Isandlawana

For my first post I thought I would throw together something to highlight my 15mm Isandlawana game that I've taken around to local conventions over the past few years. It took about 9 months to put together including building terrain, coming up with rules, and acquiring and/or painting the figures. The Zulus are represented at a scale of about 1:20 and the Brits at about 1:10. The Brits just didn't look right at 1:20 and the thought of painting up another 1300 Zulu's to do them at 1:10 was a little daunting so I ended up compromising and taking the difference into account in the fire and combat charts.

The board was constructed out of sheets of insulation foam and coated with Durham's water putty. I've since switched to a product called Flexcoat for this. Durham's becomes quite brittle once dry and I had a lot of problems with chipping. A friend of mine suggested Flexcoat and it works very well and does not suffer the brittleness issue. The board is 6' x 12' and I arrived at the size need by using the historical British battle line as a guide and scaling the board to the size needed for my British units to cover the same frontage.

For Rules I used a homegrown variant of Fire & Fury. They give a really good game and are easy enough for new players at conventions to pick up quickly.

I've run this game seven times and so far have 4 Zulu Victories, 2 British Victories and 1 Draw so I feel pretty good about the overall balance of the scenario.

Well, enough of the description for now, here are some pics.....

The Zulu chest (Center) enters the board

The view from the Zulu Left Horn

A view of the overall battlefield

The Zulus Advance

The right horn vs. the thin red line

The end is near

The first Zulus approach the camp

This game ended up in a Zulu victory with the camp being totally overrun. The only saving grace for the British was that the colors were saved by a plucky young lieutenant at the last minute.