Indian Mutiny – Siege of Delhi 1857
Well, its that time of year where a small group of us get together and have our annual fathers day game – this year it was the Siege of Delhi. (Yeah we know its a bit after fathers day – but its close enough!)
This year, Warrn, Mike and I were joined by James for the game.
We started off Saturday night setting up the terrain and playing a small game of “Setting the East Ablaze” – Chinese warlord factions using James beautifully painted figures from the Copplestone back of beyond range – truly fantastic figures. Sadly no pictures as we were too busy talking, drinking beer and occasionally moving the figures around – suffice to say I now have another period that interests me!
Saturday morning bright and early we finished off setting up the terrain, and deploying the figures… while we did pay attention to the various troops involved we did make some small changes to the layout for game play purposes…
For the rules we used “The Devils Wind” – I will make a separate post in relation to these as the truly deserve a post of their own!
While the Mutineers gained a foothold by sallying forth from the city – Jones and Nicholsons columns were able to exploit the breach made by Siege battery 3 & 4 and gain a foot hold in the city – but it was only established at great cost to Jones column and quite late in the game. The Mutineers holding the Cashmere gate fought back repeated attacks by Campbells column (aptly aided by James who could not roll below a 10 for his Pluck tests!) after the engineers blew the gates open and if it were not for Nicholsons column rolling up the walls the cashmere gate would still be in the hands of the Mutineers… – So thanks to Nicholson a strong foothold was established and thats when the Badmash decided that this mutineering lark was not for most of them and hightailed it – so while the Mutineers had a good position from from outside coming to aid the beleaguered defenders of the Cashmere gate – the HEIC/HM forces had a strong foothold in the city and were re establishing their lines outside .
Overall we suspect the press of time would have given the HEIC/HM forces the upper hand as the flow of Badmash to aid the mutineers had dried up following the breach of the city by Nicholson and Jones… overall another superb game of which the images below do not do the game justice.
A special thanks to Mike for providing almost all the scenery for the game – the wall and bastions all being hand made by him – superb!.
Next year we return to the Biblical period and its Hittites vs New Kingdom Egyptian – with the aim to have two hundred chariots on the table!
And finally my thanks to James, Warren and Mike for providing yet another excellent Fathers day game.
Usually we only get to play skirmish level games for the colonial period, but this was one of those rare events of a great day playing a large scale battle where the Brits actually had a lot of toys on the table to play with for once.
It was quite a spectacle with over 1000 figures on the table.
Cheers
Warren