Well with temperatures hovering around zero I decamped from the shed into the kitchen and set up a rather small Zulu game.
We played two missions the first being titled 'In the shadow of the mountain' the second called 'defending the mission'. As you can guess from the title these try to recreate the carnage of Isandlwhana and the heroic defence of Rourkes Drift.
The scale is 10mm with figures principally from Magister Militum and Pendragon. I painted all these up about four years ago.
We used a rule set I initially found on a freeshare site called the Restless Natives. These have been tweaked and now rebadged as 'Assegai'. The games have that uncanny ability of recreating those movies we love whilst at the same time are fast paced, unpredictable and very gory.
The original rules are posted here
http://www.colonialwargaming.co.uk/Rules_Models/Rules/Downloads/Restless%20Natives.pdf
If you interested in getting my own set in pdf format drop me a pm on one of the forums.
Onto the battles...not too many pictures or AAR as for once I was playing...badly !
Below you can see the set up for the first game. The British infantry are yet to be deployed and having thrown out screens of horse mounted troops the Zulus are approaching ...en masse
What you cann see here are about a third of the total Zulu force
Movement trays speed up the moves of the Zulus really quickly
Well Isandlwhana went down to the wire but in the end the natives rushed the boys in redcoats and a massacre occurred. Could the defenders of the drift do better in game 2.
At this point in time I clicked play on the stereo and out boomed the intro music to Zulu, the brilliant score by John Barry.
You can hum along...de de de derr, derr derr, de de de derr etc
Or play it here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvpnNa1nFWI
This certainly set the scene. Unfortunately the game didn't follow the script and within a few turns the Zulus were washing their spears...
Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming...
Can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warrior pennants streaming
To this battle field
Here they come boys....
Great night...great game.
Until next time
Glad you weren't in the shed! Those 10mm figures look very good!
ReplyDeletegreat games , I am now thinking how the first game would have played using black powder ... I know how game 2 would have gone .... :-)
ReplyDelete