The Battle of Driskos in the Balkan Wars 1912

Having spotted a Balkan Wars scenario in the Great War Spearhead iOGroup files section, I invited Jon to come on over and give it a go. The scenario represented the Battle of Driskos in 1912, with a very understrength Turkish division attacking a 'ragtag' group of Greek units. The game was played using my 6mm armies, with WW1 Russians proxying for the Greek troops.

This was the scenario map:

The open ground across which the Turkish infantry would have to advance looked very daunting. A quick of a topographical map however showed this:

This is fairly rugged ground. We added some ridges running across the Turkish line of advance. The deployment restrictions on the Greeks however meant that this had little effect on the game.

The battlefield with Turkish troops attacking from the right, the Greek forces positioned on the terrain protecting the two spot heights.

Jon commanded the Turkish division and concentrated on his right against a single Greek 'regimental group'. He drew carefully constructed command arrows anticipating a disciplined advance. 

At each stage Jon would advance, and enter the firefight

The overwhelming weight of small arms fire meant that within three moves he had essentially won the firefight on the extreme right

The Greek left flank was held by a mostly Green regimental group. It survived the first morale check at 33% casualties, but failed the second, and the Greek left disintegrated

The Greek position was untenable, and their defence melted away, much as it did in reality. The game was a good foray into a relatively uncomplicated pre-WW1 period of battles. In hindsight, with this battle in particular, when you look at the topo map the ground is more rugged and challenging to an attacker that the scenario models. We felt that the Greeks should be defending at least four contours. We connected this with my experience playing the Gallipoli/ANZAC Cove scenario developed by Robert Dunlop. This modelled the difficulty of the terrain with a scenario rule whereby attackers could only cross one contour at a time, and that at half speed. We finished by wondering if that might more effectively represent the terrain that you see in reality in this battle.

Forcing a river crossing in the American Civil War

Inspired by various accounts of early war (1861) battles in the American Civil War in which one side attempted to cross a river to take a significant road/rail/ferry 'node', I tried to create a scenario that incorporated an opposed river crossing. I built a simple raft styled model as a means of representing/marking the place of crossing.

The scenario itself didn't work too well, so no tedious after action report. I did learn enough to be able to rejig the scenario, and we'll have another go some time in the not too distant future. In the meantime, just a few more photos of the action, that saw a confederate force supported by an ironclad trying to force a river crossing. The game was played using my 15mm ACW armies. The mechanisms I used to model the crossing were created by Adrian and Jon in a different scenario setting. The 'rafting operation' (a concept rather than a literal representation) allowed for two stands to cross the river at a time. This took one complete move. The stands then landed with their base edge against the 'river bank', and they were disordered for that turn. This represented the vulnerability of troops crossing the river.

Yes you are right: the 'river' doesn't go to the edge of the table... purely a result of the inadequacies of my terrain. Until next time .....