The what now?

The Russo-Turkish War of 1711 was a short-lived, obscure sideshow of the Great Northern War. The Kuban Campaign was a short-lived, even-more-obscure sideshow of the Russo-Turkish War of 1711. As such, it's ideal for those of us with penchant for lesser-known historical settings.

I've been wanting to make more use of my 6mm Great Northern War miniatures for some time so in the hope of inspiring myself, I pulled off the shelf Nick Dorrell's Peter the Great Humbled, The Russo-Ottoman War of 1711.

The problem is that I'm not presently motivated to relearn Shot, Steel and Stone or to learn Twilight of the Sun King, the two sets of rules in my library that are most obviously relevant. I decided therefore to see if I could use my 6mm chaps to fight an action from the period with The Pikeman's Lament.

I set up a scenario based on a Russian column advancing towards a small Tatar settlement. A single road (little more that a muddy track) crossed the table and there were scattered woods and areas of broken ground.

The Russians would have three contingents; a Dragoon company supported by a field gun, and two sotnyas of Cossacks. 

The defending Tatars would have two companies of cavalry with a single unit of militia holding the village and counting as a company on its own.

The field of battle seen from the Tatar side

I used colour coded mini-dice to distinguish between the various types of unit on the table. In the picture below we see, from left to right, a white die indicating one of the more experienced groups of Tatar warriors (classed as Veteran Dragoons), a blue die showing that the militia (Raw Shot) were at full strength (they would switch to a yellow die when at half-strength) and a green die showing another, less-experienced Tatar unit (classed as Dragoons). The numbers shown on the dice would be reduced as casualties were taken. In addition, silver mini-dice indicated contingent commanders. 

I was treating this as a solo test of a future Saturday Afternoon Wargame. Worth doing as it soon became clear that I'd started out the two forces too far apart. Quite apart from a delay in getting into action, the non-mobile Russian field gun would never be in range of a decent target throughout the game!

Tulpar's contingent of Tatars prepares to move forward

I did roll up characteristics for the named contingent commanders but they didn't play a major role in the game. The only significant impact came when the recklessly brave Sotnyk Horobet's company were led into a Wild Charge that decimated their already-weakened numbers.

The Russians advanced with their regular dragoons in the centre and a Cossack sotnya on each flank.

Tatars (centre) surrounded by already-weakened
Cossacks including the wavering Horobet

The action on the Tatar left looked like it was going the way of the opposing Cossacks until Captain Horobet's unit was routed. The resulting morale tests saw the rest of the company routed off the table.

In the centre it looked like the Russian dragoons of Captain Likhanov's company would capture the village but the Tatar militia proved a tough nut to crack. They drove off Likhanov and his immediate followers who were then hit from the flank by Tatars previously victorious on the left.

This led to a rout which triggered tests for the rest of the company. Again the Russian dice were unkind and the dragoons left the field en masse.

Despite this, it looked like Sotnyk Nepyipyvo’s still-fresh Cossacks, sweeping around the Tatar right could still save the day.

The Cossacks would need to hit the settlement in repeated waves to take out the militia but I'd decided at the start that the end of the scenario would be determined at the end of any turn where a D6 roll exceeded the remaining units on either side.

With victory in sight the Cossacks were recalled by higher command as the D6 roll finally ended the game. On this occasion a victory for the Tatars as the village was still in their hands.