Death in the Dark Continent - First Game

[Calumma]

I just posted this over on the Facebook page, but it's a bit long and better suited to discussion on the forum.

We had our first game last night. My Azande rather foolishly marched into Zululand and a Pitched Battle followed. We enjoyed the game and things flowed quite smoothly. One thing that became apparent very quickly was how powerful warriors are in melee and I do wonder if the points values of warriors is on the low side.

My Azande elite Skirmishers (with throwing knives) cost 10 points per base. Elite Zulu warriors only cost 8 points (10 if armed with muskets).

In melee a unit of elite Skirmishers gain an overall +1 bonus to the d6 when attacking the elite warriors.

By comparison, when the elite warriors initiate an attack they gain a +4 bonus.

The key to winning a melee against the warriors was getting as many disorder tokens on them as possible through shooting and/or placing the chief close to the melee. Quite difficult to achieve when most missile troops have a range of either 3" or 4".

If there had been fewer Zulu warrior units, I could have also tried outflanking them to get a bonus for hitting one warrior unit with two or more elite Skirmisher units, but the opportunity didn't really arise. Another tactic is to run one or more elite Skirmishers into knife range and then charge the warriors with a third unit who can run through the Skirmishers to engage in melee. I'ts effective against a single unit, but likely to result in the attacker being outflanked in the following turn.

Since it was clear my Azande were unlikely to survive even one Zulu charge, my strategy was to be the first to attack. Unfortunately the dice gods were against me (three different melee charges with d6 rolls of 1, 2 and 3). From that point on, the game was pretty much over. My chief made a last stand and managed to take out two units on his own. But he went down in the third melee when the Combat Outcome of 4 forced him to fall back and remove his single base (for fighting warriors).

It's tough to remove just one Zulu warrior unit. Tough, but with good skirmishing and outflanking not impossible. Defeating five elite warrior units with four elite Skirmisher units wasn't going to happen in the first game though  

I actually quite like playing against a stronger force, but I do wonder about those warrior points.

[Calumma]

Just realised we made an error in the combat roll. Warriors don't get a defence bonus for muskets. The elite Skirmishers should therefore be on +1. I'll modify the post.