The Battle of Khartoum - 54mm Toy Soldier Game

 

Earl K. (left) and William P. (right) commanded the Dervish forces.

This past weekend, on September 26, 2020, we gathered at the barracks of Major General Pettygree and played our version of the Dervish assault on the city of Khartoum during the Mahdist Uprising in 1884-85. We used the 19th Century variount of Bill Protz's "Battailes dans l'Ancien Regime" (or B.A.R. for short) for our game. Our gaming group has a strong familiarity  with the BAR rules and the rules' mechanics are easy to adapt to other historical periods. We use BAR variations to fight the Jacobite Rebellion, Napoleonic and 19th Century Colonial battles. Thus anyone in our regular group already knows the mechanics of how the movement, shooting and melee systems work.

The Sirdir Himself, the Honorable Major General William Augustus Pettygree has provided an excellent piece of game background on his blog  Back To Khartoum and recently followed up with his version of the events of this game Khartoum Battle Report. Both blog articles are well crafted and fun to read so I recommend that you click on the links to Bill's blog and give them a read. It will provide context to my pictures on this blog.

Once a year, usually in the Fall season, we stage our big Colonial wargame with anywhere from six to twelve players and lots and lots of well painted and colorful 28mm British, Indians and Egyptians versus various natives in either the Sudan or on the Northwest Frontier. This year we decided to stage an assault on the town of Khartoum by the Mahdi's Dervish army. 

The Cast of Players (left to right):
Chuck the Lucky, Earl the K, der Alte Fritz (or Purky Pasha) and MG Pettygree Himself.

The game was actually broken down into three seperate, but connected, games within the overall game. The central game revolved around the Dervish attack on Khartoum; the second game featured the British and Egyptian relief force marching to Khartoum; and the third game was a smaller skirmish affair involving the rescue of Mrs. Pettygree from the Dervish menace.Due to social distancing protocols we decided to limit the game to four players. The Khartoum garrison was commanded by Chuck the Lucky and me. The Dervish were commanded by Earl K. and Bill P. We switched sides to play the relief column game, but time ran out before we could play the rescue Mrs. Pettygree game.

Game One - Assault on Khartoum 

Major General Charles Gordon, commander of the Khartoum garrison, had five companies (16 figures plus one officer per company) of Egyptian-Soudanese troops and two heavy Krupp cannon for his defense of the city. He also had one Nile River gunboat, but this had been dispatched up river to accompany the British Museum's archeological dig of pharaoh Rutin Tutin III's lost tomb. Mrs. Pettygree and friends were part of that expedition .

The Mahdi brought a force of approximately 300 foot soldiers to attack Khartoum. Another Dervish army of 30 cavalry and 120 Beja tribesmen were posted in the rear areas to keep a watch for any British relief column that might appear (more on that later).

Khartoum defenses at the start of the battle.

General Gordon takes up post on the roof of the Governor's Palace to watch for the arrival of the British River Column. Journalist for The Times, Melton Prior can be seen in the background, working on his sketches.

Egyptian Krupp guns man the corner towers.

The Riverine Arab tribes assemble for the attack, preceeded by their rifle armed
men who hope to pin down the enemy on the walls with well aimed fire.

The Dervish rush towards the walls with scaling ladders in hand.

The Egyptians find their Krupp guns to be useless once the Dervish close in on the walls. 

The Dervish quickly reach the walls with minimal casualties.

Ground level view of the attack.

Up to four figures were allowed to climb up the ladder at any one time.
The defenders would roll a D6 to determine whether they could push the ladders over.

The Beja tribesmen on the right appear to be taking more casualties during their advance than do the Riverine Arabs on the left.

The ladders go up across the front of the defenses.

  

And some of the ladders are tipped over.

The ladders go up from multiple directions. The sheer weight of numbers favor the attackers.

The first of the Dervish climb over the walls where the thinly held artillery towers are.

