Bayonet & Ideology

[JohnWyatt]

This is a brief account of a solo game I tried recently to familiarise myself with the 2017 edition of Bayonet and Ideology (BI). Please excuse any howlers with regards to applying the rules or decision making!

Preparation
For the Republicans my choice of army was obvious. I'm a big fan of George Orwell's writing so it had to be POUM. I even chose the "Local Supporters" option so I could represent the man himself. I should probably have referred to him as "Eric" rather than "George" though. I used the other additions on extra troops and some MMGs, plus beefing up the Assets. I was deliberately going for quantity above quality because I wanted to see how that would work under the rules.

The Nationalists ended up being Civil Guard. They had one mega-sized platoon, some MMGs and mortars and a couple of light armoured cars.

For the dice game I decided in advance on a couple of contrasting strategies. The POUM would roll up to six times before banking their total, the Guard up to three times. This was all part of my attempt to reflect the nature of the opposing forces. My expectations were confounded when the POUM had a really good run and the Guard did terribly, failing to score anything at all. After that it seemed only fair to nominate the POUM as attackers. To make life even more interesting, I started the Guard with a single platoon plus the armoured cars.

To counteract any inadvertent bias I devised a little routine for placing the terrain randomly (within the constraints set by the rules). This resulted in an interesting layout that might not have occurred otherwise. The POUM had some relatively open ground on their left flank giving the possibility of a rapid, but risky advance. On the opposite flank the Civil Guard had a good defensive position including a nightmarish network of gullies that would severely limit lines of sight. The Anarchists really would have to capture that ground with the bayonet (and ideology).

Because of the paucity of Civil Guard forces I decided the defenders would concede part of the battlefield at the start in order to keep their sole platoon together. The armoured cars defended a crucial road junction.

In retrospect I probably made a mistake by deploying in this fashion. Frankly I was intimidated by the size of the POUM company and got seduced into trying to preserve my meagre force at all costs, losing sight of the big picture. I should probably have strung out the platoon in a longer line and used it as a speed bump to slow the POUM advance, accepting that I was probably going to lose it.

And so to the game. In proper HG Wells fashion I'll tell the story from one side only, that of the POUM commander. But I did try to play in an unbiased fashion. I've included a few technical notes in brackets.

Turn 1
As soon as the battle opened I sent a message round asking for volunteers to act as snipers. No one would admit to having the necessary skills (dice roll failed to turn up an asset). Being otherwise happy with my dispositions I ordered the company forward.

Over on the left flank our men were unopposed, and being nicely bunched up in the cause of comradeship and political orthodoxy they advanced rapidly and seized a wide swathe of terrain. My right flank platoons were facing a platoon of Civil Guard on a rocky knoll and with my encouragement the men unleashed a torrent of fire. Unfortunately the attack displayed more revolutionary fervour than accuracy and our men got decidedly the worst of the exchange. (Paid for shooting all missed or was saved, a return shot hit and the POUM failed to save.)

"Where are the reinforcements? We need more men!" the platoon leaders cried. As it happens I had made arrangements for fresh troops to be brought up quickly but in the furore over finding a sniper I had no time to implement them. Still I felt the battle was going well so far and I was eager to hasten it to its conclusion. (Basic strategy was for the attackers to run down the clock and the defenders to slow the countdown.)

After a brief delay the Guard opened fire again. Our men responded in kind, but still had trouble finding the range. The Guard also used their armoured cars to good effect, peppering our men with long range fire to which we had no reply. (The only thing in range was an MMG, which was ineffective.)

Turn 2
"Where are my snipers? They must be here somewhere!" Thus was my cry, but alas it went unanswered once again. The recent action left our hillside littered with casualties, and I set the English writer to work tidying them away lest they dampen the enthusiasm of their comrades. Meanwhile part of our first platoon had got into a gully and was working its way towards the flank of the rocky knoll. For once the terrain was working in our favour.

Those armoured cars continued to annoy me, exacting a small but significant toll of casualties. Therefore I settled on a bold stratagem - send a platoon forward to make a frontal attack that would annihilate one side or the other. Alas, the treacherous Guard reversed down the road thumbing their noses at our men before unleashing another storm of fire that left many of our brave boys prostrate on the battlefield. (Attempted assault and fallback.)

By now our 3^rd and 4^th platoons were peacefully sitting on objectives near the left flank, well out of range of the enemy. They hadn't seen any action but they were doing a useful job (or so they assured me).

The Civil Guard now unleashed a new terror on our battered 2^nd platoon. This took the form of an aerial attack, which in addition to causing casualties would force the troops to go to ground. In the event, the latter was not a problem because there were only casualties left in the vicinity of the target. Fortunately the rest of the Guard shooting was ineffective at this time.

Turn 3
Having despaired of the snipers I enquired diffidently about the possibility of artillery support. Surprisingly it arrived, and some even landed on the target. As far as I could see it caused no casualties, but at least it kept their heads down.

My first and second platoons were seriously weakened. Second platoon was in a worse state because there had been no opportunity to deal with the casualties, but fortunately the men kept their nerve. In the event though, they were unable to achieve much at this time. (The platoon was too spread out even for the survivors to reach the casualty markers.)

The remnants of the first platoon however were in position to assault the outer ring of defenders surrounding the rocky knoll. This time the Guard elected to stay put and the fight was on. After some fierce hand-to-hand fighting honours were even and my men were forced to withdraw.

By way of a consolation, my reinforcements were drawing near. I ordered them to march straight down the road and leapfrog the second platoon, who I suspected would not be staying around much longer.

