Friday 11 August 2017

Darkest Africa - First Game

Well, I've been painting up Darkest Africa figures as you know - I haven't got round to photographing each unit as yet, but will get to it soon. Tonight, we put on our first game at the club - I provided the Zanzibar Slavers, and my good friend Steve provided the British regulars.

For rules, we decided to use a variation of Legends of the Old West - now sadly out of print, though still the best game Warhammer Historical every produced...it is easy to play and suited to multi-player games.

I've been working on adapting it (using elements of  the 4 LotOW books, Legends of the High Seas & the Lord of the Rings set which the system is based on).

We used the Dawn Attack scenario, from the Blood on the Plains book, and set the terrain up as can be seen below.



British set up is shown below, everyone was sleeping on the roofs, except for two sentries and the camels as the forces of Zanzibar approached to steal supplies.....!





Disaster strikes for the Zanzibar force as they were spotted in the very first turn, and the alarm raised.




The Zanzibar men suffered heavy casualties from the British repeating rifles...all high skilled troops, hitting on a 4+....!

The camel riders got to their mounts to try to protect the entrance to the town and ride down iscolated enemy troops...



The natives finally started to cause some damage, killing a number of British and reaching the walls...







The camel riders sped quickly towards where the breach was happening to support their foot troops, but were driven off by heavy bow and musket fire...


...as the fanatics finally breached the walls...!




But it was all too late, as the Emir of Zanzibar watched on, more of his troops died, and the remainder slunk back into the undergrowth...


An excellent game over all, very encouraging rules wise - everyone playing picked it up very quickly, and fun was had by all.

I will certainly be pressing on with my rules adaption, writing "proper" army lists up for the Dark Continent, and painting more figures...!!!

A brief report, but I'm off to Britcon in an hour or so......

5 comments:

  1. Atmospheric and beautiful, I do like your buildings...a great report, no doubt!

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  2. Great report. Is it possible to have your variation rule and army lists ? you give me desire to play this period. here is my mail : charmant33@hotmail.fr

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  3. Hiya, thanks for that - yes, we have used Legends of the Old West pretty much vanilla (so british troops are soldiers from the Alamo book). I did, however, knock up some army lists for the Zanzibar forces - I used a few things from Legends of the High Seas, for example, I gave Natives Stealthy which worked very well in balancing the game. I will email them (and the two scenarios we used) to you.

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  4. Very nice pics. Which company makes these buildings ? and miniatures ? (foundry it seems).

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    1. All of the Zanzibar/Native figures are indeed Foundry, painted by me (I will be posting some detailed painting blogs soon), British are mainly Black Tree, mixed with some Perrys....these were painted by my good friend Steve. As for the buildings, most are scratch built by Durham Wargames Group.

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