The Dervish have gained a foothold on the deck of the walls. The outnumbered Egyptians know that they are doomed, but try to sell their lives dearly. 

The Beja break down the town gates and swarm into the city. 

A half-company of Egyptians are waiting for the Beja and open fire.

Dervish riflemen capture the tower and start shooting into the courtyard.

A small group of Beja make a desperate charge into a company of Egyptian regulars.

Meanwhile, on the deck of the walls, a small group of Egyptians make a last stand against overwhelming numbers of Dervish. 

An every growing hoard of Dervish fill up the town square. Is this the end? 

Perhaps, but then General Gordon gains hope as he looks in the distance and sees.....

... the arrival of the cavalry and...

...the British Camel Corps!

Major General Pettygree (and that bounder Freddy Burnaby) have arrived to save the day.

The Mahdi breaks off the attack and his Ansar retreat back into the desert. Has the rebellion been crushed in front of the gates of Khartoum? Time will tell.

The Conclusion

The game ended with the arrival of Major General Pettygree's relief column of Egyptian lancers and the British Camel Corps. The Egyptian lancers charged the Beja foot twice and were twice repulsed. So their commander decided to leave things well alone and shadow the Beja instead of attacking them.

The Beja holding force of two tribes on foot and a collection of cavalry/camelry had no firearms, so when the Camel Corps deployed, the Beja had no choice but to fall back out of rifle and Gardner Gun range. 

Meanwhile, inside the walls of Khartoum, the Beja command had fought a ferocious battle with the Sudanese regulars and were badly mauled. The Riverine Arab command fared better and had nearly wiped out their Egyptian foes. However, the Riverine Arabs had suffered enough casualties to force a "fall back" die roll on a D6. They still had a lot of fight left in them, but deemed it pointless to continue the battle.

So General Gordon barely hung on to the city and he was saved by the arrival of Major General Pettygree's relief force.

The game was played on one long table measureing 24 feet by 6 feet. We did not have need of the two side tables that were available, given that most of the action was on the vertical axis of the table, rather than on the horizontal axis. We all had a fun time playing the game, Colonial games lend themselves to having fun no matter which side one plays on. We used the BAR rules up until the Dervish were scaling the walls and getting into individual hand to hand melees with the Egyptians, at which point we switched to a more simple system of melee using D6 dice.

What will next year bring in Toy Soldier Land? Perhaps Rorke's Drift?

Minden Russians On Parade Review

 

Minden SYW Russian Musketeers on parade.
(click all pictures to enlarge )

The Sudan Project is winding down and I wanted to get some SYW troops onto the game table. So the table was cleared of Khartoum (which was actually moved to its own 6ft by 7.5ft table) and Dervish figures; and then I set out all of the figures in my Minden Miniatures SYW Russian army.

Russian generals and staff are trying to figure out which road to take.

Russian musketeer brigade with its ammo wagon.

Minden SYW Russian artillery crew and cannons.

Minden Russian Musketeers wearing their green coats (front battalion only).

Minden Russian grenadiers wearing their green coats.

Minden Russian Horse Grenadiers in Summer waistcoat
order (right) and in regular uniform coat (left)

Close up view of the Russian Horse Grenadiers wearing just their waistcoats.
Their blue coats would have been left with the baggage train. Officers, however, continued
to wear the blue uniform coat.

Russian Cuirassiers. These are actually Minden Austrians painted in Russian colors.

One good reason to display all of the units in a particular army in your collection is to see what might be missing and require painting. The Russian parade made it apparent to me that I needed to add 1 to 2 Observation Corps musketeer battalions, one battalion of Russian grenadiers in summer waistcoats, 1 to 2 more battalions of line musketeers wearing waistcoats and a similar number wearing green coats. And finally, the cavalry inspection revealed that the second squadron of the Yellow Hussars needed to be painted. A few more 3-pound battalion guns would look nice too.

It looks like I have my work cut out for me over the next several months.

