Our gaming group recently played a couple games of Gunboat & Dhow, fast-play riverine rules for The Sword & the Flame. The scenario was "Sink the Bismallah!" – kind of like Sink the Bismarck, except set on the Nile in the late 1800s. The Dervish, who recently captured Berber, have outfitted a large sternwheeler with cannon and turncoat Egyptian artillery crews. The big steamer has cut off all river traffic on the Nile. The British have thrown together a scratch force of steamers and sent them up the Nile to deal with the situation.
The British Squadron includes three gunboats, a barge and tugboat, a steam launch and supply dhow. They have a ton of rifles and machine guns, but very few cannon, making them deadly at medium range, but not so hot at long range.
The squadron is lead by the Hoodia, which up until recently was the largest gunboat on the Nile, and her sister ships, Sultana and Lotus. Each carries a 7-pounder (the Hoodia's a quick fire), gardner gun and rifle squad.
The Dervish fleet is led by the Bismallah, along with the tug Sobek, a barge full of riflemen, plus three dhows. They also have a quick fire battery on a nearby rock that we like to call Fuzzy Fuzzy Island. They have a lot more artillery than the British, though some of their gun crews are untrained.The dhows are loaded with assault troops, who are deadly in melee. So the Dervish, for once, have the advantage in long-range firepower, as well as melee.
The Bismallah features features a 20-man Jihadia rifle unit, plus three guns, including a 12-pound quick fire cannon. The 12-pounder is now the biggest gun on the Nile. It outranges anything else on the river. Anytime it hits, it causes massive damage. Anyway, to make a long story short, we've played the scenario twice now. In the first game, Bismallah and the shore battery ended up sinking all three British gunboats.
The second game ended a little differently. The tug and barge full of winter uniform Sudanese – the pride and joy of my Ral Partha colonials – managed to fight off boarding attempts by two dhows, dismasting one in the process.
Upstream, meanwhile, the three gunboats were again on the verge of sinking, most having lost some or all of their guns, when a lucky shot by Hoodia managed to start a fire on Bismallah. Bismallah attempted to back away from the fight as Hoodia swept forward past a burning Dervish barge. Out of time, we carded one more turn of fire to see what would happen. A black card came up, and Bismallah proceeded to blow the Hoodia out of the water with her 12-pounder … until we realized she couldn't shoot that turn because she was one fire. Hoodia, using the last cannon available on the British side, managed to score four points of damage – just enough to finish off Bismallah, who was down to her last three points of hull.
Shameless self-promotion follows: we're running the rubber match at 2 p.m. Friday, April 26, at Little Wars in Lombard, Illinois. Tickets for this and a ton of other great games are now available at link 
