The Emir's Lair was a 54mm wargame fought in November 2000 using my 2nd Edition of With MacDuff to the Frontier. It was held in honour a visit from my friend Peter Douglas, author of the Peshwar Gazette (which should reappear soon) who relocated a few years ago to slightly more than 1/2 way across the country. The game was set in the fictional Land of Naud sometime in the late 1850's. It took about 4 hours for the 4 of us (there were to be 5 but one player was unable to attend at the last minute). Starting with the next battle, pictures will be provided by a digital camera which appears to give me better pictures at a smaller file size, so please bear with me. The forces involved were a mix of Soldierpac recast Britain's, home cast figures, converted Hat plastics, some lone star Afghans as slavers and a handful of new (and nearly new) toy soldiers by Britain's, Beaugeste and Frontline.

THE BRITISH:  GOC Brigadier Douglas (Peter Douglas)

Home Service Brigade: BG W Britain (non-player)

• 42nd Royal Highlanders (Black Watch)  Colonel +2 companies,
  

• Royal Marine Light Infantry Colonel +2 companies.

Indian Service Brigade: BG T. Nolan (Tom Nolan)

• Punjaub Field Force: Colonel +1 co. of Guides and 2 of Napier's Rifles,
  

• 93rd Highlanders: Colonel + 3 companies + colour party,
  
• Naval Landing Party Rocket Battery 4 crew.

Divisional Troops:

• 'B' Battery Royal Horse Artillery with 9pdr Field Gun,
  

• Capt. Nolan (One of several identical siblings apparantly, one, the famous one, being the first man to die during the famous charge of the Light Brigade, another dieing during the 1st Action in the Tehste Valley) with  Sgt. Roch + 1 squadron of 11th Hussars,
  
• Sgt. Dilbert Royal Engineers with a detachment of 2 sappers,
  
• Supply wagon including field hospital and Nursing Sister Small.

Royal Navy: HMS Invisible. Frigate with broadside of 2 heavy guns.

All companies were 6 strong. All British regiments  had a drummer, bugler or piper for each company except for the Punjaub field force which only had 1 bugler. All infantry was considered steady regular light infantry with  rifled muskets. The Hussars were impetuous steady regular light cavalry.

THE EMIR'S ARMY

Commander: Mohammad Jerri  (Jerry Legge)

Fort with 2 inferior heavy guns and 6 crew + garrison of Colonel and 2 companies of the Emir's Circassian Guards, regular infantry with musket.

Encamped  outside:

• 2 heavy guns with 3 crew each in sea batteries, these have no limbers,
  

• Turkos: Colonel + 2 companies light infantry with musket,
  
• Zouaves: Colonel, bugler and 2 companies of regular light infantry with rifled musket,
  
• Bashi Bazouks: Captain + 5 impetuous irregular light cavalry,
  
• Pilgrams (in port) 6 impetuous irregular light infantry with spear,
  
• Slavers (in port) 6 irregular light infantry with jezzail. 

Sheik Ar Makpha. (Ross Macfarlane)

• The Shepardi:  Chieftain +2 companies of irregular light infantry with jezzail, and 2 companies of impetuous light infantry spearmen,
  

• The Arabs of the Desert: 1 company of  5 Irregulars mounted on camels (light horse) with jezzail, 2 companies of irregular light infantry with jezzail, and 2 companies of impetuous light infantry spearmen.

Again all companies were 6 strong.

The British mission was to capture the Emir's fort. They could get a marginal victory if they could set up a battery ready to breech the walls if they still controlled the supply wagon.

The Emir's mission was merely to prevent the British from winning.

The Shepardi's  mission was  to stop the British from capturing their village.

The Arab's of the desert's mission was to capture the supply wagon.

 (Note neither the Emir nor the British knew what the Arab victory conditions were.)

NOTES on the game. 

Poor Capt. Nolan. Everytime this figure has been fielded in a wargame, he has been killed.

The rocket. Tom was manning the rocket and he did a good job, twice hitting the target but he did manage to combine range and variances in such a way as to have the rocket explode on the launcher. The resulting explosion hit 1 man and a die roll quickly determined that it was the unit commander. Hence the brave death of PO Bloggins.

The British made a few errors, mostly due to what turned out to be a false appreciation of the threat posed by the Arabs, which in turn was due largely to lack of information.  The poor guides were sent out by themselves with no senior officer to attack a village held by leaderless natives whose mission was to stay put. To add insult to injury, they were beaten!

In the valley, the British at first ignored the village on the hill, not even throwing out flank guards. When the villagers, failed a control test and charged out, they missed contacting the flank of the British column by about 1 inch due to a poor movement die roll. Simultaneously, the Arabs of the Desert successfully made their die roll to appear and rode on behind the unguarded wagon. If the Arabs had of won the toss to go first next turn, the game could have turned into a bloody shambles for the British. As it was, the  RHA unlimbered and graped the Arabs while the 93rd deployed into line. The rear brigade hurriedly redeployed and everything was safe. Unfortunately for the British this meant that all but a small portion of their force was now facing a weaker force of irregulars who didn't care if the British  moved on (although they couldn't be relied on not to attack an open flank).

We'll never know if an aggressive reaction by the British might have smashed the Arabs and let them turn on the Emir or not, or if they could have successfully disengaged and moved forward to attack the fort.

As for the Royal Navy,  they just plain had bad luck. They got an abnormal number of  'horse' results when hitting the Emir's guns while these despite only getting 3 or 4 hits, twice rolled  a '6' putting an RN gun out of action each time. 

Bayonets. This game was the first play test of the new 2nd Version of the MacDuff rules which combined the original Colonial with the later French & Indian Wars version. Part way through the game we dicovered that the advantage which Imperial regulars had enjoyed over native regulars in melee and shooting had been inadvertently lost. This has since been rectified but we played the game out as the rules were written at the time - to the detriment of Brigadier Douglas's forces.

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