Suggestions for Sudan rules?

[sjwalker51]

Keith, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to adapt the MWWBK mechanisms to allow for much bigger games - my Sudan stuff is in 15mm, with the typical ‘rub being 12 stands of 3-4 figures each (representing 900-1000 men) taking on British and Egyptian battalions represented by 8 stands of 4, which looks great. It’s become my ‘go to’ set for colonial gaming for all levels of action.

“Sands of Sudan” capture the feel of the period very well. Science v Pluck is essential reading if only for the background information provided, but less easy to run as a game as written, unless you’ve got a bunch of players who ‘get it’. “Battles for Empire” is also pretty good. Despite its detractors, BP and its supplement actually gives quite an enjoyable and realistic game for the period.

[italwars]

Just my opinion:
TSATF is Great , fun to play, visually appealable..its the only wargame rules that allow to simulate on tabletop the real essence of colonial warfare...that is a regular , more or less eroic army , vs tribesmen/natives  with real antropological advantages and disatvantages at war and that fight like African forest tribesmen, Sudanese tribesmen ecc and not simply as irregulars ...for example despatching wounded, charging without orders and the fact that, on most cases, warriors becoming a herd of sheeps if left without leaders..that use  fire weapons roughly and not able to send to contact or in front line every member of the unit (tribe)..with that in mind you can scale down realistically your forces..I think those features which are described in colonial warfare manuals like “small wars” by Calwell ecc...could be find only in TSATF..the other great feature is that if you like personalized skirmishes or bigger battles you can play both with TSATF

[Keith T]

Some good suggestions and advice thanks chaps, I have just ordered a copy of "The sword and the flame " as I hope they might have some new take on the period.

[n815e]

There is actually a new edition of The Sword and the Flame coming out! 

Peter Pig has a set that looks interesting.

[Nick2729]

Does the new edition TSATF stream line melee combat? There is a lot to like in the rules but I find the hand to hand combat dreadfully slow and clunky.

[SteveBurt]

The original version of TSATF (the one by Yaquinto from 1978 or so) has a curiously deterministic system for firing and melee where you just rolled 1d6 causing a small variation in the results. I believe the later versions had you roll d20 per figure.
We found that keeping track of wounded figures might be realistic but it got a bit tedious and slowed the game way down.
It's a good set of rules for its age, but a lot of better systems have come out in the intervening 40 years.

[Flashman14]

Ya - for natives I skipped tracking wounds altogether and rebased accordingly - you can read about my modifications here: I've basically hacked it to handle more formations than it was designed for. http://flashman14.blogspot.com/2011/01/15mm-essex-colonial-dervish-rebasing.html 

Teaser shot here:

[RichCitti]

We usually use Battles for Empire II by Chris Leach.

[SteveBurt]

Another set which I quite like is Victorian Steel.
My only problem is that the rules are not very well explained, so you have to use your judgement to figures out a few things.

[Andrew_McGuire]

There's a new contender from Partizan Press:

https://www.caliverbooks.com/bookview.php?&id=27447

[Bindonblood]

Simon is also too modest to mention the cracking games of Science vs Pluck he used to run, far too many years ago....

[n815e]

Patrols in the Sudan.

[Ignatieff]

There's a new contender from Partizan Press:

https://www.caliverbooks.com/bookview.php?&id=27447

these look good!

[sjwalker51]

Bindon,

Thanks for remembering that campaign we ran - incredibly, it’s been 9 years since Fred Burnaby was accidentally machine-gunned by the Egyptians, Redvers Buller fell valiantly defending the regimental brandy and Johnny “Bolter” Stewart ran away.

Suitably inspired, we dug out the toys this weekend to try out a few ideas for big battles using MWWBK - just as much (more?) fun than SvP.

[smirnoff]

Bloody Big Battles...currently using it for a 15mm campaign based on the Sudan...works a treat