MacKenzie's Heights 1854 Crimean Batrep......

....or the poor bloody ill equipped Russians!

The Rejects gathered for the first time this year last Saturday for a fictional Crimean wargame, John, Surjit and Ray playing the Allies, myself, BigLee and Ian playing the Russians, the teams were picked beforehand.

Most of my pictures will be the Russian point of view as Ray and BigLee have batreps on their blogs (Ray is turning his into a version of War and Peace).

The Russians were in defence building siege lines and redoubts and the Allies were scouting to find and destroy them........let shenanigans commence!

Some of the intial Russian deployment on the heights.......

........and the rest, you can see that the redoubts are not complete......

The Allies initial deployment that I could have screwed up if I had rolled a 2 or better, fickle dice gods......

Contractual Postie shot, up close and personal......

BigLee's cossacks, never to attack unless the other units routing or showing it's flank or rear and you're really close!

Russian sappers giving it the big one filling in large gaps in our defences.....

Ray putting on a brave drug enhanced face due to back pain (he had bent down to pick up his wallet and pulled something), there was not a lot of sympathy from the Russians or his allies......

A Russian heavy gun prepares to unleash hell......

Sappers are still at it, the number on the paper is what had been thrown on an average dice, this was done every turn until 20 was reached and another piece was completed....the rocks denote impassable terrain.

The Russians deploy and change formation to counter the cowardly but sensible Allied tactics....

Ian's troops turn to my right and deploy for battle.....

The thin red well armed line....

The Russian left flank.....

The Russian right flank.....

The rest of BigLee's cavalry and horse artillery arrive on the Allied right flank.....

The cossacks sneaking through the woods......

The Allies deployed and never moved further than this, they had rifled muskets with a range of 15" while the Russians had muskets with a range of 9".

Ian's knee heals well after surgery even with my attempts to put him back into rehab with pokes and kicks.....

One of the highlights from the game for the Russians, giving the allies heavy horse a slapping.....

The cossacks were lured out of the woods by the Coldstream guards showing their flank, the cossacks couldn't resist and took out a quarter of the guards out in the action and then pursued and hit a cavalry regiment but died to a man....

The other cossacks took out this artillery and then....

...took on a guards regiment in square and died to a man.....

By this stage Postie was shattered physically and mentally, mostly Ray's fault as he whined so much (lunch had been pasties, oven fries and garlic bread) and a draw/minor victory for the Russians was declared and accepted by both sides!

The difficulty with the rules was the range of the allied weapons, they stayed at 10" and whittled the Russians down (moving back and forward to keep the 10" range while the Russians 9" range counted for feck all, this is historically accurate and the Russians never really won any engagements during the war but it's hard to deal with in a wargame that's hard to win but it was a good fun day with the usual banter, laughter among the Rejects and racism(Ian, it's why he was in pain for a lot of the game).......it's why we play mainly.