Friday, August 19, 2011



Some Colonial Campaigning

Faced with some really messy jungle areas I put the Ghurka troops on the left front and split the Highlanders with the officer leading the larger group on the left while the sergeant performed recovery duty with the ponies (you can see some wounded still on them at the start of the action).

All of the Pioneers are massed together to back stop the Ghurka, while the remaining Brits (in Khaki) are to be first cover force and be ready to form firing line immediately.

Somewhere around these jungles are some Zulu like spear forces with my objective to put the village to the torch.

The Ghurka got into action much faster than anticipated, they did well however they were forced to flee with casualties that ~ in this territory ~ are not easily accepted.

One thing I will say about card systems that include any sort of 'end of turn' card in them. They take away very much of any players freedom to plan or act. What they do create is a sense of 'what is most important to move' as you may only get ONE unit to move (or maybe NONE! ~ something that really BITES and I take umbrage at such a rule as one bad luck with the cards and you end up standing around getting whomped ~ not much fun nor is it any sort of 'recreation'). Thankfully I had moved most of what I wanted to when the dreaded HALT! card came up TWICE! in as many turns with less than 1/2 of my force moved.

The Zulu guys came at my flank after the poke at the vanguard. This time there were two major forces that could fire as they came out into the open. Only three of them made the first charge home, the total of 8 got into hand 2 hand. Then they ran away, only 2 from the charge. Combined with the remaining 6 was less than 1/2 survivors ... they started to flee.

Then the crazy move cards created a rear attack potential, something that my recce had indicated was not possible.

At least the cards gave me the ability to get the leading two units to "ABOUT TURN!".

Once again withering fire, fleeing Zulus. This time only 1 of 20 even got away.

We prepared to engage the village, still not certain that I had dealt with all the opposition...

That was when the one British officer got wounded. Lucky shot from the one rifle armed Zulu.

All in all a good start to the campaign action ... we shall have to see what develops for the others now.

3 comments:

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

I'm with you on the HALT card concept. Its enough for me that a unit may roll a 3 on movement or might fail a morale check or leaderless check without such completely random interference.

-Ross

MurdocK said...

I would argue that the HALT card means that ONE LAST unit may move now ... at least that way ~ at a minimum ~ one unit could get to move on the unhappy event of the HALT card being the first one turned over. (While it did not happen in movement it did occur during firing phase)

tidders2 said...

Nice looking colonials

-- Allan