Coming Additions to Fife and Drum

 

We anticipate the arrival of a new addition to Fife and Drum on October 23, 2020. A female Golden Retriever, to be named Bella, will be joining the crew at Fife and Drum Central. We visited the breeder last weekend and Lelia picked out her dog and named her. Each of the six pups in the litter were off the wall cute so one could hardly go wrong choosing any of the dogs. When Lelia picked up the pup with the red collar, said dog gave Lelia a dainty dog licking on her cheek and we all knew that this particular dog had chosen Lelia.

Here are some pictures of the actual pups ( the picture at the top of this page is file stock from the internet). Bella is the puppy with the red collar.

Lelia and I are in charge of all dog care. Mom is prohibited from walking Bella so that the latter does not bond to the former. All of our previous dogs have bonded primarily to Mom, due largely to the fact that it was always Mom who was taking care of the dogs (walks and feeding). She has become the Dog Whisperer in our house because all dogs naturally gravitate towards her. So Lelia and I are starting with a clean canvas and the chance to create the numero uni bond with Bella. Dad will be doing the house breaking training and spend numerous nights sleeping on the couch to offset the expected night crying of Bella until she acclimates to her new home. Hopefully, our Lab Augie, will help Bella have some comfortable nights in the beginning.

It’s been years since we have had a puppy. We know the drill and routine and know how difficult the first six to eight months can be. However, the payoff with an adult Golden is well worth the effort that one puts in.

We are looking forward to Bella’s arrival.

Sitting On A Dock On the Bey

 

Dockside on the Nile River at Khartoum 
Note shiny water effects.

Shower curtains are the order of the day. No, not for the bathtub, but rather, for providing water effects on tabletop waterways. Place a strip of clear plastic from a shower curtain liner as an overlay on a piece of blue felt. This provides a shiny shimmering effect to your water.

This is a temporary color for the water. I’m looking for something darker available in felt. I’d appreciate any suggestions in the comment box on this post.

Here are some pictures of the wharf in my Khartoum display. I think that the addition of the river and the wharf adds so much to the overall look of the tabletop display. A gunboat manned by RN sailors and a nuggar are docked at the wharf. A nuggar is a small boat that carries cargo on the Nile River.

Royal Navy Blue Jackets man the gunboat.

A small nuggar boat ties up at the dock to unload supplies.

British soldiers off load the supplies and load the wagon.

Nile River gunboat and crew from Trophy of Wales.

Another view of the quayside. I think that the addition of this
feature really adds life to the Khartoum tabletop display.

I had thought that I was finished with building construction, but with the addition of the waterfront, I think that I need a riverside warehouse and/or a customs office.

De Nile Is A River

A river gunboat at dock in front of the Governor's Palace in Khartoum.

This past weekend in the Virtual Wargames Club "Tidders" (Kingdom of Wittenberg blog) taught us how to make water effects on a sheet of blue felt: you take a plastic shower curtain liner and cut off a piece and lay it over the felt. Simple solution and it looks great. Thank you Tidders for the tip.

I went to my local Target store and bought the recommended shower curtain and I will soon cut it up for river sections on my Nile River. Yes, I added the Nile to my Khartoum set up. The VWC talk about water, rivers and streams got me to thinking that a little bit of de Nile would enhance the look of the tabletop. So I layed down a six foot long strip of blue felt on the end of the table. Now before doing this, I had to shift the town and the walls 18 inches further down the table in order to create enough room for the river and wharf. While I was doing this, I shifted the position of some of the buildings inside the walls. For example, the queyside walkway in Khartoum rolled past the Governor's Palace and said palace was on the wrong side of my table layout. Thus it shifted along with every other building on the table.

The gunboat and a small trade boat.

The riverfront in front of the Governor’s Palace in Khartoum 

Then I layed down a temporary dock/pier along the edge of the Nile and scattered some sand along the shoreline to hide the edge of the felt. A little bit of lichen, some palm trees, and Bob's your uncle! I have not yet placed the shower curtain overlay on the felt. I will do so soon and post a picture or two on this blog.

