A Colonial Battle

Yesterday saw our group play a game of Colonials that wasn't really a game of Colonials...

This game was part of an ongoing campaign at our club that combines role-playing elements and large scale battles. It is a novel approach because the events of the role-playing game trigger these larger battles but, generally speaking, none of the role-playing gamers play in the large battles. This method for generating games has led to some very interesting games with scenarios that we otherwise would not have tried.

For this game I was commanding a sleepy German outpost in German Southwest Africa near the banks of a small river. The scenario began with my troops asleep in their fort, a nearby town, and at the dockside barracks house. Naturally, I expected hordes of natives to begin appearing all around the edges of the table (it is a Colonials game after all). Much to my troops' surprise, steamboats full of British and Indian troops begin to approach the docks! If you know anything about me, you know that I have awful luck when playing wargames. Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that I failed my rolls to identify the ships as British or to raise the alarm.

The first that my troops knew of something being amiss was when my troops on the docks were gunned down by disembarking British infantry. Now aware that danger was afoot, my troops began to file out from their quarters and form for battle. I was able to form a "grand battery" in the center of my lines and those guns wrought havoc on the steadily advancing British and Indian troops. While my center was strongly held, it was my flanks that proved my downfall. The Askaris sent to each wing to delay the British were ultimately overwhelmed and eliminated. As British numbers began to tell, my troops fell back to relative safety of the fort. Quickly realizing that the fort was about to become a prison camp the remaining German units elected to retreat into the interior and left the port in British hands ... for now.