This follows a lighthearted conversation with a friend, in which we were lamenting things from our past which, somehow or other, seem to have slipped into ancient history when we weren't paying attention.
For example, what happened to:
I found this on Youtube, which is a clip from his show in Dublin the night before. It might not be your thing, of course - maybe you had to be there...
To start this off, I'd like to hark back [how does one "hark back"? - do you need a special harker with a reverse gear?] to 2010 (in fact I had remembered it as a year or two earlier), when Clive Smithers came to visit me and we spent a couple of days on a very basic Napoleonic siege game, which was a lot of fun, but even at the time very obviously wildly inaccurate.
Once he had returned to Durham, Clive recorded the day on his blog (see here, and a few subsequent posts). I didn't have a blog in those days, though I often wished I did! I have borrowed a couple of his photos from his blog, without permission, alas, but as a taster if you wish to see how far out of our depth we were on that happy occasion.
Our preparation for the 2-day session was that I had bought a ready-painted fort, we pooled all the suitable troops we thought we would need, and the rules were based on a collective speed-read (and very sketchy understanding) of the famous "Sandhurst Game" in the appendix to Chris Duffy's Fire and Stone. One of the huge distortions in our 2010 effort was that we made mining so effective that bombardment of any kind was almost a waste of time. Clive describes this - we had miners digging galleries underground at something close to charge speed, and huge loads of powder being planted under key points with watch-like precision. Very exciting, but bonkers.
So, whatever else I learned from that early session, I came to realise that mining wasn't like what we had thought it might be like. Since then, the topic has always appeared in my sieges as an apologium in the scenario notes - "because the fortress is built on a marsh/next to a lake/on top of a rock, mining is not possible". I have, in fact, swerved it.
Righto. Since I am pleased with the fact that most other aspects of my still-experimental siege rules seem to be working themselves out now, I am honour-bound to revisit these underground efforts. One logical starting place for ideas has to be the appropriate sections of Vauban's Wars, in which the advance of a tunnel is driven by the roll of (yet another) trick die, numbered 0-1-1-2-2-3 (inches), in the mining phase of each turn. Since VW's turns are half a week long, same as mine, it seems it would be simple enough to borrow much of that. However, it might be an idea also to read some material which was not published by Piquet.
So I went again to the obvious place, Duffy's Fire and Stone, and on p.137 he states:
The miners were chosen from among skilled civilian employees of coal or mineral miners. They worked in squads of four or more at a time, one cutting the earth with his pick, one scooping up the spoil and piling it on a wheelbarrow or trolley, one wheeling the container to the entrance of the tunnel, while the fourth dumped the material in a concealed spot. A carpenter and a number of mates saw to the positioning of the frames and the driving of the planks.
Experienced teams of miners and carpenters could progress between fourteen and eighteen feet in twenty-four hours, and could even drive a tight gallery beneath a water-filled ditch.
And then he goes on to discuss the limits to what the diggers could achieve without special arrangements to provide ventilation. It becomes obvious that mining, though it clearly was used, was a very short-ranged weapon, and slow. Clive and I would have been very disappointed with the possibilities back in 2010, and it seems that the best digging possible in Vauban's Wars is still very optimistic.
Let's look at these distances. Duffy's estimated digging rates would work out around 20-25 paces in half a week, which is about 1 inch on my table, or one-seventh of the way across one of my hexes, and this is assuming that the crew have not been interrupted, or frustrated in their efforts by big stones or enemy action.
Thus I am coming round to the idea that mining was potentially useful, but should not be contemplated as an attack on a target more than 100 paces away, unless you have no choice, or a few months to devote to the task. Maybe the 3rd Parallel could be a possible kicking off point?
Meanwhile, I am also developing ideas on a workable game system which protects the secrecy of mining and counter-mining without the need for an umpire - thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions - it seems that it is possible, but requires the players to maintain a paper-trail of mining work so that they can prove that they have actually done what they say they have done. I'll discuss this on another occasion.
Righto - got into the bombardment, the Allies started knocking a hole in the curtain wall. I think that in the real WSS the French garrison would have surrendered by now, but in the interests of testing most of the rules I have pushed it on.
