Wednesday 28 November 2012

Tribal wars



Yesterday Peter and I had another game in Tribal Africa.
The setup was that the Gamo tribe had invited the neighboring Bushongo Cannibal tribe for a fiest and some good music with dancing. Some might think that it would not be the best idea to invite them over for dinner but it’s a small gesture to try to keep calmness in the neighborhood.
The Zulu tribe got angry because they weren’t invited, they got angry and with the help the grumpy old Death cult living in the area they decided to crash the party.
The attacker’s objective was to either break the enemy tribes or break the drummer unit in the village, party poopers as they were.
In this game we also tested to include a lion male luring in the jungle, he would use his initiative movement to try to close in and attack any one foolish enough to venture to close. He would count as cavalry. His stats are given at the same picture as the Gamo tribe.

Special rules for this game was that all miniature could choose to either deploy in closed rank or open order given the small size of the tribal conflicts and the difficulties with the intervening terrain.

The Zulus and the Bushongo models equipped with large shields were given the special rule of given the enemy -1 to hit at ranged attack in closed rank, the same rule as heavy infantry.






The Zulus closed in but had difficulties to spread out on the flanks. The Gamo tribe laughed at the big cat hiding in the bushes and ventured to close...Their chieftain wanted a new rug in his hut.


Here are some pictures of the game.




























Some after thoughts:

I think that the altered stats from previous games are a lot better. Im not totally sure about the Zulus so some tinkering to the next game may be in order.
The lion worked surprisingly good and I think he will be used I many games to come, maybe some small altering of stats.

Any thoughts on the game or tips on how I could alter the stats, give units special rules or something else is appreciated. So next game can be even better.
Thanks for looking.

7 comments:

  1. Very nice to see HC be used as a "Skirmish" game, looks like a grate game, might need some better light for the pictures.

    Best regards michael

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  2. These were using Hail Caesar rules?

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  3. Thanks Dalauppror.
    I think I will need to get me a better camra where I dont need perfect light to take good pictures. Sorry for that.

    Phyllion> Yes its a nice set of rule that I found very easy to umpire or play against new members in the club. Its a rule you quickly get the grip of and thus makes it perfect for me to pressgang anyone venturing to close when I start unpacking my stuf att the club...
    I have thought about getting a propper set of Darkest Africa rule set but as Hail Caesar works so fine for what I am aiming at, this have not happened yet.
    And I use the rules for other conflicts and games and this meens I dont have to learn another set of rule and thats works fine for me...

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  4. Hello!
    Nice game and very funny to play indeed.Last time I played with these black knights i got whipped like a pig on the battlefield but not this time! An extra flavour is to add wild animals that are unpredictable. I am looking forward playing this again. Have a nice "little-saturday". :)
    greetings / Wexio-Peter

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  5. HI Engel,

    I am also tinkering with HC skirmish rules - early days. Do you have a compilation of HC skirmish rules you use that are available to show how you use skirmish games for these battle rules?

    Cheers

    Happy W

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  6. Thanks Sam.

    At the moment I have used the standard rules as it is. In this battle here I used small unit sizes to keep the model count down.
    Im guessing that this could led to some issues with gaming balance if including heavy infantry or cavalry that have a risk of dominating the field but at the moment it work.
    I will try out using standard size units in the future but keep the unit count down instead. Im not sure how good HC will work with say 2 or 3 units per side but it could work.

    Another thing to remember is that all the unit stats in Hail Caesar are relative to each other so for example I cant (or rather shouldn't) take a heavy greek hoplite unit and use it in medieval games and still count it as heavy, here they maybe should be counting as light and so on.

    Its a hard thing to try to include tough units without making them to good.

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  7. Hi Engel,

    Thanks for your thoughts there.

    I saw this interesting thread on the HC forum that was aiming to do a similar thing.

    http://www.warlordgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=15581

    It seems to me that the rules should play just fine with a reimagining of relative scale for the each of the leaders and unit types. Probably the main potential change I could see is that a unit could perhaps be able to operate in a looser organisation anytime, similar to when a formed unit deploys in skirmish to go through rough terrain and then forms up again.

    If this was allowed to occur as allayer chooses then this would give the game a 'skirmish' look and you could argue that perhaps formed units suffer the -1 to hit modifier if they are not 'formed up'. Further to this, any traits formed units normally could get, would only apply when not in open order.

    ...it looks like HC might very well have the flexibility to operate as a fairly good skirmish system and the ability to use the same rules for battle games is appealing.

    Cheers

    Happy W

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