About to start my own expeditions to the dark continent

[Torben]

Greeting all!

I've recently been hit by the Africa Bug (fortunately, not the tze-tze fly or malaria mosquito) and I've been looking for various resources to spark my imagniation of any sort of fantastic tales to be told in this dark continent.

First off - "when" does the actual Colonial Adventures begin and end? What are the time frames I should be aware of? As far as I know it seems to progress from mid-1800 up to 1914 (and of course beyond, but then there's too many machineguns around to my taste) and this means that there are wildly different styles of clothing and weapons that could be represented on the board.

Second - I've fallen in love with the Tanzanica.com modification for Mordheim rules, and the club I usually game with are all for this idea (well, 2 at least, but everything counts in small amounts) but are there any other rulesets out there that I should be made aware of? Preferrably rules that do not require 80+ figures to be fielded on the table.

Thirdly - Following up on the first question; would the "Dark Africa Era" be suitable for Victorian Science Fiction? Or is that too late? Personally, I've set the timeframe around 1900 and inspired by some of Hemingway's yarns set in Africa - but I wouldn't mind terribly much if I could expand into the VSF era as well with the same figures.

I hope that this great board could help me out with this venture! Thanks in advance!

- Torben

[twrchtrwyth]

In the Heart of Africa by Chris Peers are a good set of rules, they include a campaign system and generic army lists. There is also a more detailed army list book available. Here is a link to a group which is sort of an In the Heart of Africa group, but not quite:-
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/intheheartofafrica/?yguid=158122475

[Malamute]

The exploration of the dark continent is perfect for VSF, anywhere between 1842 -1901 is fine. Try reading H Ryder Haggard's King Soloman's Mines and his Allan Quatermain adventures for some inspiration.

[Driscoles]

Hello Torben !

The  Triumph and Tragedy rules are also pretty suitable for Darkest Afrca !

http://forum.backofbeyond.de/viewtopic.php?t=4924

http://forum.backofbeyond.de/viewtopic.php?t=4760

http://misterplynkes.blogspot.com/2008/03/german-central-africa-1890.html

Cheers
Björn

[Plynkes]

"when" does the actual Colonial Adventures begin and end?

Depends what you mean by the "colonial Adventures."

Britain acquired the Cape Colony during the Napoleonic Wars, and during most of the 19th Century was involved in fighting hostile tribes as the colony's borders expanded. The numerous Cape Frontier Wars (previously known by the un-PC term The Kaffir Wars) ran for decades (and the Dutch had been fighting them in the 18th Century). So you can game musket-armed British troops against Xhosa tribesmen for an early/mid 19th Century feel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_Wars

Of course there are also the famous Zulu and Boer wars, and the British intervention in Egypt (which leads to the crisis in Sudan) which are well-known enough to for me to not need to go on about them here. Also they aren't really considered to be "Darkest Africa" gaming, more your traditional Colonial games (though it is a pretty arbitrary distinction).


The expeditions to explore the interior of Africa is when the "Darkest Africa" gaming period really gets going. A couple of white men, armed porters, and a long baggage train, marching off the edge of the map in search of the source of the Nile. Burton and Speke, Samuel Baker, Henry Morton Stanley, Carl Peters, that type of thing. That starts in the middle of the century and carries on until the 1880s.

The late 1880s is when the European nation states really start taking an interest in swallowing up huge chunks of Central and East Africa, and you find military expeditions bent on subduing tribes, rather than just exploring.

Then of course, once all has been swallowed up, you can set everyone against each other as the Great War comes to Africa.

[Torben]

"when" does the actual Colonial Adventures begin and end?

The late 1880s is when the European nation states really start taking an interest in swallowing up huge chunks of Central and East Africa, and you find military expeditions bent on subduing tribes, rather than just exploring.

Then of course, once all has been swallowed up, you can set everyone against each other as the Great War comes to Africa.

So, if I set it around the 1900's then there should still be some unexplored areas and a whole gamout of european powers attempting to wrestle each other for power in clandestine wars and border skirmishes?

I knew of the "early" colonial adventures; like the Zulu Wars, Boer Wars and what nots - but the musket age is just a bit too early to my liking. Well, they're too early just yet

@Bjorn
Will keep T&T in mind when we get more figures - for now we're both just starting out with around 15 men each; but we might branch out in the future. Other than that, I will get a copy of T&T soonish anyway as I've got a tinkeling for the periode it covers (aided greatly by Plynkes reports).

@Topic
Thanks for the suggestions; I will have to browse about a bit for these.

In addtion, apart from Foundry and Copplestone, what figures could anyone recommend for Dark Africa Adventures?

[Plynkes]

I don't think the Europeans ever actually came to blows until the Great War. They were more concerned with keeping up a united front against the Africans, and preserving the illusion of white invincibility. I seem to recall something about a proxy religious war fought between pro-French (Catholic) and pro-British (Protestant) tribes (egged on by missionaries) almost breaking out in Uganda. But I think the Christian factions were united by persuading them to join together to turn on the local muslims.

There was also the Fashoda incident in 1898, where British and French troops almost got to fighting over a god-forsaken corner of the Sudan where both had been fighting the Mahdists.* There was an international crisis, but cooler heads prevailed and there was no war.

But there are plenty of small scall conflicts against the natives. The British anti-slavery campaigns, the German conquest of East Africa, etc. These tended to be a little one-sided in real life, but not always.

Explorers vs. tribesmen is always a good one, as such expeditions, even really well-armed ones, did not have the firepower to make a run in with the locals a foregone conclusion. The more aggressive types like Stanley and Peters fought pitched battles against tribesmen, and Sam Baker had various adventures with an almost-private army (under the Egyptian flag) fighting tribesmen and slavers in equatorial Sudan.



