CanCon 2009 - The Russians Have Arrived

The frowning guns overlook the Russian Infantry as they gallantly row their boats for shore.

The main barracks at Nepean; the Fortress commander sips his tea on the verandah. He does not realise how difficult it will be to get substantial re-inforcemets into the fort if the Russians break in.

Cerberus with the Naval Brigade lining her decks. Their rifle fire with the many machine guns carried by the ship caused the Russians huge casualties among the crews of their deck guns during the course of the third game.

The Vladimir Monomakh steams toward her fate. She was sunk in each of the three games played, but not before absorbing the attentions of the Victorian Fortress artillery and that of the Cerberus for almost the entire game.

Russian marines and light artillery pull for shore. They did a fair job of pinning some of the Victorian militia down during game three, eventually overwhelming them - but far, far too late in the day.

By the third iteration of the Game the Russians were getting desperate; nothing seemed to be working. They decided to put their Cossacks in boats and run them ashore in the Vladimir Monomakh. It ended poorly; one unit got ashore, advanced bravely up the cliff then failed a number of morale tests and surrendered. The other unit were all shot down in their boat by artillery and machine-gun fire.

So much for that bright ideaski!

The Victorian Navy steams into action; Albert is towing two units of Victorian Militia in boats. This is a desperate ploy to bring them into action quickly before the infantry defending the fort all succumb to the tender attentions of the Russians.

Duelling Ironclads. The Cerberus and Vladimir Monomakh close, exchanging main armament fire as they go, pom-poms and Nordenfeldts raking each others' decks.

General view of the fort from the end closest the entance to the Bay. Russian Infantry would come swarming up these slopes... slowly.

The whole area counted as difficult terrain whicin TSaTF terms means that of the three movement dice your infantry throw, you loose the highest D6. Ouch.

The figures on the board are engineers hoping to act as speed-humps. They are effectively poor-quality infantry. They held up two Russian Cossack Units for almost the whole of the game.

Russian Sea-Cossacks surge past the Vladimir Monomakh. Figures by Askari Miniatures.

In the movie industry they call this a "Beauty Pass". *sigh*

Two 8" Hydro-Pneumatic (HP) guns to the right and a 9" RML in an open pit to the left. The trick was to keep the gunners at their guns; the crew of HP#2 fled in the first two games, while that of #1 fled in the third.

Steadfast Victorian Infantry lie on their guns, waiting to "Stand To" as soon as the Russian Infantry hit the beaches. The Nordenfeldt Gunners (one gun is at the right of the picture, the other is out of shot to the left) shelter in the bomb-proofs before they rush to man their guns.

Main barracks in the foreground. This building was a bit of an impediment to re-inforcing Victorian forces and I am sure the Victorian Commander was secretly overjoyed when a stray Russian shell reduced it to splinters at the start of game three!

The front of the fort as we set up. The land to the left of the building at right is impassable, forcing any troops landing at the quay to march left up the tram tracks.

Dolphins'-eye view of the Russian landing boats. The figures in the foreground are Old Glory Boxer Rebellion.

More Russians going ashore. In the first game this took a long time and the Nordenfeldts caused one of the boats quite a few casualties.

Victorian re-inforcements wait patiently to - er - reinforce. They needed to roll 1 on a d6 in turn 2, 1-2 on turn 3, 1-3 on turn 4 and so on. I consistently rolled high!