Redcoats on the Red Planet - Part 1

I've always been a fan of 'classic' science fiction. Jules Verne, HG Wells etc, and that includes some of the late 19thC fiction about various invasions of England by the countries of the near continent. About two years ago I was attracted by the then brand new range of figures being offered by Black Hat for their Martian Empires game.

This sort of merged with the club adaptions of the POW rules for Colonial battles (basically using 40mm frontage bases and an increased ground scale) and started a thing. I invested in some Tribal Martians, re-based some red-coated Brits and took a small game down one Friday night.

The first game went OK, but the Brits got massacred by a combination of aerials and giants supported by some Prussian Colonial Sturmtroops, but a small seed had been planted and over the next few months we had a handful of games, with Tim producing ever growing numbers of Cephlapods and War Machines.


By October 2007 we decided the rules modifications we had produced were viable and balanced so we decided to take 'Redcoats on The Red Planet' as a demonstration game to some of the wargame shows in the south of England. In February we went to Cavalier in Tonbridge, in May to Campaign in Milton Keynes and in June to Valhalla in Farnborough. Despite ripping of his figures to use with another game system, Mike at Black Hat was impressed, and we went on to do the same demo at Warfare in Reading in June.



That was supposed to be it's last outing, but at Warfare we were approached by a couple of the organisers of Salute and asked if we would like to take it to their next event.



We said yes, and began work on some extra bits for March.

Watch out for updates ...

PoW Napoleonic French/Russian

Photo's from a club game last year using POW rules.

6mm Russians versus French.

The photo's are from very early in the game, the bulk of the French forces were committed to their right flank with holding forces in the Centre and left.

Shortly after the photo's were taken the Russian cavalry was committed towhat we all expected to be its death ride on the Russian left flank, thanks to some good manouvre dice and the timely intervention by the Russian infantry it successfully cleared the flank of any effective French forces.

Leaving the Russian infantry to clear up the remaining French units it then proceeded to ride around the French Army scattering the French cavalry before it in the process, by the end of the battle it arrived on the Russian left flank to block the retreat of the French infantry which had spent the entire battle locked in close combat with the Russians.

On the left flank the French infantry had opted for a close assault on the Russian forces defending the hill, while there had been some local successes the Russian reserves had been able to plug any gaps, and in some instances inflicted serious damage, so by the time the cavalry had arrived the French infantry was already withdrawing followed by a battered but still dangerous Russian infantry force.

All in all not a good night for the French, and most unusually the accolades for the game going to the Russian cavalry which was largely responsible for destroying on French brigade, assisting in the destruction of a second, pulling a third out of position allowing the destruction of several elements of the French grand battery, and finally being in position (with enough strength left) to make the successful retreat of a fourth brigade unlikely.