First Game for a While - Russo Polish war of 1920

 On Sunday, Chris, Paul, Rick and I met up at Julians place for a game of Red Actions set in the above-mentioned conflict. As our host had not informed us ahead of time, neither Rick nor I brought any of our own troops - so everything you see in the following images is from Jules' collection. 

Rick and I started on the table with the Bolshevik forces, with Julian to join us later with reinforcements, once I rolled a d6 that corresponded with or beat the turn number. As it happened, fortuitously, I think I succeeded on either the first or possibly the second attempt and having Julian on relatively early certainly helped our cause!

You will have to excuse the quality of some of the pics, we play in Julians "conservatory" and the sun light plays havoc with the look of the table!

The rules du jour - Red Actions by A Perfect Captain

Overview from the Polish perspective - Chris had an isolated command out front, Paul occupied the rearward position, guarding the vital road and rail hub from marauding Red cavalry! My command can be seen, mounted and in column, entering on the road top right.

Each side had possible air support - a roll of 5 or 6 once per turn would bring it on - it could stay for three turns if not driven off by AA or the arrival of the other sides plane - we got ours on the table first!

Rick commanded the Red infantry on our right flank and spent most of the game trading blows with Paul.

Cleverly, Rick moved a portion of his force into the centre, which was clear thanks to Chris withdrawing his forces to join up with Paul. The truck is the sole AA on the Red side (the Poles had two AA assets)

The Poles air support arrived and strafed Ricks men who were attempting to assault across the railway on the Poles left flank

Julians command moving into the cover of woods in the top left, my dismounted cavalry in the woods and in the top right, Chris's command in the process of falling back on the main Polish position. The Red armoured car (centre) was a God send - its twin MG's took out a mortar and both Polish field pieces (we had no indirect fire assets) and it proved to be impervious to Polish attempts to knock it out!

The Poles line the railway - this was on an embankment and provided cover to all troops in contact with it.

After a lot of maneuvering, Rick managed to get his troops into a position to assault the Poles in the wood.

And then the Poles were gone- Urrah!

Julians cavalry also dismounted in the woods and advanced on the Polish right, now tenuously held by one of the units Chris had managed to pull back.

Rick bites the bullet and advances en masse with his Red Guards against the defending Poles

Despite an initial rebuff, the Bolsheviks stuck to their task and were eventually rewarded with success

The black clad Checkists were particularly effective here

And here is the Red secret - Rick is renowned for poor dice rolling, but the Red Actions combat works on a chart, based on the relative strength of the combatants. Paul had all the advantages, so we were rolling on column one - step forward Rick - who promptly rolled a 1 - urrah again - the stronger side (Poles) lost two platoons and routed back!

The Bolshevik infantry go in again!

On the other flank, Julians troops were also in the ascendancy, driving the Poles back here, too.

A final view of the table as the game concluded with an unexpected Bolshevik win - my command is in the centre - one unit up against the railway line in the upper left, with my other two units spread diagonally across the table across the road, and linking up with Ricks guys in the central wood (my right most unit is the one wearing red caps!)

The game went much better than we had expected after the initial "set up" (and I use the term advisedly!) Rick was certainly man of the match, as he continued to plug away, despite repeated rough handling by the Polish defenders. Ironically, and amusingly, it really was his ability to roll low scoring dice in the melee phase that won us the game!

Now, here are another batch of pics from my now not so recent holiday:

Hopefully, these should be of some interest as they are all from the Howick Historical Village, a collection of colonial era buildings assembled together is a small settlement to create an idea of what early European New Zealand looked like 

In case you can't read above, here is similar info from Wikipedia:

Fencible comes from the word “defencible” meaning “capable of defence”. The Fencibles had served in the wars of Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. To emigrate to NZ under the Fencible scheme, retired soldiers were required to be under 48 years of age and of 'good character and industrious habits.

This, needless to say, was an officers house1

How the immigrants travelled by ship from Blighty

The British Empire - not quite covering half the globe here!

I think we had desks like this at my primary school in the lates 60's!

An outside privy

A model of a Maori Pah.

There follows quite a number of individual biographies of some of the Fencible soldiers who helped create and defend early Auckland - hopefully of interest to at least a few readers!

Between 1847-1854, eleven ships brought the 2,500 Fencibles and their families, which nearly doubled the population of Auckland at that time. Other Fencible villages (in addition to Howick) were at Panmure, Otahuhu, and Onehunga. All this history and more have been captured and brought to life at the Howick Historical Village.

A model of the early Fencible settlement in the Howick area

And that's it for today's exciting episode of "Bydand Blog"! Thanks for dropping by and extra special thanks to all who contribute to my blog by way of a comment - they are all appreciated!