see what Outback has to offer…enjoy!

Happy W

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Nice! I hadn't thought of the sealers as a faction before; 1820's VDL could work quite well in Congo mode with Tasmanians, Bushrangers, Sealers and Settlers.

Chaps,

In this post we expand out the factions in Outback, my conversion of Congo for use in the Australian Frontier wars.

These extra factions are more specific and take the game toward more of a ‘wear themed' game than the original exploration game though off course the two intermix to a degree.

So some added content for you to peruse.

Enjoy

Happy W

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@mrinku – 1820 VDL would indeed work well and these additional factions would also will be useful in that setting ;-)

Loving it but also want to see some more of the skirmish games!

Gents,

Here is a article on frontier warfare in Tasmania by Australian Frontier Wars historian, John Connor.

It's not to long and a very interesting piece going into a good deal of military detail on operations in Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania)….the stuff we like – certainly worth a read with a cuppa.

Enjoy.

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@Field Marshal
Thanks!..we'll see what we can do ;-)

I'm just curious as to why you've chosen to illustrate this article with an image that depicts an early morning surprise attack on an Aboriginal camp and the ensuing massacre in 1840s QLD, HW.

…no reason…it's just art…

Well… so are Vermeer's 'The Girl with the Pearl Earing' and Picasso's 'Guernica'. Why not use one of them?

Wait… I know… copyright issues.

Gents,

In this post we look at using The Men Who Would Be Kings for frontier wars clashes. The higher figure totals in this rule system will allow for a more spectacular game. Alternatively the smaller ‘half kings' game still allows players to use the game with smaller numbers of figures.

TMWWBKs provides a unique style of play and the many tweakable rules allows enough variation and combinations that a frontier wars game can be had in the spirit of the original rules.

The post includes full rules for each force type and army lists for the entire period – there should be something useful in there for anyone interested in the topic.

Enjoy

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To reiterate earlier points:

TMWWBK doesn't use facings or arcs of firing and visibility, and therefore doesn't have the capacity to represent the historical tactical fulcrum of frontier conflict: the need for Aboriginal warriors to try and get into positions from which they can throw missiles from outside their targets' visibility arc, and the colonials' need to avoid this situation. Yes, there are mechanisms in the rules and your mods that indirectly mimic this effect to a limited extent, but it's so diagnostic of the subject that it really needs to be written into whatever rules are being used.

Also, the colonial forces generated with TMWWBK are atypically large, both in the absolute sense, and relative to the Aboriginal forces listed. Colonial forces of this size were rarely seen on the frontier. One of the Rufus River expeditions consisted of 68 personnel, and Battle Mountain might have seen as many as 100 or so deployed, but these are exceptional instances; for the most part no more than a couple of dozen were engaged (the 1790s expeditions were successfully eluded by their quarry).

Still, as long as people are aware that they're playing a distorted caricature or para-fantasy take on Australian frontier conflict and are happy to do so TMWWBK at least makes for a fun, light-hearted game.

While the viewing recommendations are interesting in their own right for various reasons, they fall very far short of serving as adequate AFW equivalents to celluloid representations of other colonial conflicts.

Gents,

Wrapping up our series of posts on the Australian Frontier Wars I provide a simple campaign system for use that should be very easy to implement and can easily be converted to any colonial setting – so it might well be off use to any game setting.

Campaigns often come to an inconclusive end due to the requirements of planning and bookkeeping and sometimes the services of an umpire, but this campaign, Resistance!, requires only the keeping of one number to keep track of the action!

Before each battle players set up the campaign dynamics which should take little more than 10 mins and then they may conduct a campaign, in a setting of their choosing. They may use a map to locate fictional encounters with some creative thinking which can provide some element of creative campaign narrative and theme, but it is not required.

I hope you have enjoyed this series and there will certainly be additions made as time goes by…

Happy Wanderer

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