Black Tuesday in Estevan - 29 September 1931

 As I described in my post earlier in the week, the most recent Bonsor club night for the Trumpeters was May 1st, International Workers' Day.  This allowed me to bring together multiple concepts:  shining a light on an event in Canadian history, putting my brand new Pulp Figures construction workers and strikers onto the gaming table, more generally putting my diverse interwar civilian figures into a game.  After initially looking at the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, I determined that the Black Tuesday events of 29 September 1931 in Estevan, Saskatchewan would make the basis for the game.  The Bienfait strikers came to town with the intention of holding a parade and a rally to inform the townsfolk of Estevan of their issues.  They were met by a combined force of Town of Estevan police and RCMP intent on stopping the parade.

The toolbox of ideas from Fistful of Lead once again formed the basis for the scenario. One of the key concepts was how to present the conflict between the strikers and the police without leading straight to violence.  I decided to use Shock as a measure of the strikers' enthusiasm for sticking around.  Each individual miner or group of miners or their families will need to roll higher than the number of shock points they have at the start of each turn or else disperse.  So the next step was to give the police player some options to inflict shock.  

Firstly, the police player can speak to the crowd.  I based this on a cause fear effect from FFoL's Tales of Horror.  This is a contested roll, similar to close combat.  If the police character rolls higher, they end up adding a number of shock points based on their degree of success.

In the actual event, the Estevan police co-opted the use of the Estevan Fire Department's fire engine.  I didn't have a fire engine in my collection, so I quickly acquired a 1:48 scale WWII-era deuce and a half USAAF fuel truck and painted it red!  (check the link for what the real fire engine looks like!)

A police officer may attempt to hose down strikers.  He'll need to pass a skill test, then he'll have a chance to impose shock on any strikers under the template.  I also included an option for police to fire their weapons over the heads of the strikers to add a bit more shock.  To offset the shock imposed on the strikers, I assigned union organiser Annie Buller the Encouraging trait, which allows her to rally shock off of her allies.

Enough background, on to the game!  Kevin declared that as a former shop steward, he wanted to play the strikers, and Colin joined him.  Arthur took the police, and I took the role of a moderately biased GM.  The objective of the miners was to reach the cenotaph, and the goal of the police was to stop them.  Arthur and I made a very quick and easy representation of the cenotaph from a paper obelisk model.

The police got the fire department to park the fire engine at the intersection of 4th Street and Souris Avenue, and formed a line to confront the marchers.  Chief McCutcheon and Constable McKay of the Town of Estevan Police Department in blue, and the RCMP in their khaki service tunics.  The shopkeeper can be seen keeping a wary eye on the coming events.  I had some ideas for bystanders getting drawn into the events, but as the game played, the townsfolk stayed out of the action.

Strikers advancing down 4th Street.

Aerial shot of the pending confrontation.  Not an exact representation of Estevan, just what I was able to assemble from my existing terrain collection!

Chief McCutcheon's words didn't dissuade any of the marchers, so the RCMP turned on the fire hose and Annie Buller goes down wounded!  (the intent of the fire hose is primarily to inflict shock but I left a small chance that an injury could result - didn't expect it to happen on the first use!)

Undismayed, the kids' mob pushed forward, as some of the men attempted a flanking maneuver.  Kevin and Colin joked about the Horns of the Buffalo.  I didn't expect the strikers to draw inspiration from Shaka!

Chief McCutcheon yelled at the kids, and caused them to fall back.  Meanwhile, the women got angry at the treatment of Annie Buller and surged forward!  Small blue dice were used to track shock on each figure or mob base.

Some action on the south flank.  The mob base has multiple blue dice to show differing levels of shock after they charged the police line and were pushed back.

The mob of strikers rally off their shock, and push back into the police line, knocking down a mountie.  "Which Side Are You On" knocks down another mountie.  When the third mountie tries to shoot WSAYO, he rolls a '1'.  Out of ammo!

Mayor Bannetyne, in the blue suit, is starting to get worried as the mob base puts the boots to the downed mountie.

The gloves are off (not that they were ever really on...) and the police start shooting into the strikers.  The raging granny and WSAYO are knocked out.

Another mob of miners enters the fray, full of righteous anger at the cops for shooting the women.

The police line breaks as the strikers surge forward.

Chief McCutcheon decides that discretion is the better part of valour, and legs it.

Mayor Bannetyne goes down to the strikers.

The miners catch up to the Chief.  He gives a good accounting for himself, holding off the attackers for several turns. His ability with a billy club was greater than his public speaking skill!

But in the end, numbers carried the day and the Chief went down under the combined wieght of the miners.

In the end, 5 of the initial 7 cops, plus the mayor, were taken out of action, versus 4 of the protesters.  In addition, one of the police was captured by the strikers, while RCMP Constable McKay of the Estevan Police escaped off the board. 

After the game, Arthur checked the campaign rules to see how many of the downed cops would be available for a future game. The results were:

• Alex McCutcheon - Town of Estevan police chief:  lightly injured.
• Constable McKay - Town of Estevan police:  prisoner
• RCMP Constable Sutherland:  medium injury
• RCMP Constable Palmer: medium injury
• RCMP Sgt Molyneux:  serious injury
• RCMP Constable King:  medium injury
• RCMP Detective Sergeant Mortimer:  Got away!
• Mayor Bannetyne:  killed.

For the miners, we had:

• Miner Peter Markunas (WSAYO): insignificant injury (just winged me!)
• Raging granny:  minor injury
• Mustard shirt and shovel: insignificant/just winged me
• Hands up:  minor injury.

Note that we only checked for those taken out, not just wounded.

This game was just a one-off to commemorate May Day, so I don't know if I will host it again, but it was fun to play around with some new game mechanics.  As an improvised setting, I was just guessing about how to balance the numbers on each side.  To be honest, the size of the strikers' parade was largely driven by my desire to get as many models on the table as I could!  

I'd like to play a bit further with the idea of people in authority (e.g, the cops) using their presence to dominate a crowd and encourage them to disperse.  This game took some ideas I'd tried for crowd control in Jamjhar last summer and developed them further.  It will likely take a bit of playtesting and analysis to fine tune the results to get something playable.