Maratha Maul

The 'Road to Waterloo' rules get a reprise and numerous modifications for use in the Indian theatre where numerous British Generals (and fictional Riflemen) cut their teeth.

In this trial run a small force of elite British, Sepoy and the not so elite John Company troops face the more numerous Maratha native forces, with their plentiful supply of Cavalry and explosive things. Matt leading the British while explaining the new rules, with Raja Tel leading the natives, assisted by Jim on the right and Tony on the left. Figures from Jim (Natives) and Matt (British).

The Mathara forces line up behind their massed artillery, with the majority of cavalry on the left, and a screening force to push up on the right. With luck at least some units should get on the flanks of the much less numerous foreign lead force.

The John Company Cavalry were soon rode down by the Mathara Heavy Cavalry, but these just failed to carry on through to the Sepoys, who immediately went into square while next round the Heavys failed their roll to go in and so returned to lines.

The natives were certainly a bit brittle when it came to charging in, with the lighter horse not keen at all.

The impressive array of heavy guns in the centre did manage to consistently dent the advancing British line, who realised that it might actually have been better to advance in columns. One new tweak to the rules was that the Natives had to roll a success to even fire the guns, and this was at a negative if they had already fired in the previous phase.

The native rocket men also did some damage but a quick round of canister from the Horse Artillery soon saw them leave the field. Other native units on the right soon got jittery under fire as well and also started to withdraw.

With the remaining cavalry on the right unwilling to charge the slowly advancing British line, the Natives withdraw from the field leaving the British with an unconvincing victory, with the elite line troops never even getting in range to fire a volley.

Matt continued to tweak the rules as the game was ongoing, mostly revolving on Artillery fire rates.

The plan seems to be to organise a campaign with the players being individual native rulers commanding initially small armies of classical troop types trying their best not to involve the Europeans too much else they would lose credibility or worse their independence. There's the possibility of the group doing a bulk buy of the Freikorp miniatures for this period so that each player can field at least part of their own force, in addition to the core units.
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