Broadside 2014 - The Battle of Shaho

I thought it was about time I got the Posties Rejects game the Battle of Shaho up on the blog?? This new job is seriously taking up all my time....Goddammit!!!
We did plan on doing a Skirmish game for Broadside but Postie kept going on about the Russo-Japanese War and he had a secret plan?? The secret plan (the balloon) remained a secret until the day before for me and on the day for the rest of the Rejects. I've already said it but I'll say it again. The Balloon was a real winner and helped us to win the Best at Show prize.
I't was rather warm in the centre as Fran mentioned here, on his post about the game
Anyway on with the game........

We picked the sides randomly, Me and Surj were the Russians and Fran and Lee were the Japanese.
Now here's the bone of contention.....Don't believ them lying Gits Fran and Lee, all along the plan for the game was to PLAY it, as and when we could throughout the day. It was his Nibs Posties idea to play the game like we would in the shed, Its not my fault that Fran and Lee are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee!!

A close up of the base of the balloon, for extra strength Postie melted down some old figures and caste a base, the figures were once all holding flagpoles and guns.

The Balloon itself was made from a polystyrene ball, the basket was simply made out of card, but the most delicate and cleverest thing for me was the stringwork...Nice one Postie

Simple plan for me and Surg....try and not get blown to pieces from the masses of Russian artillery opposite us. We deployed our artillery behind the hill, as we had the balloon, we would only incur a minus 1 firing indirectly.

For some strange reason the Japanese moved forward instead of deploying, this bought it immediately in range of some of our infantry???

We're gonna wait here behind the hill until we really have to move.......

Two units of Russian Cossacks.....not the best troops you'd hope for in battle??

People were getting confused, who were the troops in white??

Fran was obviously doing something wrong

Fran....what a happy chappie!!!

We advanced up the hill and went prone.

The Cossacks advance........

Fran - "Dis is my soldier"...Lee - "And dis is my widdle soldier"

An ariel view....with added charging artillery???

Why??

Oops, Bang goes their artillery.

The Japanese advance, you should have heard the moaning....

Another balloon pic

The village of Shaho, all hand made by Postie apart from the building itself.

Surj moved our only machine gun around the flank to give fire,

 

In typical Cossack style after taking a few casualties and promptly failing their morale, one unit buggerd off!!

Plugging the Thin White Line

Charge!!!

The Japanese were taking a pounding, they'd nearly lost all their artillery, so we pounded 

their Infantry instead

The Japs were getting miffed at this point???

But they continued their attack, their numbers were thinning quite dramatically!!

Postie made the Prone markers

Close ups of the balloon!

We were about to fire our infantry, when we decided to take a short break

But the throws never came as the two Tweedles decided not to play on

the rattles were well and truly thrown out of the prams!!

So that was it, they tried to claim a tactical draw, what a load of old cobblers!

Get in there!!!!