A Portable Wargame - The Nutcracker (Miniature Wargames with Battlegames #386)

Back in Miniature Wargames with Battlegames #386, Arthur Harman penned an intriguing, if whimsical scenario, converting the fight between the toy soldiers and the mice in The Nutcracker into a wargame! 

 

 

 

He based the mechanics upon those in Bob Cordery's The Portable Wargame which are always a suitable 'go to' game for getting something quick yet tactically interesting to the table in a variety of periods; furthermore, it cries out for adaptation and modification of every sort, and Arthur Harman had clearly taken on the challenge.  I have mulled over getting it to the table over Christmas for a couple of years now, and this year, having finally got around to purchasing and painting a suitable artillery piece, I finally managed it...

The board: the ferocious rodents to the left, behind the kitchen door...

There they are..

Clara and a dashing officer; the Mouse King wants to capture Clara to torture her, for all the crimes committed by humans against mice...

Another shot

As the rodents begin to pour out from the kitchen, the officer calls upon his soldiers who were in their toy box...the soldiers wheel out their cannon first...

The rodents advance across the floor...

The artillery crew, having missed wildly initially, have now got their eye in...

The effectiveness of the gun gives the soldiers more time to deploy and advance

The rodents knock down a couple of the toy soldiers, but some of the rodents are running and more or stunned from the effects of the soldiers' gun...

Clara and the officer move forward to revive some of the fallen soldiers...

The artillery crew continue to splatter rats at a high-rate of knots...the infantry soldiers advance - quite a few of the rodents are running for the kitchen door

The Rodent King (the standard bearer) and the dashing officer trade blows in the centre...

The King is forced to retreat, and he desperately needs to revive and revitalize some of the wavering rodents..

The officer is knocked down by one of the rodents! The mass of fallen rodents and soldiers in the middle of floor is making manoeuvre very difficult...a small squad of enterprising soldiers is moving round to try and block the door!

The King is trying to hold the door, whilst rallying some of the fleeing rats

The fighting is ferocious!

Many soldiers fall, but at last the officer runs the Rodent King through!!

Clara, and the day, is saved!

Clara (excitedly): Oh well done! The soldiers were very brave, weren't they?
Officer (gravely): They were. But as the foremost soldier of our age has noted, it is with artillery that one makes war, and that made the difference.

 

Game Notes:

Jolly good fun, and with a surprisingly rich set of tactical nuance given the nature of the game. In particular, the maximum square occupancy of four models provided interesting restrictions on movement. The Rodent King in particular has many options of things to do - fight, rally, revive - and not enough time to do all of them, and he can't take too many risks, for if he is defeated it is an instant loss. Clara's twin roll as objective for one side and combat medic for her own side provides similar conflicts. The artillery made the difference for Clara and the toy soldiers, but this was by no means a foregone conclusion - after being totally ineffective initially, they followed the old gamers' dictum of if in doubt, roll high, and for a crucial period it felt they couldn't miss. Incidentally, I think this is the only part of the article which doesn't have a specific mechanic actually written within it and instead refers back to the Portable Wargame book itself. I used 5-6 to hit the target square, otherwise a miss lands one square distant, with 1 being orthogonally above, 2 to the right, 3 below and 4 to the left. 

 

For a Christmas game, I really enjoyed this - will be giving it another go! Figures were:

Toy Soldiers - Perry Miniatures British Napoleonics

Rodents - GW Skaven

Clara - One of the North Star girl elementalist figures