Unyamwezi - The Land of the Moon

[Plynkes]

Unyamwezi is a region of East Africa east of Lake Tanganyika and south of Lake Victoria. In the Nineteenth Century it lay on the trade routes and its people, the Nyamwezi, had great success as traders, providing porters for Arab caravans and explorers, and forming caravans in their own right. It was also a region that became riven with conflict, and as such is a perfect venue for Darkest Africa buffs who want to engage in some gaming that is more about the natives and less about the European colonizers. For into this region came the Arabs, looking to get rich trading in slaves and ivory, the fearsome Watuta, who were always up for some hooliganism and trouble, and the land bordered many other warlike peoples who were often dragged into its conflicts. You have a wide choice of interesting armies to play with in this setting. Perhaps greatest of them all were home-grown. For it was here that the Nyamwezi warlords such as Mirambo, and their fearsome ruga-ruga rose to prominence.


The explorers also came this way, for it was rumoured that a great inland sea was located in the region, and the theory was that this great sea was the very source of the Nile. This was the fabled Lake Uniamési, which took its name from the region.



Unfortunately, that turned out to be a load of bollocks.

In a kind of reverse case of the fable of the blind men and the elephant, it wasn't a situation of a bunch of smaller parts making up a singular whole, it was just a bunch of smaller parts. Though the great lakes are pretty impressive in their own right, it must be said, they aren't quite the great inland sea that was imagined.

My plan is to recreate on the table top some of the strife that embroiled this region in the early 1860s, as described by the explorer John Hanning Speke, who along with James Grant was in the region at the time, still searching for the fabled Four Fountains of Herodotus, the source of the Nile. He documented the war that was raging between the Zanzibar Arabs and the deposed monarch Manua Sera (Mnywasele). We'll get back to him later. I have another thread running which is documenting my project to build Manua Sera's army, and has some background on him and the conflict. There's no point repeating it here. Go and have a look if you're interested:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=101585.0

Unfortunately I haven't made much progress on that of late, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. In the mean time we figured we ought to actually try out The Men Who Would be Kings to see if it was actually a good fit. I had received this rules set as a gift from a friend last Christmas and on reading the rules they seemed like they would be a lot of fun. But I felt that I was getting ahead of myself planning this whole thing and not having ever actually played these rules. So a test game was cooked up, and how that went is what follows next.

Let's just say things did not go entirely according to plan...

[Plynkes]

Test Game of The Men Who Would Be Kings - Arabs vs. Tuta
This is a what-if scenario inspired by an incident noted in Speke's writings. Manua Sera, king of Unyanyembe (one of the three major kingdoms of Unyamwezi) had fallen foul of the local Arab traders. The Arabs had been moving into the region in the past decades, and were becoming very wealthy. Unlike his predecessors, who were happy with the caravan work it gave their people, Manua Sera thought he was entitled to a share of their profits and levied a tax on them. They weren't having that and so orchestrated a coup, kicking out the king and replacing him with a more cooperative puppet. Manua Sera fled to the bush, and formed a bandit army of loyal musketeers and other allies who had a grudge with the Arabs. He raided caravans and generally made life difficult for the traders.

Speke says that the Arabs, not wanting to face him themselves, hired a band of Tuta mercenaries to fight a proxy war against their enemy for them. Unfortunately they immediately ignored their orders, and started raiding the surrounding lands themselves, doing more even more harm than Manua Sera's band had. Speke arrived in the Arab town of Kazeh at a time when the depredations of the Tuta we so bad that all caravans and trade had ceased, as the porters were too fearful to leave the towns. He thus found himself stuck there.

This seems to have been an occupational hazard of hiring mercenaries in this region. I have also read of a band of Masai being hired, only for them to pinch a herd of donkeys from their employers and then high-tail it back home up north. 

Things eventually settled down, but in our scenario the Arabs decide to march out and deal with their wayward employees.


The setting: A peaceful valley in Unyanyembe...






Two lazy boys have been charged with minding the cattle. But they are more interested in chasing girls and abandon their work to do so.





Unsurprisingly, the cattle get out, and spread out all around the valley.





The Tuta raiders arrived at this point, and were keen to scoop up all these cattle that don't seem to belong to anybody.

