Zulu Wargame

       In the past I have mentioned using Horde of the Things army list to fight battles. With my current interest in the 19th century British army, I started looking for army lists for the period. It has been pointed out that many of the enemies of the British army during this period were armed with spears and other hand weapons, in which some battles can result in the slaughter of the natives before the natives have a chance to engage the British army. However on Fanaticus.org has variations of the HotT rules, called Hordes of the Empire, which gives rules for the 19th century colonial wars. I wanted to see if their army lists would give a fairly equal armies. For this game I used Zulus (as I have a large collection of Peter Laing Zulus) versus the British army.  The Zulu have 12 war bands. The British have 6 infantry units, 1 machine gun manned by sailors, a troop of frontier horse and the 17th Lancers. I did use Bob Corderys' Memoir of Battle rules to fight the battle.

The British army on the left, Zulus on the right.

The Zulu left horn holds back as the "loins" close in the center. The British advance to give themselves room to retreat. The British general brings the Highlanders behind the line for reserve. The British open fire, with no success.

The Zulus overrun the machine gun. Another Zulu unit has pushed back one infantry unit.

Another view of the above picture.

The Frontier horse holds back the left  horn of the impi. The Highlanders are in the right spot to hold back the Zulus in the center. The Zulus lose 13 figures this turn.

The Zulu left horn forces the Frontier horse back. In the center the Highlanders are routed off the board. One Zulu unit gets behind the British line. The British general had joined one infantry unit to recapture the machine gun.  The Zulus kill four of the five in that unit, including the general! The 17th Lancers tried to hold the right horn back, but is pushed back. 

Suffering heavy losses, the British start consolidating towards the center, except the Frontier horse, which pushes back two Zulu units.

The Frontier horse continues to distract the Zulu left.

The 17th Lancers overrun one Zulu unit.

The Zulus eliminate the 17th Lancers and the two rightmost infantry units. The Frontier horse  is finally pushed back when it is attacked by three units. At this point the British won the roll for initiative, which allowed them to retreat.

This was just a sample game to see if these armies would work out. The game worked out better than I thought it would.  At first I thought it would just be a slaughter of the Zulus. As can be seen, quite the opposite occurred. The armies are based on Army points: these armies were 24 APs  for the Zulus and 20 for the British.  It would be easy enough to base the armies on lower APs, or even roll for APs.  This army list could make my gaming easier.

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