Friday, June 8, 2018

Zulu's? No mostly I won.

Every time I get the old Britains' out, I seem to get the urge to paint more of them and to play another game. It occurred to me that by expanding the One Hour game to full table size and using double the number of units to maintain the ratio of unit foot print to battlefield, I was robbing myself of the opportunity to have a simple, clear, distinction between really quick, simple  OHW scenarios with  a handful of units  in a corner of the table and longer, more complex Grant Teasers with larger forces on the full table, all while drawing from the same armies with the same campaign background. By adopting a scale of 1 square per 4" on the OHW table instead of 3" as in the previous game, I could use a 1:1 ratio of units equating to the smaller 4" frontage suggested by Thomas for his scenarios.

I reset the table using 81 squares instead of the previous 144.
"Zulus sir! Dozens of them!"
 Since only my Zulu War units are set up for my planned 6 figure infantry units, and haven't been out in over a year, I decided to go to South Africa.
The shrunken layout with hippo instead of a cat.
 Once I got the troops out I remembered that I hadn't gotten around to adding spearmen and the like to the Tin Army and decided that I was over due for a Portable Wargame anyway.
One unit of Lancers tried to deal with 3 Zulu units but they zoomed past them and bounced them and, well, I think they did manage to stick one Zulu in 5 rounds of melee before they were surrounded and cut down.

The line gets pushed back but thank heavens there was a Taboo preventing the Zulus going into the woods. The British are also grateful that for 4 turns the Colonel single handily held off 2 units of Zulus in hand to hand combat after the Naval Brigade was cut down. 

Turn 15 of 15.  A desperate, last half of the last turn  British counter attack got the Rutlandshires to with 6" of the road thus earning a technical but cheesy win.

As usual,  the Portable Wargame  served well and the game came out at roughly an hour so the whole thing can be considered a success.

Now I want to play a full Grant game but I need to get back to bringing the armies up to scratch since a few of the existing units are short a few figures  or are temporarily mounted on slightly wider bases which won't allow 6 figures in a 5" square and I need to add a few more units to both Canadian and American armies.

We have work to do!

27 comments:

  1. A nice looking game and fun small action.

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  2. More Wargaming fun! Bravo Ross. Thank you for the battle report and the photos. I look forward to a video post of one of your games.

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    1. Something to think about doing again but in the meantime, going back 6 years the Newport Noodle has my first video experiment: Stony Creek Surprise

      The next one will be planned and scripted not a sudden spur of the moment.

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    2. Wow, what a treat. Thank you for the look at the table. Even something as quick and simple as that is a nice look in real time at one of your games.

      Thank you for directing me to the Stony Creel Surprise post.

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  3. Ross- "Zulus- Thousands of them!'...always interested in a Zulu game- back in 1984/6 I built Rorkes Drift in 1/72nd using my ESCI Figures- I had 100 British versus 300 Zulus with using WRG Rules...a memorable game - with my Book being a spin off. Keep up the good work. Cheers. KEV.

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  4. The Zulu figures mix really well with the Britains. It is quite incredible how effectively a smallish number of figures can convey so effectively the sense of thousands in a battle. The game looks great but l miss the cat shaped mist rolling over the battlefield. I do hope that weather phenomenon will be sighted once more soon.
    Alan

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    1. She's not as "into" wargames as Hector was but she'll be back I'm sure.

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  5. The line of Zulus in the top picture look very threatening, you could just imagine what the real thing must have been like.

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  6. Ross Mac,

    Another great battle report!

    I love the look of your 54mm figures, and the Zulus are particularly effective. They do look like there are far more of them than there actually are, and it looks as if they gave the British a very difficult time.

    I hope to feature your battle report on my blog as soon as I can.

    All the best,

    Bon

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    1. I can't explain in Bob. I started off trying to squeeze more Zulus into each unit but it turned out that I didn't need to. I like the look as it is.

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  7. Fabulous Highlanders. Was that a cow in the lake? First casualty of the game

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    1. Hippo, she started wallowing part way through the game,

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  8. Looks and sounds like a fun small game.

    I am more drawn to smaller games like that these days, although most of what I am looking at doing is more "skirmish" level (in the sense of a few figures, each representing a single character/individual). Games like Pulp ALley and Five Parsecs From Home.

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    1. Life would be easier if I could succeed in getting myself "into" that level of game. I have tried.

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  9. Which version of the Portable Wargame rules did you use? (Colonial?). Are these the rules by Bob Cordery?

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  10. A portable and fast war game ... a good idea. Magnificent photos and very nice figures, especially the zulues. Best regards from the cold and far south, Carlos.

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