Chapchachi
This is a generic scenario for the very first months of the Russian
Civil War – the "Railway War" period
With the fall of the Kerenski
Provisional Government to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917 (November
in the modern calendar), the extreme left sought to take control of all
the major centres of the former Russian Empire. Led by the Bolsheviks,
but including many Left-SRs and anarchists, they were only opposed
where there were pockets of troops who actively preferred the previous
government – which wasn’t very often. The Cossacks
however
clearly stood to lose their privileges under the new régime
and
sometimes put up a brief fight.
With both sides fielding minuscule forces, cobbled together from
whoever would volunteer, fighting was almost exclusively along
railroads. Already “armoured” trains were fielded,
but with
the revolution only weeks old, they were sand-bag and field gun
versions still.
The scenario is based on the resistance of the Astrakhan Cossacks
(picked because that is a Host I have painted figures for, not for any
more sophisticated reason). The Astrakhan forces resisting the Soviets
were apparently approximately 1,500 men (including some 300 officers),
with 4 guns and 30 machine-guns, but this might only be those in
Astrakhan city.
Chapchachi is a real town to the north of Astrakhan, which might well
have been chosen as a defensive position. There are quite a few
villages in Russia with similar arrangements, though not normally quite
so flat. Similar forces and villages for this scenario might also have
been seen in the Don and Kuban.
Scenario
Chapchachi scenario
I wrote it as a potential kriegsspiel, but it works fine as a table-top
game too.
It assumes a rule set which uses company sized units as the manoeuvre
element.
Battle
report
I fought the battle solo, just to see how it would go:
This
is a report (note: it is 1.2 MB due to the many pictures)
