The Sun Never Sets II

Transcription

1 The Sun Never Sets II PLAYERS NOTES By Joseph Miranda First, let s take a look at the units, since it s with them you ll be fighting your campaigns on the far-flung frontiers of the British Empire as portrayed in Sun Never Sets II (SNS II). Each unit has a strength (lower-left number), weapons type (letter in the middle), movement (lower-right), and morale (letter to the right of the unit-type box). I did it that way for a couple reasons. One was for color. That is, this was an era in which weapons technology, at least for European armies, rapidly advanced. In the 1840s your typical British infantryman was armed with a muzzle-loading musket not too unlike that shouldered by his father at Waterloo or great grandfather at Bunker Hill. By the 1890s that same infantryman would ve been armed with a bolt-action rifle and his unit would ve been supported by machineguns. I could ve shown those distinctions simply by giving each unit a combat factor equal to the amount of firepower its weapons could generate. That might ve meant a smoothbore-musket-armed British battalion would ve had a combat factor of 4, a rifled-musket unit a 6, an early breechloader (such as the Martini-Henry) an 8, and a bolt-action rifle a 16. That might ve been accurate, but it has the wrong feel. The larger numbers give an exaggerated sense of how a unit performed relative to opposing forces who were similarly armed. And there was another issue: many relatively primitive armed forces often proved to effective tactically. A case in point were the Zulus, whose impis proved capable of winning a battle or two before they went down to defeat at Ulundi in Yet the Zulus were armed largely with melee weapons, notably the famous assegai. How then does one make comparisons among all that? The answer was in having a unit s printed strength reflects only its manpower. When it engages in combat, it fires on the line of the combat results table (CRT) corresponding to its weapons type and strength. That makes for a quantitative difference in the amount of firepower a unit can generate. Outcomes are in terms of enemy units eliminated and demoralized, but there s also a qualitative difference. If you examine the CRT you ll see there s a wide spread of numerical outcomes, some of which can annihilate an enemy force while others have no effect. What that means is there is every possibility of, say, a Zulu impi breaking through and overrunning a British column, or of a small force, such as at Rorke s Drift, holding off what appears to be overwhelming numbers. I used Trevor Dupuy s analysis of weapons systems and casualty causation to generate the values on the CRT. It represents the percentage of casualties caused by each type of weapon during a typical action. The effect is quasi-tactical insofar as losses are determined via units employing their weapons, as opposed to the more generalized results of odds-based CRT. That also means a battle won t be resolved by a single die roll. It may just be that a battle will A1

2 The Sun Never Sets II be less useful when it comes time to cross bayonets or sabers or spears. Units armed with cavalry weapons ( C class) are the most effective when it comes to melee. That means having a couple cavalry units in reserve can make a major difference when it comes to that last round. That also shows the tactical difference between cavalry and infantry in battle. Below is a summary of the weapons types in SNS II: Artillery & Machinegun Types A = Early Breechloader B = Late Breechloader G = Early Machinegun F = Field Gun Muzzle Loader H = Heavy Artillery L = Light Muzzle Loader M = Advanced Machinegun R = Rocket Launcher Infantry/Mounted Infantry/ Camel Corps Types B = Early Breechloader L = Late (Magazine) Breechloader M = Musket (Smoothbore) R = Rifled Musket S = Sword & Spear Cavalry Types C = Cavalry Types N = No Weapons (may not fire ) Morale be decided by artillery making a show of firepower, or cavalry making a final charge. Again, that kind of thing is difficult to simulate using an odds-based CRT, while a quasi-tactical approach produces the desired range of outcomes. There are all kinds of die roll modifiers. Headquarters, tactical factors and unit morale all make a difference. A small but well led and well trained force has an edge over a foe larger in manpower but deficit in those same factors. That s at least true most of the time but not always. A2 For you, the player, it all means it s best to take a combined arms approach. Artillery fires first. That can often whittle down a larger force. Musketry comes next, which will probably cause most of the casualties, at least when the British are firing. Then comes melee. The numeric results on the CRT are the number of enemy units eliminated and demoralized; if parenthesized, it s only demoralization. Demoralized units perform less effectively in combat; so units demoralized via artillery and musketry are going to There are four classes of unit morale in SNS II: veteran, line, rabble and fanatic. That allows for a large degree of qualitative differentiation among units. Morale is used as a die roll modifier for various functions, notably for firing in combat and for rallying. The fanatic class allows for a unique case: they were units that were really good at melee (they get a +3 die roll modifier for it), but not so hot in musketry (no die roll modifier for that). Only certain units are fanatics, such as Afghan Ghazi and most of the Abyssinians. As can be seen, if fanatics survive combat to the melee round they can be deadly. I assigned morale factors to units based on their demonstrated combat performance. There were a few special cases. In Second Afghan War, the British 2/8 Infantry Battalion was given a line rating since it was a relatively new unit

