Van-Portable Wargame

Ron and I played another Colonial Portable Wargame today.

A call to arms from Minaret instead of a call to prayer! 

The scenario this week was the first Initiative scenario from Asquith and Grant's Scenarios for All Ages (the Red Book).  The attacker (randomly selected) has to march on and seize crossings over both rivers. The defender who gets dribbles of reinforcements has to prevent any crossings, a very hard task though a draw is very possible with the right combination of luck and skill.

Overview as cavalry race back with orders for the reserves to hurry forward.

Ron had originally set this up for Sudden Death using strength points with a total of 13 (12?) units attacking 9 but raising the Exhaustion levels but after a discussion we decided to double the number units to 18 vs 26 (or maybe 24) and use sudden death.

The Elite status of the Hadendowah allowed them to survive three repulsed charges.

Three hours later we had  played some 15 or 16 turns full of nervous tension and swings in advantage. It would be interesting to play with fewer units using the strength points for unit destruction but with army exhaustion based on lost units. That would have allowed the garrison in the town to give up SPs to avoid retreating thus increasing the odds that reinforcements would arrive early enough to seriously contest the first bridge but it would mean fewer miniatures on table unless we really packed the hexes. It might well have had less tension on each die roll though!

Its over. The Mahdist force is exhausted by its losses and incapable of further attacks on the British bridgeheads.

Ron's last reinforcements never came off the shelf, the slip of paper listing them just marched up the road as a reserve! They did their job though Ron lost almost as many units as I did but didn't reach exhaustion due to his larger force.

All in all, the set up may not be easily portable, but it was a cracking good game!