First game of the new year was using a very old set of rules called “Drums along the Watusi” which were published in Miniature Wargames #9. They are a solo set which attempt to recreate the problems of a column of troops moving through hostile terrain and being ambushed by natives.
Two of us tried them out with three columns of troops each - a mix of Belgians and British - and a 6′ x 4′ table laid out with jungle. We started in one corner of the table with a village in the opposite corner as our objective. The jungle was laid out with a trail through it and a couple of clearings.
The rules are very simple, yet effective. You roll to move each column with a chance of an ambush happening depending on your roll. You move twice your roll distance in the jungle, three times on the trail or in a clearing, but there is a higher chance of an ambush.
The natives appear at a random distance and heading and with a variable number of figures. The rules handle them firing at you, the possibility they will charge and whether they flee after the initial combat.
We soon discovered that you needed to use your units to support each other. A unit that ran on ahead by itself would suffer casualties from any ambushers without supporting units to fire back.
The game took about 2 hours and we managed to get all our columns to the village, but with severe losses to three of them.
The rules need a few tweaks, but they seem to offer real possibilities for a participation game at some point as players move their own columns through a jungle.
I have been sent a number of rules to review for WargameReviews.com and will be trying to organise games for them over the next few weeks. I dislike reviews from people who haven’t actually played the rules.
The first of these is Swords and Dice, which is a set of very nicely produced ancient rules for the classical age. They come with historical battles detailed and look like a mix of Strategos and Warhammer. It’ll be interesting to try them out..