The Battle of Assaye

Expatriot Mercenary General Gorman leads the Tippoos troops on the field of Assaye. The elephant palanquin is just slightly out of shot, my apologies.

Uwe over at History in 1/72 may be interested in Seringapatam, I on the otherhand am rather more interested in the Battle of Assaye. Wellington once described as the victory he was proudest of, which means something from the chap generally accepted to have won the Battle of Waterloo (quiet at the back Hofschroer) .

I've been tinkering with ideas for scenarios set during Wellington's campaigns in India for a while now, so I finally sat down and put a scenario down on paper.

Those of you who have been reading for a while, know that I had something rather special planned for the 12th of July. Sadly, that has had to be postponed and as a result, along with being called to court at short notice, I was in a foul humour. I was contemplating a evening spent profitably kicking the cat and glowering at Mrs Kinch, while denying that anything was wrong. Then Gorman suggested that we might have a game after all. Savage came along as well along with Tootsie, that's Mrs Savage, and she and Mrs Kinch repaired to the kitchen where they smoked and do whatever it is that women do when they could be playing wargames.

Rather magnificent Mysorean rocket artillery from Uwe, painted by Krisztian. I keep toying with special rules for these chaps, but at present they're just standing in for artillery.

So we played a lot of games, did justice do some of General Gorman's port and finished off my remaining stock of Asbach Urband. The Peninsula games I'll put up in due course, but I was most pleased with how the Assaye games went. We used the rules I'd sketched out previously and a map I cobbled together from a mixture of Weller and the Osprey. We used my fictional Khala-akatans to stand in for the Maratha's. The games went well, with the honours even at two victories a piece. 

I will need more cavalry however.

More of Uwe's crew, this time manning monster gun - I presume a Revell knock off, as it was originally in a box of Mars 17th century artillery

The British won by a greater margin, but I've weakened their forces somewhat to make it a little more even and hopefully with some blind playtests it might be fit to see the light of day. Drop me a line in the comments box and I'll send you a copy, just let me know how it turns out.

 The British centre looking decidly thin - I seem to recall I lost this one.

It was a good night and all the better for being unexpected. I'm much more confident about my scenario designs that I was a while ago, where I suspected it was more a sort of black art that I didn't really understand. Which I suppose shows that nothing beats doing a thing.

And we will get to the Boyne. 


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