"One Hour Wargames" - Scenario 13 - "Escape" - Setup

DG got in touch last week with the not unwelcome news that he was down for a visit with the Grand-spuds, and did I fancy a game? Silly question...  

Summer is usually pretty slow for me on the wargaming front - too hot and stuffy in the loft for painting, and too many competing interests for my time (usually the mistress [clicky] ), but the opportunity of a game is not to be sniffed at and for this one I chose the two periods we've played least recently and offered DG final decision...

So it is that we are heading to the Sudan again for this game using the "A Good Dusting" [clicky] rules.. for the scenario I turned to my must have book and chose the next in the series - #13 "Escape".

The scenario posits the situation that a force is attempting to return to base/camp/safety, but is attacked while doing that by an enemy force from various and random locations...

For this game, like the last Sudan game we played, rather than use the random force generator in the book I went with a vanilla solution based on the rules. I've stuck with 6 units for the Imperial forces - one of Lancers, two of British regulars, two of Egyptian regulars (one Sudanese/one Egyptian), and a Gatling gun detachment.

The rules recommend two to one, or three to two, for the Dervish but I am going for two to one for a close/balanced game...

The road down the middle will be blocked by one unit of Dervish, and an ancient 12 pounder crewed by captured Egyptians at about 9" in from the right in the following ...Imperial entry is the road, and on the left, exit is via the road on the right:

From the bottom (ie. Imperial exit point) of the table:

Broken ground to the left - only the hill top right counts as a hill, the other smaller protuberances are purely to block line of sight.

DG will have the honour again of commanding the Imperial forces, I will take the Dervish... Imperial entry is on the road at the top of the previous picture.

I will roll for the Dervish arrival as per the rules; starting at a high percentage on move 1, and deducting 10% per move, roll higher than or equal to the percentage to trigger Dervish arrival that move. If I got a positive result I then rolled for the number of units (1 to 3), the unit types, and I then roll again for arrival point ... I'll keep doing this, until I've reached my 10 (as two units are already deployed)

After the last game I had some idea's that I will be trying out in this one to speed up play in the area of casualties...  so:

1. There is a lot of dice throwing which can be fun to start wiith but is a bit of a faff after a while - a fully 'spammed' up force of four bases is throwing roughly 16 dice for casualty calculation, units then "hit" on a 3, 4 or 5 (depending on type), and have to throw those dice again for a "kill" - lots of dice throwing..  For this game we will throw 1D6/base for hits, and then test those for kills
2. The "Pluck" (or Morale) rules are a little static...  we'll drop the pluck rating by one for each base lost...
3. The Gatling was pretty ineffective in the last game - for this game we'll also throw 1D6 for hits, but these will be automatic kills. Gun jams on a 6. Anything targetted and hit will test against pluck automatically. 

Now then...   better go and buy some beer!