The dock master awaits the disembarkment of the crew.

British sergeant and some Sudanese guards are wary
of what might be  inside the cargo hold.

The river gunboat was made by a toy soldier company called Trophy of Wales, which has long been out of business. The trade boat is actually a small Norse boat that Herb Gundt modified for me a long long time ago. It is good to finally put it to use. It doesn't have a lateen sail, but it is good enough for me.

I have taken a short break from building construction these past several days, shifting work to painting more 54mm Armies In Plastic Dervish figures. I have to build out several of my Ansar and Beja units to 60 figures.  

I will work on making a proper boat dock this week and maybe even get a start on the mosque. The new town layout has room for a couple more buildings and I am thinking that a warehouse would look nice along the river.

From Here to There

The city of Khartoum as it appears today.

The Khartoum portion of my 54mm Sudan Project is nearing the end of its construction phase. I have been on a construction frenzy from August 1st through the present, making 5 houses, 1 tower gate, 2 corner bastions, 2 staircases, and 7 x 12-inch straight wall sections.

So Khartoum has grown from 3 commercial houses (from King and Country) and some  conceptual cardboard boxes filling in for the location of buildings to be made to what it is today. I have also replaced most of the King and Country walls with ones that I have made.

The incomplete Governor’s Palace.

The first conceptual city layout with cardboard boxes standing in for the planned construction.

General Gordon standing on the balcony of the Palace.

The finished Governor’s Palace.

The commercially made King and Country walls look very nice, but they didn’t fit my vision of what I wanted the walls to look like. So I made my own walls.

The new town walls and gate tower from the inside point of view.

Close up of the tower gate. The gates are on hinges so that they can open and close.

The two walls with barracks, on the right, were completed yesterday.
The end cap tower is from King and Country.

The town footprint takes up an area that is six feet wide and five feet deep. I have shown the Before and After photos above.

I only need to build the mosque and one more corner bastion to complete the city of Khartoum. The walls are only built for two sides because the left and bottom table edges represent the Blue Nile and the White Nile, which were considered impassible as far as the town’s defenses were concerned. I might push the city walls out another 12-inches in order to add a river levee and a bit of the Nile. This will allow me to add a riverboat to the scenery.

Now I have a sort of wild and crazy idea. What if I expanded the city with enough structures to fill an entire six feet by ten feet table? This would lead to an attack and assault of Khartoum game scenario in which much of the fighting takes place scaling the walls or fighting in the streets of the city.

Just an idea. Who knows? What do you think ( please leave comments)?

Cccc

Gate Tower Construction Tutorial

Khartoum gate tower for 54mm figures.

A view of the walls, corner pieces and gate tower models.

Over the past month I have been building the city walls of Khartoum, gradually replacing the commercially made King & Country Desert Village walls with those of my own construction. Why? Because it is gratifying to have your own purpose built terrain on your game table.  

I have been knocking out 12-inch wall sections at a rate of about one every three days and as a result I now have enough wall to cover the width of a six foot wide table. Whereas the first wall sections were made one at a time, I learned enough about their construction that I started making them two at a time. Now I cut out the pieces (from 1/2 inch thick foam core board) for two or three models at a time and glue the shells together at the same time. Then I add details such doors and windows to individualize each wall section.

Gate Tower Tutorial

Today I completed the center piece of the wall defense- the gateway tower. It really adds a sense of completeness to the appearance of my Khartoum model city. The gateway is basically an 8-inch square box with a 10-inch height. I use half-inch thick black foam core board for my walls and three-eights thick foam core for floors. I use a metal T-Square measuring stick that I bought at Home Depot in their wall board section of the store. This tool is about three feet long. You will need this to cut up small pieces from the larger boards that you purchase at the store. I also have a smaller 12 inch long T Square that I use to cut smaller pieces of board material.