3 with a shaky record. The Indian Army engineers, guides and Gurkhas are all rated as veterans owing to their superlative performance in the field. The Afghans get a range of morale classes, as their army consisted of everything from regulars to tribal levies. Specialists One of the most valuable unit types in any British order of battle is the engineer. They can enhance mobility via river crossings and hacking trails through jungles and mountains; however, that also requires having a supply unit in place; so it again comes back to logistics. The engineer rule points up a feature of the design players can exploit: certain specialized units will provide advantages out of proportion to their numeric combat strength. Therefore, any column that s going to engage the enemy is going to need cavalry (for recon and screening), engineers (for movement enhancement and sapper attacks), artillery (which can get in that sometimes decisive first shot), and infantry, which will do the bulk of the fighting as well as garrisoning and assorted other mundane but necessary tasks. Some scenarios have pioneers. They re infantry who had some engineer training and consequently can perform some engineering functions. Again, they can be useful; so be sure to have one each per major column. Civilians make an occasional appearance as units. In the Abyssinian game they represent the hostages held by Emperor Theodore. The British player has to rescue them and then get them back to a friendly port. Finally, there are also some elephants. They provide enhanced transport for supplies and heavy guns. And, after all, what is a game of the British Empire without elephants? On the March One feature of pre-modern operations was commanders dividing their armies into an advanced guard, main body and rearguard. The idea was the advance guard would clear the path for the main body, while the rear guard would protect everyone from sneak attacks and police up stragglers. SNS gives a reason to use that tactics. For example, say the Native player has left several units along a road over which you must march your army. One way to deal with that is to have an advanced guard made up of your more mobile units: cavalry, camel corps, mounted infantry, and perhaps an engineer or pioneer. They can clear the road by using the Attack from March rule, which allows attacks during the movement phase, though at a penalty to the attacking units. That s useful for dealing with small enemy contingents; though, if the advanced guard runs into a larger force, it could be in trouble. The thing is, it s only the advanced guard units that are losing movement factors. Once they ve cleared the road, the main body can move freely along it. As for a rearguard, that s also useful. You may need a reserve. For example, say your main body fails to make a move, but you really have to seize some critical hex, perhaps a river crossing or a weakly held fortress. That s the time for the rear guard to move forward and show what it can do. Also, if the advance guard or main body runs into a larger than expected enemy force during movement, the rear guard can be used to reinforce them for combat. A3

4 The Sun Never Sets II On the Field Battles are critical for eliminating enemy units and seizing objectives, but there s also a political dimension. Eliminating enemy units in battle gives you victory points. They contribute to winning the game, but they have another impact in that the Native player gains additional units via Reinforcement/Replacement Table. That die roll is modified by the current level of victory points. Thus, if the Natives are ahead, they gain a positive die roll modifier; if behind, then negative. Positive modifiers increase the chance of receiving reinforcement, or even getting all the benefits of a full-scale uprising. Negative modifiers mean the possibility of losing units to desertion. Winning or losing an engagement is therefore going to have considerable effects beyond that battlefield. That s one more reason players have to make a lot of careful calculations before deciding to engage in a major action or avoiding it. NATIVE REINFORCEMENT/ REPLACEMENT TABLE [13.0] Die Roll Result 1(-) Desertions 2-3 No effect 4-6 Reinforcements 7(+) Uprising Players also gain victory points the first time they occupy