To add to our misery the Civil Guard finally took some aggressive action, assaulting the troops who had assaulted them a moment ago. They won without taking any losses, threatening our right flank. News also arrived that the enemy were bringing up reinforcements, a large platoon being sighted near our left flank. It appeared that the counterattack was about to begin.

Turn 4
I asked for more artillery but the only response I got was, "mañana". Once again our second platoon was unable to do anything useful. A firefight was beginning to develop on our left but mostly this turn was about consolidation and preparing to weather the oncoming storm.

The Guard's response came as a shock. A shock attack, which reduced our first platoon to such low numbers the survivors immediately ran away. But our men's passion for the Cause was such that the platoon was immediately reconstituted as a reinforcement. Thinking about this taught me two valuable lessons: 1. our men fight best when there is no one to fight against and 2. the initial attacks should have been more aggressive and less mindful of casualties. The quicker you get your platoons wiped out, the sooner they can come back.

Turn 5
Spirited exhortations behind the front persuaded a few comrades to return to the battle, and in fact this, plus a gamble on prioritising the arrival of the reconstituted platoon, led to its arrival back on the battlefield at the end of this turn - but minus the writer, who was carried off in the other direction still complaining hoarsely about the design of the drinking vessels. (Rapid Deployment asset and the "mighty handful" resulted in very good rolls.)

Less happily, the second platoon also qualified as a reinforcement by running away and the Guard kept up a constant, debilitating long range fire with heavy machine guns and mortars. The previously unengaged platoons on the left were now taking hits; by this point their lack of long range or heavy weapons capability was really hurting them.

Turn 6
This turn was effectively a mad scramble to capture a few last pieces of ground. As such there was little combat, which I had found did not generally go in the Anarchists' favour. The reconstituted second platoon arrived on the right flank, too late to influence the course of the battle. (Quite cynically I nominated a corner square in the hope of deviating down the flank and occupying some more terrain. It almost worked.) With that done the battle was at an end. I was certain I had scored a moral victory, but the outcome on the ground was more doubtful...

The result
The POUM had taken a lot of ground including two objectives, but had suffered far more casualties than the Civil Guard. They had also failed to dislodge the Guard from their initial position. After totting up the scores, and taking into account the disparity in starting forces, the outcome was... a draw. That felt about right, although the dicing criteria could have given either side a very small victory.

Reflections on my own performance
The POUM deployment wasn't quite right. I had too little force on the right and too much on the left; I hadn't appreciated just how much difference the troop quality rules would make to the fighting. In the first couple of turns I was insufficiently aggressive with the POUM; I should have accepted more casualties as the price of making progress. (Seems a good revolutionary motto.)

As far as troop choice was concerned, I picked elements that fitted a particular conception of the army so I have no complaints on that score. But if I was playing "competitively" I would probably have made a few changes.

The Civil Guard were static throughout the first part of the battle. That was my game plan, and broadly speaking it worked except that I could probably have defended a larger piece of real estate. Again this was down to overestimating the capabilities of the POUM company.

One of the Civil Guard assets was a waste of time. Expecting that the Civil Guard would be attacking I chose to delay the POUM reinforcements, but a good occasion to use this asset never materialised. Now that I think it through the POUM were never going to be short of troops. I should have chosen something else.

Reflections on the game
The game rattled along quite nicely with minimal rules queries. I probably got one or two things wrong in the heat of battle, but everything which happened seemed to play out logically and intuitively. Only turn 5, which was a short one, felt slightly artificial as I was trying to maximise my victory points, but that is inevitable in any game with a fixed turn limit. By and large I don't pay close attention to victory criteria during a game; I formulate a general plan at the start and try to stick to it. That worked well in this game; I had no idea how many points I had scored until the end but I had a feeling it would be a close-run thing based on the situation on the table.

I didn't keep a record of playing time and in any case I split it over two sessions. About two to three hours in total I think. I actually packed the whole thing away between sessions so there was some downtime in the middle. Surprisingly little downtime thanks to the use of a grid; for future games I'll speed that up still further by preparing a "game situation summary sheet" which I've already done successfully for MoCB.

There was a lot more action than I described in the main account but I didn't want to weary anyone by going through every exchange of fire. Basically, it felt as if the Civil Guard had plenty to do even during the first couple of turns when they were wholly on the defensive.

As soon as I got to the end of the game I wanted to try another one, which is always a positive. I'll probably reverse the roles of attacker and defender next time, or see what would have happened if the Civil Guard had tried defending along a broader front, or tweak the company compositions slightly, or, or...!

[martin goddard]

This is great John.
Can we make it into a MILL article?
Others would enjoy the solo thoughts I believe.

It is an enjoyable period to fight as it is so unsophisticated.


martin

[JohnWyatt]

Thank you for the kind words Martin.

I will try to work the solo thoughts up into something more comprehensive / comprehensible and also do another AAR so there is something new to read. I tried to stay away from too much discussion on game mechanics (and cut out a long paragraph on how much I liked the game) as I assumed this would be old news to most readers of the forum, but possibly a couple of extra sentences might be appropriate for the wider readership of the MILL?

Like many people I am eagerly awaiting the new PBI but there is certainly something to be said for the simple approach of BI.

[Sean Clark]

Wonderful stuff John.

You're amongst friends on here because there's a lot of love for Bayonets and Ideology. 

As a fellow fan of George/Eric's writing, my first figures were POUM militia. I also now have International Brigade, Moroccans, regular Nationalists and the start of a Falangist company. I also have some Civil Guard waiting to be painted.

[martin goddard]

Any input for solo players is a good thing.
I suspect there are a lot of solo gamers out there looking for some ideas to make their games more challenging.

martin