TMWWBK - Siege of Delhi

Sabzi Mandi, the village from where the mutineers will launch their attack

For our second game in January we played a game of The Men Who Would Be Kings. I chose the Hindu Rao's House scenario from the Colonial Conflicts scenario book, but modified the scenario rules to fit the figures I had, and to make things more interesting for the players.

One major change I made was to convert the rules to grid-based for this scenario. I reasoned that for the mutineers, there were really just three points of interest, which formed their victory objectives. For the British, I gave them the primary objective of defending those three points, and a secondary one of capturing a "spawning point" for the badmash, which could be "recycled" indefinitely. The spawning point was a temple (represented by a mosque building in the game) which was located in the built-up area, which I decided could be represented by a number of grids which could be used to determine combat. This gave the British player an option to try to capture the grid to stop the endless flow of badmash units, instead of just sitting at their positions and shooting throughout the whole game.

The mutineers mass for their attack on Delhi Ridge

The battle started a bit slow as, despite their numbers, the mutineers rolled poorly on the activation rolls and could hardly threaten the British. At the same time, the British could pick their targets tactically, choosing the unpinned units while ignoring the pinned ones, which again had difficulty rallying.

By the end of 12 turns, which was the planned game length, the mutineers were far from achieving their objectives. We decided to let the game play on, and the weight of numbers begin to tell. This prompted the forces on the far side of the table to sally forth to support their beleaguered comrades, and indeed the Gurkhas to sally forth from Hindu Rao's House. With no turn limit, it was a matter of time before the mutineers were victorious.

The Sirmoor Battalion sally from Hindu Rao's House

In retrospect the activation roll of 8+ (7+ if a general was in the same grid) proved too punishing - one sepoy unit did not make a successful roll throughout the whole game! At the same time the stacking limit of two units per grid meant that the mutineers suffered a congestion at the foot of Delhi Ridge, which available units unable to press the attack as pinned units were occupying the grids in front of them. If we were to replay this scenario, I will probably increase the stacking limit to three.