Played face to face with Hugmenot as the last in our play through of Indian Unity. We both agreed that while it was fun, it did not have the variety and ultimate enjoyment of War on the Equator. Having said that I should point out that the scenarios are surprisingly balanced in total they merely lack some of the elements that would improve the experience (e.g. the continued experience of a combined arms force attacking hordes of infantry got somewhat repetitive, despite a number of interesting victory conditions.

When we sat down to play this one we both felt that this would be an Indian victory and the only question to be posed was at what level. We even toyed with the idea of a fourth victory condition being for the Indians to hold the road free of un-DEM Hyderabadis over the first two boards but did play it as written.

As the Hyderabadi player I placed two comapnies (hordes?) of Razakars in the town facing the Indian entry, two companies in the woods on the entry board (hidden) and two companies in the woods to the north of the road on board 6 (also hidden). The cavalry advanced along the road on board 6 and the north edge of the woods on board 6.

Daniel's Gurkhas advanced cautiously and took the town. The Razakars put up a great fight, not through causing losses (none were incurred by the Indians taking the town) but by surviving and delaying subsequent Indian activity. The town was not completely secured until after a ten turn fight.

My hope was that Daniel would overlook the possibility of the Razakars being hidden in the woods on the entry board and push on to secure his exit. When he asked if it was possible to have the Razakars hidden there, I said that I wasn't sure and went to the SSR's to check. Despite feeling that my answer had given him the option to avoid checking he sent some troops to check it out and found the men there. The next 10 turns saw an ultimately futile attempt by the Gurkhas to eliminate the Razakars in the woods. One sidelight was an intricately devised cavalry charge being launched without any significant result. At least I got to visualize the charge. The failure of the charge is a foreshadowing...

Meanwhile Daniel had pushed his leading elements into the woods on Baord 6 and found my Razakars hidden in the eastern portion of the woods north of the road. Since his force was split in two, with the fight going on in the woods on board 16 mentioned above, he was incapable of generating the force necessary to overwhelm the Hyderabad forces. Around turn 16, he decided to begin moving sufficient forces to exit the board. His initial force was only 10 steps worth and one of those steps was lost due to a cavalry opportunity fire. Immediately after the casualty the Hyderabadis were able to seal off the road and severely restrict the Indian from exiting steps. Two Razakars dug in on the road and other events led to the diversion of Indian attention from further attempts at breaking through.

I should mention that the Indians were never in danger of losing the victory condition pertaining to losses. Only three step losses were incurred by the Indians, unfortunately for Daniel all of them were for units that were attempting to be in the exit party. So while the losses weren't germane to the overall victory condition they were especially critical to denying the Indians the Major Victory.

The other events were quite simply a swarming of the remaining Hyderabadi forces around the town. First four platoons of cavalry made it safely onto the hill with the town forcing the Indians to pull back to maintain a garrison sufficient to keep the town under control. Mortar fire and air attacks were sufficient to cause severe disruption to this force. Interestingly, it wasn't the cavalry that was affected but rather the leaders. While the Indians were trying to neutralize this force the Razakars in the woods escaped their assaults and began moving towards the town from the south. Shermans moved in both directions to cause the wild-eyed attacks to change course and burn time.

It became apparent that the Razakars would not be able to make it to the town and the leader with the last two good order cavalry was disrupted and they were 5 hexes away from the town anyway. In a desperate move the cavalry took direction from the disrupted leader and moved to within 2 hexes of the town while the leader of the Razakar section left his charges to be diced up by the Gurkhas to be adjacent to the cavlary and provide direction to teh cavalry on the 25th turn. The Indians, aware of the danger tried to caputre the leader but he evaded capture and displaced onto the cavalry.

At this point the only chance that the Hyderabadis had was to have the cavalry charge the town. During the first activation of the 25th turn the Hyderabadi cavalry charged. Unfortunately the Opportunity Fire disrupted one platoon and demoralized the second leaving them milling confusedly at the gates of the town, one hex from victory.

This was surprisingly competitive, although I believe that the result was expected (an Indian minor victory) it was at least in doubt until the 25th (of 26) turn. That gets a "4". Daniel had horrible luck with morale checks and recoveries which greatly aided the Hyderabadis and made the final result closer than perhaps in will normally be. This one is best played against a live opponent, the hidden troops are critical to the balance.