I measure out the dimensions for cutting using the T-Square to ensure straight cuts on the boards. The actual cutting is done using an Exacto knife with Number 2 blade (for the walls) and a box cutter blade for the thinner floor boards. Do not try to make one cut of the material, but rather, make several light cuts of the material, going deeper and deeper with each cut. This improves your odds of getting a straight cut of the foam core material. The cuts are made against the edge of the metal T Square.

Crenellations were cut into the crown of the roof, placed at one-inch intervals. A removable floor was built into the top of the model at a depth of 1.5 inches from the top of the wall. This makes it easy to access the ground floor of the passageway between the front and rear gates. I suppose that I could later add an interior floor and cut a couple of small windows in the front wall of the tower, but I probably won’t. I attached some doll house trim, turning it upside down, around the perimeter of the tower on the upper portion of the structure. This breaks up the surface of the tower by providing a bit of architectural detail to the tower.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, I decided to put hinge on the doors of the front gates. I found some doll house door hinges at Michael’s Stores and thought that it would be nice to trick out the doors so that they could open and close. After about 2-3 hours of fiddling with the extremely tiny hinge nails, the doors were hinged. In retrospect, it was a waste of time to put hinges on the door and I doubt that I would do it again on future models. The rear gates were constructed in the open position and simply glues onto the tower wall. I cut the gates from a length of balsa I and then scored some door planks with a BIC pen. A pair of doors were added at the deck level of the parapets to allow access into the

 Now I create some exposed brick or stone by tearing off some of the paper surface of the foam core that exposes the black foam center. I take my trusty BIC pen and score stone or brick patterns into the foam., making sure that the space between the ends of the individual bricks has a long stretcher brick  layer above them. A flat stretcher brick prevents water from running through the cracks of adjoining bricks.

Once the doors, windows and other decorative bits are glued to the walls it is time to prep the model for painting. I apply household masking tape to the joins of the four wall pieces. The tape is covered, in turn, by wallboard paste mixed with tan colored paint. I use the Red Devil brand of premixed spackle compound paste. Mix the color of paint that you want to use for your walls into the spackle paste and create a goop that you can use again and again. 

I apply the spackle to the joins and also slather some  clumps of the paste in random places on the walls. This creates some raised relief that breaks up the flat appearance of the wall. Let the spackle dry overnight. You can now paint the exposed brick sections of the wall with a light brown color for middle eastern buildings.

The tower model after the spackle past has been applied.
Note the dollhouse trim attached just below the crenalations of the tower.

Next, take a piece of fine sandpaper and smooth over the areas where you applied the spackle. Now your model is ready to be painted.

Smooth down the spackle with fine sandpaper.

I use a matte chalk finish paint for my walls, either something on the creamy yellow spectrum or the white grey linen color. Mask off any woodwork etc. that you don't want painted by the wall color. Paint your walls, but try not to paint over the raised wall relief that you created with the spackle. It will take 2-3 coats of paint to cover the black foam core board, but fortunately the chalk paint dries quickly. Doors are now painted brown. 

Matte finish chalk paint from Michael's Stores. I used the cream color paint on the left as my base coat
and the linen white color for highlights.

Use masking tape to cover the doors so that you don’t get cream colored paint on them.

The next step is to apply a brown wash to the surface of the walls. I use one or two ounces of tap water, add a couple of drops of dishwashing soap to the water, some brown paint, and then mix it all up. Use an old paint brush to apply the wash to the walls. This tones down the color of the walls and gives them a more natural appearance.

A view of the front of the gate tower.

A view of the interior that shows the individual appearance of each wall section.

A door was added to both sides of the gate tower to allow soldiers to enter the tower form the parapet decks.

Finally, dry brush the surface of the walls with a color that is lighter than the wall color. I find that white paint, used sparingly, works well with either the cream or linen colors. Now your model is ready for gaming!