certain objectives, such as Magdala Fortress in the Abyssinian scenario. Again, that means there are operational reasons to seize critical objectives insofar as the shift in the balance of victory points is translated into different levels of Native reinforcements. All that was well understood in the 19 th century. Winning and losing big battles, or even minor actions, often had considerable psychological and political impact. A home government might be loathe to continue a campaign in the aftermath of a debacle, such as the loss of Elphinstone s army during the 1842 retreat from Kabul. Even the loss of a single brigade, as happened at Maiwand in 1880, had considerable impact in Bombay and London. Similarly, winning a major victory might overawe tribesmen to the point they would go home, and thus a campaign could be concluded. The converse was also the case: a warlord who proved he could bring in the victories was sure to have numerous warriors rally around his banner. Remember: eliminated British units earn more victory points than do eliminated Natives; so you can afford to exchange losses on a one-for-one basis and still come out ahead. If you re commanding the Native army, you can be clever about those things, and give the British player a hard time, by losing the occasional battle while still coming out ahead on points. As you can see, the subtle approach often works, but then again, winning a big battle can also be decisive. All that is what players need to consider as they prepare for campaigning in Sun Never Sets II. A4

5 DESIGN ANALYSIS By Joseph Miranda Sun Never Sets II (SNS II) is a venerable system. It goes back to my designs of First Afghan War (S&T 179), and French Foreign Legion (S&T 200), as well as the Sun Never Sets boxed game. The system has proven to be popular; so we decided to have another go at the series. SNS II has four games, with both myself and Roger Deal contributing to the designs. Eric Harvey did the development. The games are: The Anglo-Persian War of , The Abyssinian Expedition of 1868, Wolseley s 1874 Campaign in Ashanteland, and The Second Afghan War, Some of the games are small-scale, allowing them to be played in a couple hours. s encompass larger campaigns, worthy of a long evening of strategizing. They all use the same system, one that holds up well enough there need to be only a couple special rules for each game. I d call the SNS design systems intensive. That is, each of the major game functions has routines that simulate a particular aspect of 19 th century colonial warfare. Take, for example, movement. In order to move units, you roll on the March Table. That can provide a range of results from Hold (staying in place) to Mad Dash, the latter allowing for a tripling of movement factors. The die roll can be modified by the strategic factor of a leader stacked with the force being rolled for. All that makes having the right man at the right place at the right time vital if you want to get your people forward. It s more efficient to move forces as large stacks as opposed to a mass of individual units, since all units in a stack can take advantage of any leader. The downside is it makes some movement all or nothing, insofar as there s the possibility of not getting out of a start hex. MARCH TABLE Die roll: Results: 0 Hold + Attrition 1 Hold 2 Hold 3 March 4 March 5 March 6 Forced March + Attrition 7 Forced March 8(+) Mad Dash Attrition is also built into the March Table. The majority of losses in these campaigns were often caused by disease, hunger, straggling and various other non-combat elements. You ll notice the chances of getting a march attrition result are the same regardless if you move a large or small force. That was to keep things simple; but one rationale is that many of the losses were due to things such as running into small hostile forces not otherwise shown in the game, such as bandits, guerillas or the occasional enemy sniper. A larger force would be relatively less susceptible to losses from that kind of skirmishing; so it balances out. The combat system is quasi-tactical, with three rounds. Each side first fires any artillery and machineguns, then rifles or muskets, and finally engages in melee. I did it that way because of the range of historic results that couldn t be fit into a single combat factor. For example, during the Zulu War of 1879 the British at Isandlwana were overrun by a Zulu force armed largely with melee weapons. Yet, at Rorke s Drift, an outnumbered British detachment fought off a large Zulu impi. In game terms, that can be attributed to the range of outcomes made possibly by the multiple die rolls. That builds in many friction and fog of war factors, whether it be a junior officer rallying the troops, or someone forgetting the screwdrivers for the sealed ammunition boxes. You can have a heroic defense or total debacle. No battle is a sure thing, which is the point. One thing I especially like about the combat system is the sense of how forces closed in on each other. First you determine which side has tactical superiority. The artillery fires at range, followed by musketry; then the surviving units clash with cold steel. It has the right feel for the era, and brings players closer into the action. Another major system is logistics. As I noted in the rules: Throughout this period, logistical (supply, transport and medical) arrangements were primitive, at least by twentieth century standards. Food was the main problem (usually, enough ammunition could be carried to fight several battles on unit pack trains.). Much of the supply system depended upon foraging. Supply trains were often used to supplement this, but they were in turn limited by the amount that draught and pack animals could carry. Consequently, armies usually A5

