On May 11, the "Old Geezers" lunch meeting was in full flower, with Eds Sansing, Jim Pitts, Russ Schneider, and Jay Stribling when two of our favorite "extended range" club members joined us. These were Marc Fluitt from Mandeville Louisiana and Mark Stevens from Columbia Mississippi. After the lunch, we adjourned to Jay Stribling's home where we played a previously prepared 15mm Crimean War game.
Marc Fluitt took a number of photographs with his massive camera (with that lens it could probably take images of Pluto) and I will post them here.
Russian Infantry battalions advancing across the game table.
I (Jay Stribling) had probably set up too large a game. Certainly the Russians were too numerous. Three divisions of infantry, three brigades of cavalry and four(?) batteries of artillery were too many for the British and French to halt.
Above, a French battalion fires furiously. The British and French battalions received five fire dice (at full strength) while the Russian columns were allowed only one fire die. There were several Russian Rifle units that shot with four dice. The allied generated far more casualties than they took (at least three to one) but there were always more Russian battalions.
In close combat the Russians did as well as the allies… I blame the one-sided game (Imperial Russia's finest day) on the game-master and his inability to balance the thing. Who was this scoundrel of a game-master? It was Jay Stribling (ME)!
A British battalion in line. All the troops are mostly Minifigs.
At one point many MANY years ago, Mark Stevens and I began painting this army using 15mm Peter Laing figures. Does anyone remember Peter Laing? We still have a few of those (Small 15m) guys, but all of the figures painted in the last 25 years have been Minifigs.
More Russians with the tiniest portion of the British shown on the right.
This is almost a repeat of an earlier shot. The figures shown make up perhaps half of one Russian division–they had three divisions. These were a lot of figures on a 5′x 8′game table.
Jim Pitts, one of the Allied players.
Jim Pitts, Mark Stevens (Brits) and Russ Schneider (French) were the allies. While Jim and Mark suffered heavily, Russ was just blown (or bayonetted) to nothingness. Ed Sansing, Marc Fluitt, and Jay Stribling were the Russians. We had so many troops that traffic control was our major problem. Not a balanced game.
Russian columns and British line are involved in melee
There are almost no reserves for the allies, but there are many more Russians. This is the center of the line on about turn four. In defense of the game-master, he thought that the allied battalions' fire would stop many of the Russian units.
Mark Stevens in a joyful mood (probably just gave the Russians a good volley)
Mark obviously has pulled off a tactical coup here, but still the Russians march on. The Russian objectives were very near the rear edge of the allied line. This meant that the allies had very little room to fall back. They were on higher ground than the enemy so never thought about moving forward to meet the Russians earlier.
Jay Stribling, the fiend of a game-master
We used a variant of the Brom Standard rules which were an ancestor of Larry Broms Chassepot and Needlegun rules for the Franco-Prussian war. C&N would have worked just a well. It was a good game however there was muttering about "Jay fixed the game and played on the winning side." In a way that was true, but the assignments to the sides (Russian or Allies) were made randomly long after the game was set up.
I enjoyed it anyway!