We played a Back of Beyond game with my Russian Civil War armies on Saturday morning. The action was a fictional clash between the Siberian White Army and a composite brigade of the Red Army. Although the uniforms are more appropriate for 1919, the armies are inspired by the Railway war period of 1918.
The Reds occupied the station complex with a force of railway workers and the ridge-line with a food requisition detachment, a Red Army communist peasant battalion and a unit of Moscow factory worker Red Guards supported by artillery and a machinegun platoon. A force of Magyar internationalists, some red cavalry and an Austin armoured car were held in reserve behind the line.
The whites were deployed opposite the ridge and station between two small groups of trees. Their artillery was hidden in the trees on their right. The Kurgan and Ishim officer partisan detachments faced the station with the cossacks and the White Austin in support. A force of Irtysh volunteers and the White MG platoon sheltered behind a small rise giving cover from the Red gun line and an Omsk officer detahcment formed the left of the White line.
The Whites' main attack was against the station with the Cossacks and armoured car in the vanguard. Meawhile the remaining White forces pinned the Reds in place on the ridge. Realising they were weak on the station flank the Reds sent their cavalry and food detachment to assist.
On the left flank the Omsk detachment occupied the small wood and got into a firefight with the Red Austin. They were eventually forced to retreat but held up the Red Armoured car for the whole game.
The Red artillery blasted away ineffectually throughout the battle, even when under the personal direction of Comrade Pavlov. By contrast the Whites hammered the ridgeline positions knocking out the Red MG and forcing the battered remnants of the Red Army peasant battalion to retire from their redoubts.
The main fight however was for the station. The cossacks opened the attack by dismounting and clashing steel with the Red food requisition detahcment. The red cavalry likewise dismounted and joined the fight. The railway workers poured fire from the station master's dacha in support but were charged themselves by the Ishimsky Officer detachment. The Kurgan officers likewise advanced to support the Cossacks.
The food detchment, weakend by machingun fire from the Whites' Austin armoured car, were no match for the cossacks who wiped them out, even massacring the last few when they tried to surrender. With the Kurgan detachment joining the melee the dismounted red cavalry were chased out of the building. The last few shot from their saddles as they fled for the saftey of the ridge.
Despite breaking the Ishimsky officers' assault the railway workers morale collapsed as their friends died in front of them and with no way of excape they too surrendered. The cossacks adding to their bloodthirsty reputation from the station, once again massacred the prisoners.
Too late to be of much help Comrade Pavlov brought forward his Magyar internationalists but the position seemed already lost and the Reds were looking over their shoulders for a line of retreat.
As the victorius Whites pushed west to liberate more of Siberia from the Bolsheviks, the telegraph lines to Moscow were already hot with news of the attrocities committed by the Cossacks.
For the army lists and a few more pics see here
link
is back from Council of Five Nations.
