I hate the mlockfile error message so here is my second try to post this.
I went ahead and copied my comments from this other thread to focus the discussion.
TMP link
Well I ran the game and,…well it did not go so well. Sorry I did not take pictures as I think I had a beautiful board. Anyway I had set up a compound that included a large domed shrine building with a courtyard and a second two story building all surrounded by a wall. A river ran past this and the rest of the table had rock outcroppings areas of brush and scattered trees. Arab slavers had taken the compound and had a German female archaeologists as a captive. The Arabs had gotten the local native population in up roar and these forces were hidden in various position of ambush. The German forces were to rescue the captive and rout the Native and Arab forces.
I was using the unit organization and tables for The Sword in Africa.
The German forces were made up of one unit of 10 Kreigsmarine, Two 10 men units of Askaris, an over all commander and then a small 10 man gun boat armed with a Gatling Gun that was coming up the river. Facing them were two 8 men Arab Rifles that occupied the compound, 5 ten man units of natives with shield and spear and one unit of 10 Native muskets. The German forces decided to come onto the short table on the side of the river where the Compound would be located instead of opting to cross the river directly in front of the compound. The gun boat was of course coming up the river to support the German forces.
The Native forces had opted to go for a forward offense and placed the Native muskets and one of the spear/shield armed units in brush close to the German entry area. Of course all of the positioning of the Native forces had to be determined before the Germans deployed.
In the first turn scouting units of Askaris reveled the hidden Native musket unit. Shooting from the gun boat and Askari rifles left most of the Native muskets either wounded or dead but not run off. The other unit of Askaris sent scouts forward to check the other area of brush and found the hidden unit of Native spearmen. Next turn the Native spearmen were able to charge the Askaris (who were on a hill ) The unit of German Kriegsmarine also managed to join into the fray during the movement phase.
This where is all went to hell. The single Native Spearmen unit with included their leader even outnumbered two to one managed to reduce both the Kreigsmarine and the Askari units to less than half strength. At this point one of the German players stated that was the end of the game because they could not achieve their objective as they would have to detail the rest of their forces to carry the wounded. I even suggested that I would allow for a single figure from each unit to stay with the wounded so that the game could progress. The Native muskets had by this time been wiped out. It did not help that one of the German players before the game declared how much he did not like TSATF because it did not allow for reaction fire. He used the resulting fiasco to support his opinion.
Anyway I was pretty dejected as I had lugged all the terrain and figures for what was a 45 minute drive for me one way and the game ran less time than it took for me to set it up. Or so it seemed to me. Now some of the players were conciliatory stating it was their bad tactical choice to have deployed as they had with the Germans forces and that you never want to go into hand to hand with native forces in TSATF. I should add the German forces were in open order when they went into hand to hand. Regardless the whole affair left a bad taste in my mouth. Granted it has been a long time since I had run TSATF and really wanted to give this classic a go again. I am sure I made some errors. In fact several players had been pretty jazzed that I was going to run this. In the end I felt it was a huge waste of my time. I had spent most of my scant free time getting things ready this week coming up to the game and now I feel I could have used my time in a more productive way. I am also not so sure I want to run TSATF in the future. It seems like a good set of rules and it always earns high praise here on TMP. But I just do not know. I will take blame that I might not of had a balanced scenario. I felt that having the gun boat would balance the numbers the German forces were facing. Sadly I had pretty much my entire collection on the table that was painted and according to what the rules stated this should have been about right in terms of numbers. Ah well.
reveals a long-lost Martian tripod.