Some interesting bits and pieces along the way; since the changes in the artillery rules, the only decent strategy the defenders had against sapping was to use lots of Trench Raids, which is entertaining, and they did pretty well - they were a major nuisance, they killed some sappers, and supporting infantry, and they eliminated one of the Allied guns [they didn't take the thing away, they spiked it].
The Allies found out that their spy (code name Heinrich) was of good quality, so they directed him to have a go at damaging the town's flour store, and he did it so successfully that the garrison commander lost 8 turns of food, and the situation started looking critical. The French Governor took some of the steps available to him to make the rations go further:
(a) he reduced the standard rations, which added 10% to the number of turns in store
(b) he requisitioned extra food from the civilians, which added a further 10%, but also reduced the Local Support rating by 1 [LS is a measure of the citizens' loyalty to the garrison]
(c) he ordered the slaughtering of all the horses in the town (except his own, naturally), which added 3 turns to the food store, but reduced LS by another 1.
There were things he could do beyond these measures, but the LS was now down to -1, which is getting close to open rebellion in the town; it only required another bad Event Card, or a heavy bombardment of mortar shells, and the citizens might just open the gates to the enemy. He already had a situation where one quarter of his available infantry was required to police the townsfolk. So he was running out of food, the enemy were battering his walls, he was in danger of being overthrown by the citizens and the morale score was not great, but we'll get to that.
Some highlights and a few laughs along the way...
I have been tinkering with the artillery rules, and trying various versions and tweaks as I go along. My little test siege has been through a few re-takes, so overall progress in the narrative sense is limited, but a few things came up which were informative, sometimes amusingly so. There is nothing at all funny about warfare, of course, but these are merely toys, so I am able to gloss over the underlying tragedy in things which go wrong.
There was a lot of fiddling about, so I'll just show a few pictures and talk about them.
One additional misfortune for the French around this time was an attempt to use their spy, (code name Aristide). His first mission was to spread discontent among the besieging army's troops, to encourage the soldiers to desert - a form of loss which cannot be rallied away, by the way. Before he set out, a D6 roll revealed that Aristide's ability rating as a spy was 1, officially described as "pudding". Although the mission is rated as fairly easy, the situation was worsened by the fact that the Allies had paid extra to recruit a Provost, and by some freakily unfavourable dice-rolling. Aristide's failure was so extreme that he was apprehended and executed, but before he breathed his last he was persuaded to tell the Allied command full details of the remaining French powder and food stores. To add insult to injury, the French will have to pay from their remaining morale score to recruit a replacement. It was a freak result, but testing seems to be a bit like that. There is no photo of Aristide, of course, since he was a spy and - like miners - spies do not have figures on the table. Maybe it would be more entertaining if they did?
I shall bash ahead on Monday and Tuesday - see how far I get with attempting to breach the walls, and maybe get to some tactical fighting in a storm or a sortie (or both, of course).
I was pleased to have somewhere to hide from the news onslaught this week. I carried out a few spot checks on the details of some procedures - some got changed, some were fine, at least one was axed completely!
The photos are a mixed bag from various tests - they get more serious towards the end, since I am now working on taking bombardment through its course. This will continue over the weekend, if my sanity holds out. All the changes thus far have been in the direction of simplification.
Simplification; simplification.
One useful sub-project is that I have rehoused my trenches and earthworks in (smaller) Really Useful boxes, which makes it possible to keep the battlefield tidier, and also to find individual items of scenery in real time.
I have drafted a number of further changes to my WSS siege rules [Leaguer] - these include the first working versions of a few features, so I happily accept that the game is too unstable (rough?) in its present state to involve any other poor soul in testing, and I propose to fiddle about on my own for a week or so before canvassing for volunteers.
Amongst many other changes, I have fixed the rule for starting and controlling fires in a town, I now have a prototype system for supply of ammunition and food, and the first (very flaky) version of the espionage rules is scribbled out on working sheets. One of the objectives of this next week is to try to put together a QRS which actually helps. As you may imagine, nothing can possibly go wrong.
Righto - that gets me started. Tomorrow I have to refine the rules for purchasing a force for each side, do some auditing of the stores of food and powder (that's gunpowder, but is probably wig powder too), and get on with some digging and all that manly stuff.
Porridge and Lucozade will be issued first thing in the morning. A soldier's life for me.
