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.

Summer Time and the Gaming is Easy...

Well, I've been painting. Unfortunately, it isn't anything as exotic as a new 28mm Chasseur Regiment or some 15mm Pirates - instead it is the nursery for our little girl. She is due in August and we have been working to get ready for her arrival. This hasn't left much time for painting figures but I have managed to play a few games at the local club.

Our most recent battle was a Colonial Africa affair that pitted the British against a vaguely Mahdist force who were allied with a suspicious German force. The battle was the usual chaos of an 8 player game that featured a combined total of nearly 1000 figures. After 5 or 6 hours of gaming, joking, and swapping tales of other wargames we arrived at the climatic moment in the battle...

My Ansars had penetrated into the center of the city via some undefended alleyways. My troops burst into the open area in front of British headquarters only to find themselves in the midst of wagon loads of explosives and ammunition that was being moved from warehouses to waiting boats. Predictably, at least in a wargame, the British began to blaze away at my soldiers as we put the few wagon drivers in the area to the sword. Unfortunately for my Ansars (and an assortment of other nearby Imperial troops)one of the British shots triggered a series of explosions that left the central section of the town a collection of blackened craters strewn with charred bodies. Ugh...

This picture shows the British Army HQ at the top with the ammo wagons hidden behind the buildings in the center of the picture.

All in all, we had a great time and got to drag out lots of our figures for a game. Our next tilt will see us return to Napoleon's 1814 Campaign in France.

More Colonials

The British gunboat Safiah moving downstream against the native right flank.

Colonial Urban Warfare

Here we look along the native lines from the right flank towards the center and left. In the central area is the open ground that was the scene of a mad charge by a Highland unit and later the scene of a monumental cavalry charge by over eager British and Indian Lancer units. In the end the British ran out of troops before we did...