ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA
By
S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
September 4, 2005
When a favorable comment poured in after the inclusion of a short piece of military trivia in the last column (see Publisher's Corner "The Lost Symphony of the Lost Cause"), it was decided that, as an experiment, it might be nice to include a little history in some future columns before I ramble on about our fun little company and its wonderful products. Since I have spent a lifetime gathering odd and exotic military tidbits, I can write them down as long as you can stand to read them, so watch out!
Regarding that comment on my last outing, my old college roomie, Nolan Bond, saw fit to share some "Rebel Yell" stories with me and I am repeating them here for your edification. It is only fitting that these stories should reflect Nolan's extensive background with marching bands and crazed relatives.
In the late 1800's, John Phillip Sousa and his band were performing in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The show was getting a luke-warm reception although there was enough applause to justify an encore - and what an encore the master showman chose. After "The War", "Dixie" was at first legally banned and, even after the ban was lifted, the once beloved tune fell dormant. Not that day! As one of the finest marching bands of all time crashed into the original Rebel Rouser, a shocked silence fell over the crowd for about eight bars. Then, all hades broke loose. From somewhere in the crowd came the ululating signature sound of the Rebel Yell. As it floated over the strains of Dixie, another joined it and another until the downtown square was echoing with the spine-tingling mixture of the song and the yell. Old grey-bearded men who had pushed forward at Gettysburg in the certain knowledge of their impending death and stared into the smoking pit at Petersburg wept openly and hugged their equally emotional comrades. It was a moment to remember!
Nolan's own experience with the Rebel Yell was with a particularly unreconstructed great-great-uncle at a family reunion who swore that, on a good day, he could stand on his back porch and launch a yell that would roll down across the hollow and over the highway and make passing Yankee travelers take to the ditch. Unfortunately, on the day Nolan met him, it was not a good day, so Nolan will go to his reward only able to imagine that sound. Another lost opportunity.
Nolan can read and score music but this is the best he can do to render a Rebel Yell: "YEEEEEE HAAAAAW! YIP, YIP, YIP! YEEEEEE HAAAAAW!" I remain tone deaf and unconvinced.
In keeping with the determination to include some history, I will delve further into another bit of obscure Confederate lore with the Disneyesque story of "Old Juley". "Old Juley" was a member of the First Missouri Brigade, which was arguably the best infantry brigade in Dixie's western armies. As members of the Missouri militia, many of the brigade's members fought at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge before they were formally organized and mustered into the Confederate service and then they were in the thick of the fighting at the Battle of Corinth, the Vicksburg campaign, the Atlanta campaign and the disastrous Franklin/Nashville campaign. The last few hundred members of the brigade ran into some very tough and determined black Union troops near Mobile, Alabama in April 1865 and only a few of the Missourians ever made it back to the "Show Me" state.
"Old Juley" was the most celebrated member of the First Missouri Brigade but was not, as you may have guessed, one of its hard-fighting and/or hard-drinking officers. Instead, "Old Juley" had four legs and was an amazingly beloved mule. Robert J. Williams (1825 - 1902), who had served with Alexander Doniphan's legendary 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers (the equally legendary Doniphan was offered a general's star by both the North and the South but chose to remain a civilian in the Civil War) during the Mexican War, was a major in the brigade's 3rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiment and owned the mule, who was originally used to haul around the major's personal belongings. "Old Juley" was a sweet-tempered animal and soon became the regimental mascot. The beast was so popular that, amazingly, he survived the siege of Vicksburg, where the soldiers were reduced to eating rats and a meal of fresh mule meat must have looked mighty good, indeed. "Old Juley" returned to Missouri with Williams after the war, where he was a minor celebrity wherever he appeared. The major obviously thought well of his mule and was, at his request, eventually buried in the family cemetery plot right next to "Old Juley".
There you have it, a tale of men and mules. Well, as the column's title reveals, we have had two new items introduced within a little over a month, one a land game and one a sea game. To be contrary, we'll discuss the sea game first.
As
many of you are already aware, we have been changing BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS.