6 The Sun Never Sets II had to remain dispersed, concentrating for only brief periods of combat. It wasn t until the development of the railroad that a means could be devised to haul sufficient supplies overland to consistently support large land armies. Players have to expend a supply unit for a stack, or that force must forage, and the outcome depend on the hex type. Fortresses and towns are better for foraging, since they have stockpiles of food as well as shelter and amenities. terrains are progressively worse, with deserts being the pits. Some conditions allow you to ignore this requirement. One is being able to trace a line of supply along a railroad; another is being in a coastal hex with a fleet. In those cases, technologies overcome the logistical straitjackets that had afflicted armies in earlier eras. In the if- I-had-to-do-it-again category, I might ve streamlined the supply rules more, reducing the die rolling for foraging while making the system more dependent on moving forward supply units. Then you have leaders. They represent the major commanders and other personalities of each campaign, as well as their staffs. Leaders each have a strategic and tactical value, which are used to enhance various functions. Some scenarios provide political officers more on them below. The leader units an army has is based on the number of great commanders that army fielded historically, but also represents the overall strength of its administrative structure. For example, an army that had a good division/brigade organization might get additional leaders to represent better command control and staff planning. It was one more way to work historic factors into the system. Researching the scenarios for SNS II wasn t difficult. There are several histories that provided complete orders of battle for the British. Often, those data went down to the level of smallunit strengths at different times in the campaigns. For example, several of the British Indian battalions in Abyssinian Campaign started with manpower shortages; so I reduced their strength in that game s order of battle. For the Natives (a general term for Afghans, Abyssinians, Persians, Asante), that kind of calculation was more tricky, since they didn t keep records at the same level of detail as the British. Instead, it was a matter of determin- ing the relative numbers of specific unit types within an army, and then comparing them to the total strength fielded. That allowed for an estimation of their respective orders of battle. You: Commander or Staff Officer Approach the game as if you were a staff officer. You have four major things to think about: Personnel (G-1), Intelligence (G-2), Operations (G-3) and Logistics (G-4). Let s deal with intelligence first. The game has fog of war rules, with markers representing units off-map in holding boxes. You have to figure out where the other guy is located; otherwise you may blunder into a major force and risk a debacle, or hit thin air when you think you finally have the other fellow pinned down for that decisive battle. Fortunately there are a number of ways you can gain intelligence. One is via reconnaissance, which can be performed by mounted units. You can also conduct strategic recon by rolling against a leader s strategic value. The fog of war is also built into the game in other ways. One is in the aforementioned march rules. The extreme results represent the situation seen from the perspective of the commanders on the spot. For example, a Hold result may represent a force not moving due to FORAGE CHART (12.0) Die Roll => 1(-) (+) Un-Besieged Fortress Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Town, Besieged Fortress Clear, Hill (Rough), Well, Oasis hex, Minor River, Major River, Lake Hexside Mountain, Jungle, Marsh 0 2(4) Desert, Broken, Mud Flats, Sand; Atrocity Marker 0 0(2) 0(2) 2(4) 4 6 Road, Pass, Bridge, Coast, Drift, Railroad Sea n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a A6

