Zulu...a small battle... but it looks great

A couple of weeks ago we were fortunate to give Matakashi’s Zulu game a whirl. This was a 28mm game loosely based on the defence of Rourkes Drift.

Matakashi has done a full write up of this project on his beautiful website but we had so much fun I thought it appropriate to comment here on Shed wars.

Link to Matakashis Tea House:
http://www.matakishi.com/zuluproject.htm

The game is card driven with each side permitted a certain number of actions – these include movement, shooting and the possibility of reinforcements. When units come into contact melee follows.

Combat is really simple a stand has  number of attacks (10 for Zulus – double based and 5 for British) – the sum of all the d6 rolled equate to the number of hits – 5points in open, 10 in cover etc. In our game a six automatically created one hit for the British this I believe will be extended to the Zulus in future games.

For example A unit of British troops are fighting with Zulus over the mealy bags – the British Troops roll 5 dice scoring – 6, 5, 4, 3, 3 – total score of 21 = 4 hits + 1 extra for the 6 – so a total of five hits

The Zulus get 10 dice rolling – 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1 – a total of 34. Because they need 10 points to hit the British over defended cover they score a total of 3 hits. The loser (Zulus) retire and take a hit counter. If they fail their rally roles they retreat and disappear.

We managed to play three games in an evenings play. Two players controlled the Zulus and one on the British. Matakashi umpired the game.

The British had a finite amount of ammo with shell cases being used to denote how much ammo was being used. When the sound of bugles card was drawn the British knew a relief column was on the way. The deck was reshuffled and when the same card came up again the game ended. So the redcoats had to hold out and the Zulus had to wipe out the mission.

In all three games the British were successful but casualties were taken – Bromhead died twice in succession! The Zulus made it to the walls and crossed over but the firepower of the Martin Henry’s and the cold edge of steel kept them at bay.

The following photos hopefully give a flavour of the action...

A BIG Thank you to Matakashi for a wonderful evening

Eric