We had an amazing run on this popular game in March and early April and sold
out of the current game and the Expansion Deck. A new replacement game
is now ready to ship. Many revised computer games receive the additional title
of "Gold" but we decided, since this is a card game about great steel ships, to
add the word "Steel". The replacement (second edition) game,
BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL, includes the original
game, the Expansion Deck, eight new playing cards, higher quality cards (due to
an improvement in our manufacturing process, these new cards will not match
earlier ones perfectly and are a big reason we are publishing this as a second
edition), a revised rulebook (don't worry, the game is not really changed, the
rules just now incorporate the new cards and explain everything in more detail
with lots more pictures) with the addition of optional rules and a new box (we
don't know how much longer the old plastic VCR boxes will be available). The
new BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL
retails at $34.95. For those of you who already have the BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS
game and its Expansion Deck, we have a special offer. In the future, for as
long as supplies last, as a favor to past customers, if you order any of our
other products and specifically request the eight new cards, we will drop a set
into the package with your order and send them to you for free. These
eight new cards are part of a limited run and were manufactured using our former
process, so they will match your old cards. You can download the new
rules from this website. With these cards and rules added, you previous owners
will own the equivalent of the new BBS game. Is this a great
country or what?
We have recently attended two conventions and much of the rest of this column is as many pictures as production sees fit to print of the Lost Battalion crew in action. The first is the COLD WARS miniatures convention back at the start of April, which was pretty thoroughly covered in the last installment of my ravings. Especially note that there we introduced our SERGEANTS! In Miniature event using our three-inch Lost Battalion Terrain Tiles and our usual potpourri demonstration table where players could drop by to be taught any of our fine games. We also introduced SERGEANTS! In the Sand there but had to pre-sell BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL, as we were out of the original BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS and had not yet finished printing the second edition.
The second was the NASHCON convention. Jeff and Debbie went down to Nashville, Tennessee as our company made its debut at this convention. This time they had BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL ready. Stephen Duke, a tactical instructor at Fort Knox, ran a tournament event in the game and did such an excellent job teaching it to the uninitiated that a novice, Kevin Duke, learned the game and won the tournament all in a two-day span. Honest, the fact that Kevin is an old friend of mine and Steve's brother had absolutely no bearing on the result. I wasn't even there! While Debbie ran the booth, Jeff ran some demonstrations, including some SERGEANTS! In Miniatures This was a small convention but lots of fun!
Oh, yes, I did mention two games being released in a little over a month. The second and the land product is the SERGEANTS! Scenario Booklet containing 23 new scenarios for the SERGEANTS! - On the Eastern Front game, the SERGEANTS! In the Sand game and many scenarios that combine elements from both games. It retails for $10.95. In case you were wondering how the numbers jumped from Scenario Eight to Scenario Thirty-Three in our published downloadable scenarios, Scenario Nine is in the SERGEANTS! In the Sand game (published in April) and Scenarios Ten through Thirty-Two appear in this booklet. Similarly, Mapboard Five appears in SERGEANTS! In the Sand and Mapboard Six appears in this booklet, explaining why the next free downloadable board after Mapboard Four is that oversized Mapboard Seven with Scenario Thirty-Three. Just so everyone can have professionally printed mapboards, we also inserted Mapboards Two, Three and Four in this booklet, although they are still available online. Is everything clear, now? There are variants on published scenarios and totally new and different scenarios. Some new facet of the game mechanics appears in almost every scenario. The British fight the Italians and Germans in Africa, Sicily and Italy. The Soviets fight the Germans and Italians in the Soviet Union. The Germans fight the Soviets in the Soviet Union, the British in Africa, Sicily and Italy and the Italians (who changed sides in 1943) in Italy. This product will be first available at the ORIGINS convention in early July.
One of the things that I always wanted to do with SERGEANTS! was to have some fun with the scenarios and to have lots of different scenarios with lots of new rules for a great variety of gaming experiences. The SERGEANTS! Scenario Booklet contains a compilation of scenarios for play on six different Mapboards. These scenarios concentrate on match-ups between forces found in both published board games and on additional scenarios for SERGEANTS! In the Sand, as it is a new game with few scenarios currently available. These scenarios include special rules for big minefields, small minefields with wire, cavalry, tired and surprised soldiers, demoralized soldiers, a perfectly beastly turncoat, an escape artist general, crazed engineers who like to blow things up, irrational orders from headquarters and lots of very homicidal snipers. I hope that you enjoy playing these scenarios as much as I enjoyed designing and play testing them. If you are curious, a list of the scenarios in this booklet follows:
S10 Midnight at the Oasis (Libya, January 1942 - Mapboard 5)
An Italian night attack surprises some sleeping British in an oasis. My, doesn't that pond look refreshing after a hard day under the burning desert sun?