The force is divided into five distinct bands:
The Bringer of Tears (lucky) leads the best unit, a band of fearsome veterans.
The Young Bulls, inexperienced warriors led by the tribe's most famed fighter, Head-Crusher (fine warrior).
The Groin-Rippers, led by Kaba (bald as a coot).
The Widow-Makers, led by Nomba (brutal).
The Flying Birds, led by Goza (Hapless).

The terms in brackets are the leadership characteristics that were randomly rolled. They were a mixed bag, varying from giving re-rolls, being better at melee, to having no effect at all and making them pretty hopeless at leading their troops. This was going to be interesting.





But they weren't going to have things all their own way, for the local Kazeh Arabs had collectively grown a spine and set out to best them.

They consisted of:
Rameez Hasan (damn good fellow), leading a band of stalwart Baluchis.
Mussoud bin Sayf (short-sighted) leading his fellow Arabs.
Sidi Bangalore (coward), leading a band of, it must be said, pretty hopeless and timid Wa-Ngwana.
Sheikh Hamdan (pleasant manner) commanding the cannon.

Luck had not been kind to the Arabs, all their characteristics either impeded them greatly or had no in-game effect at all. Poor Sheikh Hamdan, having to face a fierce enemy with such an appalling shower. He was far more at home on the veranda of his tembe, taking coffee and exchanging pleasant stories with travelers and traders. But today he had to be a leader.


The opening moves...



The Tuta make their entrance. The plan? Grab all the cattle they can. It's not simple or subtle, but it is at least a plan. The cattle had been placed semi-randomly about the table by both players before we began, and before we knew who would be entering from which side.





The Arabs arrive to stop their erstwhile allies. They don't really care about the cattle, as they belong to the local Nyamwezi. But these raiders must be stopped if the trade routes are to reopen.


To be continued...

[Andrei1975]

Oh, great photos and a table!

[meninobesta]

Great to see you back in business

[Poiter50]

Are your Baobab trees by Schleich?

[Malamute]

Great to see you getting back into a game with your lovely collection. Keep Em coming.

[Dr DeAth]

Lovely table and collection of figures you've got there

[Romark]

Nice background info,lovely mins,looking forward to the bat rep 

[Jeff965]

Fantastic looking game, love the big trees looking forward to some more

[Plynkes]

Are your Baobab trees by Schleich?

Indeed they are. I repainted the leaves in a brighter green, as they come in a somewhat pallid, yellowy colour. Other than that I used them as they came. A pretty nice job had been done on them that I didn't think was worth the effort to try and improve upon.

[Traveler Man]

Another Plynkes classic coming up! 

[charla51]

I like the round/oval table: it literally and metaphorically, gives a different shape to the game.

[Codsticker]

Oh, great photos and a table!

I agree! I love the massive tree- perfect!

[Plynkes]

At first things were easy for the Tuta. They spent the first couple of turns rounding up the nearby stray cattle...



Three cattle tokens in the bag. This time next year we'll be MILLIONAIRES, Rodney!





But now the Arabs came into view. They were having some trouble getting organised into their firing line, those feckless Wa-Ngwana were hopelessly dragging their feet (the unit activation rules can make getting your force to do what you want quite troublesome, especially with poor troops who are poorly led, as in this case).

But be that as it may, their very presence forced a change of plan upon the Tuta. They would have to fight now, and so adopted the famous "beast's horns" formation, learned at some cost from their ancestral Zulu enemies.





Bringer of Tears and his veterans, along with the fearsome Groin-Rippers, formed one horn, advancing under cover down the left flank.





While the unblooded Young Bulls and the Flying Birds did the same on the right.





This left Nomba and his Widow-Makers as an unfortunate, and rather nominal combined head-and-loins, with the unenviable task of advancing in the open down the centre. But he was the brutal one, with a reputation for hating his men and delighting in their suffering, so this task was right up his street.




Immediately they attracted the attention of Sheikh Hamdan, overseeing the Arab cannon, which he ordered to open up on them. But he had rather underestimated the range, and overestimated his gunners' skill, so they had nothing to show for their efforts other than a lot of smoke and an impressively loud bang. But the opening shots had been fired, and this was now officially a battle, rather than just a case of common cow thievery.

To be continued...

[Belisarius]

Wonderful, more please 👍