15mm Colonial Sudan game.

The Port where the boat would dock
 and the British could leave the board!

While at Skirmish Tim "Frontline" Wade put on a colonial Sudan game.
The idea of the game was for the British players (Bob and Myself) to rescue the British forces and get them on the boat down river and back to good old blighty! The Mahdi players (Peter and Graham) had vastly different ideas! The British would be under Egyptian officers to begin with (until our own chaps arrived by boat) which game them a command and leadership value of 7. The Mahdi had a leadership of 8 for his officers. To make it more tricky we had no officers at all out in the desert where our forces were so they were not allowed to make their way back to the port UNTIL they had received orders to do so.

To make matters worse these British and Egyptian troops had limited ammunition.

The Egyptians got one chance to fire

Before they got swamped!
The Marhdist troops rolled 15 dice in close combat
The Egyptian rolled 4.
I think you can guess the result.

The relief column hampered by bad command dice
 had not made it far from the town
before the advanced Mahdi forces got close
so they formed square.
These Camalry die very quickly but do stop the
British from moving!

The boat arrives!

Egyptian Cavalry totally chew up one Mahdi unit!
Get a follow through charge.
chew up a second unit and
then badly fail (I rolled 2d6 and got 3) their morale
 and left the board!

Oh dear the Mahdi's troops destroy my thorn bush barricade
and souround the British! Gulp!
 

I dock the boat in the wrong area at first.
My mistake!

I re-docked the boat the following turn where it was not
vulnerable to the newly arrived Mahdi reinforcements.
Like they really needed more!
 

The troops sent out to get the British back get attacked on 3 sides.
And die gloriously for the Queen!
Allowing the Egyptian cavalry to get back into the town.

With now no British to pick up the boat sails.
and Leaves the town to it's fate.

Conclusion:
It was a good day to be a Madhist. I can't really say too much more. Bob and myself were really playing the game and it felt like we had our hands tied behind our backs. Shooting was not effective in any way. Morale and leadership values were too low. The Sudanese got a lot of reinforcements while we got very few. Yes we had a nice boat to play with and I could have taken the naval landing party ashore. But as they has worse stats than the British Army I was reluctant to do that. As I had seen just how fast they could die.

But it was enjoyable and I must say it did look very good. And the enjoyment is the important thing!

Thanks for reading today. I should have some painted figures for the next post.
Take care all and see you soon.
Cheers Clint