S11 Water War (Libya, March 1942 - Mapboard 5)
A British-held oasis comes under an explosive dawn attack by the Afrika Korps.
S12 Tea Time (Libya, March 1942 - Mapboard 5)
It's the middle of the afternoon! The Germans and Italians hold a refreshing oasis and the British need water for their tea.
S13 Frontier Offensive (Libya, December 1940 - Mapboard 6)
A British patrol tries to bag some demoralized Italians. Will they capture the wily General "Electric Whiskers", last seen showing a clean pair of heels in Scenario Nine?
S14 Get Off My Sand Dune (Libya, Fall 1941 - Mapboard 6)
Some fierce (they ran out of pasta) Italians assail the British in a windswept desert setting. Will the reinforcements arrive in time?
S15 Mine Clearance (Libya, November 1942 - Mapboard 6)
A determined German rearguard force guards a minefield that blocks the British pursuit after El Alamein.
S16 Perimeter Wire (Libya, December 1941 - Mapboard 6)
German sappers must clear the British mines and wire that keep them from a key road during the "Crusader" battles. A British covering force fights to hold them back.
S17 The Sicilian Bridge (Sicily, July 1943 - Mapboard 1)
Italian engineers wire a bridge that the British desperately want to capture. Despite the "Patton" movie, no donkeys are injured during the fighting.
S18 Bridge Over Troubled Waters (Italy, February 1944 - Mapboard 1)
In the dead of night, some daring Italian partisans attempt to blow up a bridge before the retreating Germans can cross it.
S19 Another River to Cross (Northern Italy, Fall 1943 - Mapboard 1)
The Germans attempt to evacuate supplies and blow up a bridge to slow a British push north.
S20 Winter Bridge (Soviet Union, December 1942 - Mapboard 1)
Will it really do any good? The Italians wire a bridge over a frozen Soviet river.
S21 Erasing Some Wrinkles (Tunisia, February 1943 - Mapboard 2)
Two British sniper teams infiltrate the lines and attempt to eliminate both an Italian observation post and a machinegun nest and evade back through the lines.
S22 The Sicilian Vespers (Sicily, July 1943 - Mapboard 2)
An Italian sniper team attempts to take out a British observation post and, following inane orders from headquarters (where they just listened to Mussolini's latest speech on the radio), everything else in sight.
S23 Experten (Northern Italy, January 1945 - Mapboard 2)
A crack German sniper (he is their main man and the most dangerous individual in any of these scenarios) attempts to take out a British observation post and evade to safety.
S24 Crack Shots (Central Italy, May 1944 - Mapboard 2)
A British sniper team attempts to take out a German machinegun nest one dark night and return in time for a hot breakfast.
S25 The Boss Greets You (Soviet Union, December 1942 - Mapboard 2)
Soviet snipers and their supports attempt to take out an Italian observation post and all their friends for a propaganda coup demanded by Stalin, himself.
S26 Payback (Soviet Union, December 1942 - Mapboard 2)
Some tough Italian snipers attempt to take out a Soviet observation post. See, everybody has snipers!
S27 Partisan Suppression (Northern Italy, Winter 1944 - 1945 - Mapboard 3)
Italian partisans evacuate their base during a German attack. Who was the dirty scoundrel of a filthy, low-down, reprehensible turncoat who led the Germans here?
S28 Long Retreat (Northern Italy, January 1945 - Mapboard 3)
A German rearguard evacuates their hard-earned loot while fighting off the British.
S29 Cossacks (Soviet Union, Winter 1942 - 1943 - Mapboard 3)
A demoralized Italian rearguard is attacked by unfriendly men in furry hats riding scrawny ponies. Sunny Italy seems so very far away.
S30 Mounted Action (Soviet Union, early November 1942 - Mapboard 3)
The Italian cavalry can be more than just sleek horses and sexy uniforms. Can a Soviet rearguard hold them back?
S31 Surrounded (Italy, Fall 1944 - Mapboard 4)
Those guys don't look familiar! Surrounded Germans attempt to break through a British cordon.
S32 Tight Spot (Soviet Union, Winter 1942 - 1943 - Mapboard 4)
Can you say "Gulag"? Desperate Italians, including some cavalry, attempt a dawn attack to escape from the diabolical Soviet clutches.