*Ha! My spell checker wants me to change Mahdists to Methodists! That's a hoot.

[Prof.Witchheimer]

As Plynkes said, actually the Europeans didnt fight each other til Great War. But jou can just try to play it, like me and Björn two years ago, Brits vs. Germans. It's fun too.

A possible conflict around 1900 is Herero Uprising 1904 in German South-West Africa or  Maji-Maji Uprising 1905/6 in German East Africa.

So, if I set it around the 1900's then there should still be some unexplored areas and a whole gamout of european powers attempting to wrestle each other for power in clandestine wars and border skirmishes?

[dodge]

I think it doesn't matter whether you stay true to period or not.

If you do that's great.

If you don't then you enter the realms of what if campaigns now that's just great.

Cheers

Dodge

[The Angle]

The height of African exploration was 1850-1890 (Stanley found Livingstone in 1871 and crossed the continent from east to west in 1874-77 -- yes, it took 3 years!). Europeans started making forays beyond the coast in the 1700s. The last portions of the continent weren't mapped until the 1920s, when inaccessible regions of the Abyssinian Plateau were surveyed by air.

Rules-wise, it depends on what scale you're after. If you want an RPG-like experience with no more than a dozen figures per player, then something like Savage Worlds, Forgotten Futures, or even Space: 1889 would be good. Tanzanica is just a hair above that. The Sword in Africa (a variant of The Sword & the Flame) is perfect for 15-30 figures per player. I've been playing TS&TF for 25+ years; it's about the most cinematic game you'll find, and it never grows old. I've only recently started playing with In the Heart of Africa, and it's also good in that range of figures or slightly lower.

Or search the web. There's plenty of free stuff out there, including my own Stand To!

Steve

[warrenpeace]

:oops: I'm slightly embarassed to have to admit it, but I have a hard time thinking of African adventures without thinking of Tarzan. I must have read too much Edgar Rice Burroughs growing up.

If you want to start very small, with a string of adventurous encounters involving 1 to 6 figures per side on a two foot by two foot playing surface, then try .45 Adventures, maybe grafting on hand to hand combat from Gloire.  That way you could game before you have a big selection of figures painted and before you have lots of terrain.

Then, when you get more terrain and figures you could start using other rules for slightly bigger battles.

I don't see why you would need to limit your timeline too much.  If you create an outline of a multi-generational story you could stage episodes from early European intrusion into the heart of Africa until after African independence from the European colonial empires.  It would just depend on having families or factions intent on achieving various things in Africa: personal glory of exploring, stamping out indigenous forms of slavery, converting Africans to a European form of Christianity, finding loot, building exploitative enterprises to extract more loot, enhancing national glory in competition with other European powers, academic glory (biology, language, archaeology, anthropology, geology, etc.), trophy hunting, resisting European religion, resisting European conquest, resisting European looting, battling evil supernatural forces in Africa, battling disease, searching for evidence of extraterrestrial incursions into Africa, etc.

Playing either hordes of spear armed guys or lines of the other fellows trying to mow them down using machine guns and bolt action rifles may ultimately be less rewarding than gaming the smaller more personal conflicts that can be set in Africa.  And on a smaller scale, characters can run into Tarzan! :mrgreen:

[warrenpeace]

In addtion, apart from Foundry and Copplestone, what figures could anyone recommend for Dark Africa Adventures?

Those are certainly the two main companies.  But there are a few OK figures from Old Glory, particularly the masked African tribes.  Old Glory are cheap but not on a par with Foundry and Copplestone.  There are several useful packs from Pulp Figures, including a "Kojar of the Jungle" pack, a pack of killer apes, a safari pack, some useful British and German troops, a pack of mercenaries, and various lost world packs that could be used in the dark heart of Africa. With a little imagination, other packs could be adapted.  For example, one of my friends painted up the Pulp Figures pack of "Chinese River Pirates" as black African pirates, and they look great that way.  Here's the pack:

http://www.pulpfigures.com/catcode.php?range=Yangzee%20Gangs&code=PYG&number=24&custID=64622221207272176

[Tancread]

Tanzanica is my site and well out of date now. The rules still work fine of course, but when I run it now I use the GW Lord of the Rings system as a base as it is faster and the hero system works very well for African Explorer types. As for other systems if you aren't running a campaign then Sword and the Flame's The Sword in Africa works well for quick skirmish games with small forces. Moves fast and frantic and isn't very chart heavy.

[Poiter50]

In the Heart of Africa by Chris Peers are a good set of rules, they include a campaign system and generic army lists. There is also a more detailed army list book available. Here is a link to a group which is sort of an In the Heart of Africa group, but not quite:-
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/intheheartofafrica/?yguid=158122475

I agree with T, HOA for me (& my fellow club members), we are just kicking off a campaign. Had a practice game on Wed with my Egyptians against the He He. Fortunately the Egyptians prevailed with their firepower, particularly after the Witchdoctor died to a hail of bullets from the Gippo soldiers. Even the Egyptian Askaris did well, holding a flank against a group of musketeers who decided that discretion was the best part of valour. Just wish I'd remembered to take the camera as Svend laid out a beautiful mountain terrain table in an encounter game of 300 points per side.

Svend's musketeer leader mounted on an Ox is a great leader character and his Old Glory warriors/spearmen/musketeers with a few Foundry figs mixed in are a treat to view as he has only painted 15s before and his technique is superb.

[Arlequín]

Reading wise I recommend;

The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham - Good (but long) history of European involvement in 'Darkest' Africa during the 19th Century.

A guy called Wilbur Smith has been writing adventure novels for years about Africa and are more up to date in writing style than either Burroughs or Haggard. His books tend to concentrate more on Southern Africa along with the odd standalone novel on different themes.