Thursday, April 14, 2011

The "Reinforcements" Problem

Because I have a limited number of Colonial miniatures, I do not think that the rather generous "reinforcements" from the Jarania Campaign will work for Afristan.

As of this writing, I have enough "British" figures for Murdock, Alex and Pete to each have a platoon and a squad . . . although I don't have any figures for myself, so I'll have to "borrow" some of theirs for some time yet. I'm also pretty near having completed a Sepoy platoon for each of them, as well as a Gurkha squad . . . and again, no troops for me . . . *sigh*.

I've been working primarily on Pathans (and am awaiting an order of Zulus to join the Dervishes, who will need to be painted). Anyway, for the time being, I want to focus on painting Natives, not buying and painting more Empire troops . . . so I don't want to be too generous with reinforcements.

Also, because my Native forces will be limited for the time being, I don't want to introduce cavalry, artillery or machine gun units yet. So what I'm thinking about is something like this:

Each month I will roll 1d6 for reinforcements . . . noting that all reinforcements will remain in reserve in the player's main district (Tewfiq, Urabbi, Nukar or Kamel) until they are used as replacements for casualties OR are numerous enough to form new units (providing I then have miniatures for this).

The d6 rolls may result in something like the following (although these are first thoughts and subject to change). Unless otherwise indicated, all troops are on foot:
  1. one Sepoy
  2. either two Sepoys; one "Briton"; or one Gurkha
  3. one Cavalryman; three Sepoys; or one "Briton" and one Sepoy
  4. one Artilleryman; one Cavalryman and one Sepoy; two "Britons"; or four Sepoys
  5. one Lieutenant; one Cavalryman and one "Briton"; one Cavalryman and two Sepoys; two "Britons" and a Sepoy; one "Briton" and three Sepoys; or five Sepoys
  6. one Lieutenant and a Sepoy; two Cavalrymen; three "Britons"; or six Sepoys
(note that a "Briton" could be either British or Scots)

The obvious bias in the above chart is toward accumulating Colonial troops (the Sepoys) . . . after all, Afristan is a backwater and there is little use in wasting too many British troops there.

-- Jeff

1 comment:

  1. Ahh, the wargamer's equivalent of the Cobbler's children.

    For the British side, you might want to add extra "personality" officers first and just reassign privates to them. Might help your own units feel more like different units despite only having 1 different figure in them.

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