"Colonial Warfare - the ideal wargame" Topic

A thought occurred to me while reading the recent thread on asymmetrical warfare. The "ideal" wargame is often cited as coming from the Horse & Musket periods. I wonder….

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Colonial conflicts are often described as difficult to wargame because the forces involved were so uneven. In many cases the technological gap between the sides produced very one-sided historical outcomes.

But looking at it from another angle, I wonder if these wars may actually be unusually well suited to tabletop gaming.

In many colonial battles the important elements are clearly visible on the battlefield itself: formed infantry, artillery, mass attacks, defensive positions and manoeuvre. Unlike many modern conflicts, the decisive action is usually happening where the players can see it rather than far beyond the table.

The command structures are also often relatively straightforward. One side is usually a regular army with organised units and a clear chain of command, while the opposing force may rely more on numbers, mobility and local initiative.

This creates a very strong contrast in fighting styles – disciplined firepower on one side versus aggressive attacks and mobility on the other – which can produce interesting tactical problems for both players.

Colonial battles also tend to involve forces of a size that translate comfortably to the tabletop: large enough to look impressive but not so large that the game becomes unmanageable.

And within the same campaigns it is easy to design a wide range of scenarios: defence of a position, convoy escort, ambush, pursuit, delaying actions or open battle.

So although these wars were historically very asymmetrical, they seem to contain many of the ingredients that make for an engaging tabletop game.

Do others find this to be the case? Or do colonial conflicts actually present more problems for wargamers than advantages?

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Fictional colonial battles can be a lot of fun, but for the most part the historical actions wouldn't be a lot of fun for one side or the other. Battles such as Ulundi, Omdurman, Khartoum (why do gamers always use a walled city for Khartoum?), etc., were certainly one sided affairs. However, skirmish actions on the Northwest Frontier, an expedition by an early Egyptian led force in the Sudan, and many other type games can definitely be worth playing.

I agree pretty much with the initial post. To me, the clash of different civilizations and military systems makes for a stimulating game, as long as the rules and scenario are fun and balanced so each faction has a chance at victory.

Horse and Musket might be the "Classic" miniatures game, but "Colonial" style wars -- and you could define these quite broadly, from the Zulu war to the Jacobite rebellions to the French & Indian War -- provide a strong, colorful, and fascinating setting all their own.

Fully agree on all points. Also, small enough to make a good campaign. There was an excellent Zulu war campaign called Marching through Zululand.

Included in it were rules for scouting based of the columns composition as well as terrain. Depending on the result the on board action was an expected or unexpected attack. If a battle was rolled for you would roll for type of battle and forces involved.

The Zulus always had the option to skip the battle if it was not under favorable conditions. With all the options is was quite possible for the imperial player to really get in to deep.

I would have been in total agreement about the one sided nature of the "climax" battles in most colonial campaigns up to recently (see threads on Assymetrical Warfare & Hard Battles to Wargame on recent TMP traffic).

However, I am tentatively preparing a scenario for Omdurman. We have the figures etc. Now we might have the battle.

One way to handle very uneven battles such as Omdurman is not to try to balance the forces, but to give the two sides different victory conditions.

For example the Mahdist player might win by achieving any of the following:

• breaking through the Anglo-Egyptian line at any point
• capturing or silencing artillery
• inflicting a certain number of casualties on the Anglo-Egyptian force
• collapsing one sector of the line
• exiting a percentage of their army off the table intact

The Anglo-Egyptian player wins by preventing these things and maintaining the integrity of the line.

In other words the question in the game is not "can the Mahdists defeat the British?" but rather "how much damage can they inflict before the firepower stops them?"

Historically there were moments early in the battle when the Anglo-Egyptian commanders were genuinely concerned about the possibility of a breakthrough, which makes that sort of objective quite plausible in a game.

The Boxer Rebellion is certainly more than 55 Days in Peking and offers all kinds of asymmetrical opportunities that are fun.

My thought is that colonials may be the ideal SOLO wargame. Everyone will bombard me with exceptions, but most "native" forces have a limited number of troop types and tactical options, making them easier to "put on autopilot" than, say, a WWII kampfgruppe. Give your imperial forces a mission, then have a system for natives appearing from wherever they may hide, or marching onto the table from an undetermined direction and in undetermined numbers, and you should stand a pretty good chance of deceiving yourself.

And now that I've thought of it, I need to apply this to some SF gaming as well.

It isn't exactly colonial, but I am having a lot of fun getting my head and my rules around Texans v Comanche especially pre-colt revolvers. Very asymetrical in weapons and in tactics, but yet an even match overall. And lots of color, as is the case with colonials, and a jillion possible scenarios and not many minis needed. So I think your argument a good one..

It isn't exactly colonial, but I am having a lot of fun getting my head and my rules around Texans v Comanche especially pre-colt revolvers. Very asymetrical in weapons and in tactics, but yet an even match overall. And lots of color, as is the case with colonials, and a jillion possible scenarios and not many minis needed. So I think your argument a good one..

And Robert, yes, solo for me is essential and the Comanches did indeed have a tactical system fairly easy to autopilot.

My thought is that colonials may be the ideal SOLO wargame. Everyone will bombard me with exceptions, but most "native" forces have a limited number of troop types and tactical options, making them easier to "put on autopilot" than, say, a WWII kampfgruppe. Give your imperial forces a mission, then have a system for natives appearing from wherever they may hide, or marching onto the table from an undetermined direction and in undetermined numbers, and you should stand a pretty good chance of deceiving yourself.

