My friend of deathworldadventures.blogspot.com and I had a game of Zulu War 1879 yesterday.

We chose to play an ‘alternative events’ scenario in which the Zulu quite unprovoked (or so the British claim) attack a settlement defended by the empire.

We used the Triumph & Tragedy rules and I apologise for the poor quality of the images. There was not a lot of lighting and in hind sight I should have used flash a bit more.

The Zulu have little or no means of communication once they’re on their move. We tried to reflect this by letting them arrive at random from different table edges.

The Zulu force was organised in to three different units: The Little Big Horn (a unit 20 strong of married veterans), The Leopard’s Paws (16 strong, veterans) and lastly The Stinging Wasps (12 strong, raw, muskets). The force was led by Mumgumba a hero induna.

The British had 3 units of 8 men (2 trained and one veteran) and a hero, John Port-Simmons Smith.

The Little Big Horn and the Stinging Wasps both arrived from the southerne end of the field with the greatest distance to the compound. The Leopard’s Paw arrived over a hill in the cover of some tall grass.

The Horn immediately stormed towards the wall and the British troopers responded with a Volleyfire order killing a few braves but without stopping their impetus.

The Wasps also ran towards the wall firing their muskets. It made a lot of noise, enough to startle the British troopers in miscoloured uniforms.

The unit fired a volley at the Paws that where hiding in the woods killing another 2 and giving them a sound 4 suppression markers.

The unit at the wall was being taken over. There were simply to many of the braves for the poor garrison. A gardner or similar would have been a great help here. After having defeated the British the Horn ran towards an inner compound to cut down more of the red clad strangers. But to the rallying cry of John Port-Simmons Smith somehow the British managed to take on the braves and defeat them sending them running off like scolded pigs.

John Port-Simmons Smith and his men then readied themselves for another wave of braves. They trusted in their superior technology and didn’t think the Zulus stood a chance.

The miscoloured unit was overrun and killed to the last man by the Paw’s who had now finally entered the compound after sustaining heavy losses. At this point people started deserting from both sides due to illness and fatigue.

Seeing where things were going John Port-Simmons Smith decided to flee the action and run for another British settlement near by.

Aroused by their victory the braves committed vandalism!

Now where will the story go next? What are the Zulu intentions and how will the British react?