7 erroneous reports of large enemy forces nearby; a Mad Dash might be a situation where a leader uses his initiative to exploit information available to him but not to you, the army commander, in another part of the theater of operations. Now let s look at logistics (G-4) and personnel (G-1), since they often go together. If you want to concentrate a large army, you have to get it supplied. If there s a railroad in the scenario, that can mean moving along it. If, however, as in the majority of scenarios, there s no railway, that means having to move forward supply units. The scenario rules will give you a set number of supply unit reinforcements each turn. Since their movement factors are lower than that of most combat units, supply considerations will slow things down. You can mitigate that by dispersing your units into smaller stacks to take advantage of forage; but sooner or later you will have to concentrate. By that time you will need to have gotten supply units to your main columns. That makes securing roads critical, and that can be difficult if the enemy is able to infiltrate units along your flanks and set up blocking positions. You will need to leave behind units to secure your line of communications. Historically, line of communications duty often consumed much of an army s strength. That was certainly the case in Napier s Abyssinian campaign. Native forces have it a little easier, since they gain bonuses for foraging in certain terrains. That s something that a wily Native player can exploit to cause all kinds of grief to a British mastermind. Another thing about supply units: in the event you get a March Attrition result when moving, you can expend a supply unit to absorb the loss instead of a combat unit having to do so. That can be a valuable tactic, because it keeps your army from melting away while on the move. Of course, you will have to get another supply unit up front eventually, which gets back to the overall dilemma of managing your logistical situation. Then again, these campaigns were often exercises in logistics; so you re faced with the challenges your predecessors had to overcome. Reinforcements and replacements are also a factor. The Natives get additional units via die rolls modified by the number of victory points in hand. That reflects the historical situation vis a vis morale: irregulars were more likely to rally to a warlord when he was winning, but tended to go home in the aftermath of defeat. It s also something the British can exploit. Winning a big victory, or seizing certain objectives, causes an immediate turnover in Victory Points that can be translated into desertions in the enemy ranks. British reinforcements are usually fixed. The British will also get replacement points, which can be used to rebuild eliminated units. They re limited; so they need to be used wisely. Sometimes you have to decide between replacing a lowquality unit now or saving the points against the chance an elite unit will be eliminated later in the campaign. And now for the part that wargamers usually like best: Operations (G-3). For the British, you have two basic tasks: getting your armies to their objectives, and finding and defeating enemy forces. For the Native player, the situation is more tricky, since you re usually on the defensive. You have to stop the British, but a frontal confrontation is often the worst way to go about that, since the British usually have a preponderance of military might at the tactical level. So a successful defense often comes down to guerilla warfare. Disperse your forces in order to avoid having them destroyed all in one place. Attack British lines of communication, but also keep enough units in hand to deliver a counterattack against weaker detachments if the opportunity presents itself. Another thing the Native player can do is spread out his army into single units along a road in order to serve as roadblocks. The British can respond via the Attack from March rule ISNS s version of the venerable overrun rule), but that costs movement points, and sometimes the delay can be fatal. Fortresses can be good places to make a stand, but the British player can exploit engineer units to wreck such defenses via sapper attack. The trick is having the right unit at the right place at the right time. Cloak & Dagger The SNS system makes allowance for political operations. (To continue the staff operations analogy, they can be rated as G-5.) They were often a critical, though unsung, part of campaigns. In the SNS system there are special leaders who represent significant agents; also, an army supreme commander has this special power as, presumably, he would have diplomatic powers. Political officers can negotiate with enemy forces, which may allow you to move through enemy zones of control or the attempt can result in treachery and the elimination of the leader. political functions include gaining strategic intelligence, representing running networks of agents, and recruiting friendly forces. The latter include various friendly natives as well as additional supply. That supply can be especially critical, given the logistics rules. As you will see, winning local support can be an important part of a campaign. What all that indicates is running a 19 th century colonial campaign involved the full spectrum of operations. Players in SNS have to remember that if they want to gain glory on exotic battlefields. A7