Through the Mud and The Blood - Yashka

 Today, we invited Lisa over to have a go at Too Fat Lardies' Through the Mud and the Blood. M&B is a slightly older game, released back in 2009.  It was the precursor to Chain of Command, and it was interesting to see the evolution of the game mechanics.

The scenario we played was 'Yashka' from the Empire to Revolution scenario pack, as it is the first in a series of 4 scenarios featuring Maria 'Yashka' Bochkareva, who was later the commander of the first Women's Battalion of Death.  This scenario was pretty similar to the 'Training the Entente' games we'd done before with CoCking up Mud and Blood, as it featured a platoon of infantry (Russian this time) attacking a trench defended by a German machine gun team supported by a couple of squads of infantry.

Here is the initial table set up.  Germans are unseen in the trenches on the left, and the Russians come on blinds, represented by the Russian flags.  I like the idea of blinds, and want to try a bit more with them.  Blinds move faster than deployed troops, and cannot be fired on until they are spotted by the defenders.  This allows the forces to move around the board relatively quickly to allow forces to be moved up to where they actually enter action.  Blinds were dropped when the Lardies developed Chain of Command, replacing it with the patrol phase.  You can also see the line of barbed wire in front of the German trenches.

During the start of the game, the Russians checked to see the effect of their pregame bombardment on the German wire, resulting in a single 6" gap.  Taking advantage of the swift movement on blinds, the first Russian squad rushed for this gap, with Yashka Bochkareva encouraging her comrades!

The 'Urrahh!' card is drawn, and Yashka's squad rushes forward, but their charge falls short.  The Germans leap to the parapet and open fire!

The remaining Germans also deploy, and their concentrated fire brings the Russians to a halt.

The Russians try to reorganise but the German fire is unrelenting.

The Russians charge again...

And again!  But are repulsed again, and again.

Overall this was a good introduction to the rules.  There are a few changes I will make before the next game, but these will mostly be tweaks.  

Things to revise for next time include:

- Use a deck of cards in place of the handmade file cards!  The ones I used were not easy to shuffle.

- The extra initiative cards did not have much impact on the game as it played out.  However, next time I won't have a distinction between initiative level. Any card that comes up will be usable by any leader on that side.  This should keep play a bit simpler, and follows the way things are done in Sharpe Practice 2nd edition as well as Infamy, Infamy.

- M&B as written gave the (regular) Germans a +1 modifier when shooting at green Russian troops.  This was particularly brutal (Germans were hitting on a 2+!), so next time shooting will just be shooting.  

Next game will be a different event, a night battle between two patrols in no man's land.  It will have a different vibe from the attack on a dug in opponent, so will be interesting to see how that plays out.