I once proposed the exact opposite: make all the players competing factions within an army of allied native groups resisting an imperialist aggressor army, and let the GM control the tiny imperialist force. The players compete with each other for glory and recognition by the religious leader, or try to hurt each other over personal grudges, or pursue different incompatible goals that disrupt coordination of the effort to destroy the hated common enemy, etc. I thought this would be an interesting alternative approach to a Zulu army, a Mesoamerican army fighting Conquistadors, one of the Mahdi's armies, Russian or British regulars fighting a coalition of tribes in the mountains of south Asia somewhere, or even a gathering of American tribal warriors like at Little Big Horn or under Tecumseh. This approach would flip the colonial gaming script (humanizing the natives, dehumanizing the imperialists) and invert the gaming experience.

I think all the things that make colonial gaming fun and interesting are related to the effort of the person(s) running the game.

Colonial conflicts were some of the ugliest in history, so nothing to commemorate. Colonial games are modeled on triumphalist adventure fiction like movies and Kipling, so it isn't usually fascination with the historical record that drives interest. Asymmetrical fights can be interesting to game, but must be handled very carefully by scenario setup and victory conditions, and in colonial gaming this is just done with make-believe, or hand-waving, or even just setting expectations (like, of course the Foreign Legion is going to win…!).

Most of the appeal of colonial gaming seems to come from:

• Colorful forces
  
• Nice terrain and figures
  
• Hollywood-ization of the gaming experience
  
• Role-playing elements

None of these things are unique to colonial gaming.

- Ix

"Colonial conflicts were some of the ugliest in history, so nothing to commemorate."

-Ix raises a fair point about the darker side of colonial conflicts. In truth, all historical wars we game were ugly affairs in one way or another. That is as true of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic campaigns, the World Wars, or ancient warfare as it is of colonial campaigns.

I would hope that most wargamers are not trying to celebrate those events so much as to understand how the battles were fought and how the forces involved operated on the battlefield.

Colonial warfare does present particular challenges because of the asymmetry involved, but that is also part of what makes it interesting from a gaming point of view. I think you can't help but admire the courage of native warriors facing modern technology.

If anything, good scenarios and thoughtful rules probably help us think a bit more carefully about how these battles actually worked rather than simply presenting them as adventure stories.

Frankly, I'm just not a colonial gamer, and never understood the appeal.

Recently (less than a decade) I've started to have some interest, but in very peculiar corners or aspects of the genre.

TSATF 20th edition is one of the best rulebook productions I've ever seen in publication, and it always gets me thumbing through it and nodding along even though I've never had a terribly good time playing TSATF.

Battles for Empire 2 turns out to be one of my favorite sets of rules to play, despite my complete disinterest in the subjects it was designed to recreate; for the life of me I cannot reconcile this mismatch. I keep signing up to play BfE2 games of battles I don't think are very interesting in conflicts I think are too one-sided to bother recreating. I had a great time playing Boers last year, and I've never spent a single minute reading about the Boer War.

I keep reading about the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, and just about every year I start noodling plans to game it out. What I really want is an excuse to use the ironclad models that bombarded Alexandria in 1882, but research has shown me that the war wasn't necessarily a foregone conclusion. Egypt was an unusually dangerous opponent for a colonial imperialist power to take on – it was a large nation with a big population, global trading influence, a professional army equipped with artillery and firearms, and a long tradition of organized resistance to imperialists (mostly Ottomans). I keep thinking it might be fun to play the war as a series of linked battles, and arrange the victory conditions so the Egyptian player(s) can actually win, or achieve a "mixed result" conclusion to the war.

And here's what started the softening of my hard disinterest in colonial gaming:
I have books, figures, rules, and terrain for gaming in Maximilian Mexico. TBH my real interest is the silly "what if" proposed in this conversation a decade ago about the US invading Mexico after the ACW – because it's more evenly matched (not colonial gaming), the naval matchup is fascinating (not colonial gaming), and it's about full-size battles between professional armies (not colonial gaming) – but it turns out the real life conflict was full of colorful characters, unlikely meetings (Austrians in Mexico? Belgians? Senegalese?!?!), and heroic stories. It helps that the war is also a story of an underdog colonial victim country prevailing against an imperialist European great power through sheer stubborn perseverance, which is unusual for colonial wars. So it turns out this is one colonial conflict I like to read about, counter to (my) type.

….Boats, Ix…..(Sudan)
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Omdurman <sp> is a good example of being tactically lop-sided. However, the Sudanese player doesn't have to amuse the English by throwing away his forces against massive fire power. Ambush, harassment and most powerfully, going after supply columns can be alternative tactics.

Couple that with asymmetric victory conditions and you may have a 'fair' fight. The British may traipse all along the Nile until exhaustion sets in and the Sudanese still has a huge force in being, nullifying the whole expedition.

I don't believe any era is more difficult than any other as long as the data is good and the means to present it in an understandible and coherent whole is there. Easy to say……

Triumphalism like Kipling?

After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.

How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit.
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.

They are only resolute they shall eat
That they and their mates may thrive,
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.

(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,
And a child will sometimes stand;
But a poor dead soldier of the King
Can never lift a hand.)

They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt
Until their tushes white
Take good hold in the army shirt,
And tug the corpse to light,

And the pitiful face is shewn again
For an instant ere they close;
But it is not discovered to living men --
Only to God and to those

Who, being soulless, are free from shame,
Whatever meat they may find.
Nor do they defile the dead man's name --
That is reserved for his kind.

@ Cpt Beefheart.

As indicated – Omdurman is on the drawing board. If I can work out historically plausible victory conditions, it may appear on a table.

Many years ago (2001-2002), the Jackson Gamers did a series of Victorian Colonial battles that started with an expedition up the Green Nile (a less-known tributary of the Nile), penetrated into the unexplored hinterlands, faced native forces at the pass of Madness before culminating with actions against the Yazulu nation. We had a blast on the campaign trail.

Jim