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| Bolsheviks and Kronstadt sailors come to blows while Conservatives and Socialist Revolutionaries look on. |
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| The high quality replica of the square. |
This was the first full playtest of Russell’s new game. Taking as it’s subject the various Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the game starts with a session of the National Executive Committee.
Surely this will pass off peacefully with everyone in agreement. Well no, because some silly sod always calls a strike. This soon descends into a vulgar street brawl and so resolved using 54mm toy soldiers to represent the various factions.
I had ‘volunteered’ to run the fighting in the square and wrote what might easily be mistaken for rules for such. I assembled various factions of toy soldiers – including two brigades of sailors from Kronstadt – and deployed them on my museum-quality replica of Palace Square.
In our game there was a strike almost immediately but that was followed by two. NEC sessions in which a number of progressive and enlightened measures were…….rejected.
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| Fighting in the square |
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| The factions gathering |
Russell had thankfully resisted the temptation of cheap typecasting and so the factions were:
Bolsheviks - Martin Rapier
Socialist Revolutionaries - Russell
Liberals - John Armatys
Conservatives - Your humble correspondent
Tsarists - John Bassett
The NEC was soon dominated by the Tsarists and Conservatives and we resisted a number of seditious proposals which if passed would clearly have undermined the stability of Mother Russia. This nonsense included the exile of the Tsar, collectivisation of agriculture and ending illiteracy among the peasants. It was widely agreed that all of these went against the laws of God. The one motion we passed was to make peace with Germany, which we all felt was quite a good idea. A government was eventually formed of Conservatives and Tsarists.
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| The very busy hospital! |
While the Liberals initially supported us, they soon decided to take to the streets! In a close fight in the square, the forces of law and order prevailed over the anarchist street thugs (as we called anyone with even mildly progressive views) and stable government resumed under the slogan ‘Forward to 1850!’
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| Both regiments of sailors joined the final fight in the square |
A most entertaining game which might well have spin-offs for other situations. Russell has run it again today for a larger group,of players - it went very well.
Look out for it at COW 2022
And if you’d like more information about any of the toy soldiers please let me know in the comments.
6 comments:
This looks like an interesting game! I used to have a book called Anarchists in the Russian Revolution that might have provided some interesting background for this sort of thing. (I see replacing my copy would now cost me far more than the $3 usd I paid originally, so it shall remain a "used to have")
You may have answered this on a previous post but I don't recall. I want to say I see AiP Russians and, is that Marx Japanese? Who makes the woman with the rifle? I was thinking maybe she was from the Irregular SCW range but she doesn't match their photos. She would javascript:void(0)make very useful partisan!
I love your replica of Palace Square Tim! It made me feel as if I was right there! Like John, I am also interested in the woman who is so bravely standing up to the enemy! Any information would be appreciated.
Looks like it was fun- shame I've always miossed it being run.
Cheers,
Pete.
John Y
I'll do a post on the figures used at some point. Mostly re-purposed plastics but 'Sophia Loren' is a scratchbuild (not by me).
Brad DeSantis
I'm glad you approve of my fine scale replica of the square - the result of several minutes of half-hearted endeavour!
Pete
I'm confident that Russell can be successfully prevailed upon to run it again!
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