The Coorg War

From Red Sash Games:

The Coorg War is a hardcore war game set in 19th century South India. The British Empire has its sights on the valuable Kingdom of Coorg (or Kodagu). The army of Coorg plans on intercepting these invaders. Who will win? The choice is yours.

The Coorg War is an asymmetrical wargame that examines a very brief colonial campaign against the southern Indian Kingdom of Coorg, or Kodagu.

The goal of the campaign, conducted in April of 1834, was to depose the Raja of Coorg, Chikka Vira Rajendra Wodeyar of the Haleri dynasty. Supercially, this sounds like the usual dull colonial campaign of annexation — it was conducted by the Honourable East India Company, after all  — but things were not that simple. For one thing, the Company was no longer a trading concern. Notionally the executive branch of the decaying Mughal Empire, it was in reality an organ of the British Crown. The reason for removing the Raja was not economic exploitation, which could be had with much less effort, but something far worse: Progress and Westernization. Those responsible for establishing and executing Company policy were not traders, but senior officials and soldiers of the British Government, of the same generation who toppled Napoleon. Coorg was invaded in response to the perception that its Raja was a tyrannical despot. Whether that judgement was fair or not has been hotly debated, but the game is not concerned with justice, only with the events.

In any case, the only one who may or may not have received ill treatment was the Raja. After three days of intense fighting he threw in the towel, but the British were only too happy to come to terms. Coorg was home to the fiercest guerrilla fighters in Southern India, men who could give the Sikhs, Marathas, and Gurkhas a run for their money. The Company allowed them to continue ruling themselves, just without the Raja, and considered itself lucky.  

As The Expedition, you will send your Columns of troops deep into the jungles of mountainous Coorg on a hunt for the Raja, trying to avoid becoming so Fatigued that you have to Retreat (which will boost the Raja’s Morale). The Columns contain Indian sepoys and detachments of British regulars (rented from the Crown), rifle-armed skirmishers, sappers and pioneers, and what the Coorgs dread most, cannon, howitzers, and mortars. Given time your men  can bull their way through any obstacle, but time is what you do not have. The paths are hard, the Coorgs are everywhere, and there are a number of incipient revolts to deal with elsewhere.

As the Coorgs, you will allocate your War Bands against your opponent’s Columns, seeking to ambush them, resisting them at your stockades, or conducting night attacks so they cannot recover from Fatigue; if you can just hold long enough your enemy will run out of time. Your tribesmen know the country. They can swiftly redeploy to meet a threat, or rush to batten on a stricken Column like vultures. In the end, while your men probably have no chance against the full might of the Sirkar — the Supreme Authority —  they can exact a high price for victory; the higher the price the better the deal.

Will Coorg become a vacation spot for Company executives, will the Raja’s rule be secure until Partition in 1947, or will a compromise be struck?

Format:

The game board consists of two parts: a map, and a display for The Expedition’s forces (plus various record tracks and play aids). The display shows the historical order of battle as a tableau of playing cards, printed on the board, but real cards are also provided so you can experiment in a Free Form game.

3D-printed colour-coded flagpoles mark the progress of the Columns as they move, using a point-to-point system, across the map. The Coorg side uses wooden cubes to represent its forces. These are deployed in various holding boxes. Warbands can be Active or Spent, or they can become Dispersed; cycling through these three states efficiently will determine whether you will be successful or not.

Combat uses a simple dice system, rolling for ‘hits’, which either change the state of the targeted Warbands or inflict Fatigue on the Units in the Columns. The goal for The Expedition is to bring the Raja’s Morale to zero by capturing vital spots on the board. The Coorg side must prevent this.

Number of Players: 1-2

Components:

1 Game Board

40 Game Cards

70 Cubes

7 Game Pieces

6 six-sided dice (6d6)

1 historical commentary book

2 Player Aid Cards

1 Rulebook

© 2025 Red Sash Games.

Published by Blue Panther LLC under license.