Truants 2: The Great War in Africa

Back up and running again.  If only I'd seen the tab that said Compose and realized I was in the HTML editor.

Our second Truant game was hosted by Mark Waddington.  Mark has a wonderful collection of WWI in Africa miniatures that not only covers the war in Tanganyika, but also the Middle East.  He decided to thrill us with the exploits of Von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Adrian Nelson and I ran the British troops while Joe Waddington and Dean Motoyama pushed the Germans.  The Germans had to move their supply troops, a bunch of porters on foot across the table.  Adrian and I were to set up an ambush that could interdict that supply.  The difficulty for us was determining where the ambush was best sited to deal with the numerous exit sites possible for the Germans.

We Brits had six infantry units ranging from pretty good to pretty awful, as well as two medium machine guns and a pair of light Lewis guns. We also knew we'd receive a Rolls Royce armored car which meant another medium machine gun on wheels.

The busy terrain meant this was a line of sight game.  We set up our mgs as effectively as possible and then spread our troops around the board.  We also had counters to mark our position along with some dummy counters to dilute our possible set up.  The Germans weren't so lucky, most set up in our line of sight, so they had to reveal their positions.

I held our left flank with a medium machine gun and a poor quality Indian unit that immediately were revealed and came under attack by three German units and a medium machine gun.  The gun survived but the infantry were beaten to a pulp and both were forced off the ridge they were holding. On the right Adrian duked it out with superior forces, giving better than he got with some support from the Lewis gun and Indian troops in my center.

Just as things seemed to falling apart for the Brits on the Left and the Germans on the right, the Rolls Royce arrived to shore things up a bit.  As the game ended the question to be answered was: could the porters wander around the British right as reinforcements began to move to the center.  That was unclear and Mark declared the game a draw.

Photos are all courtesy of Adrian Nelson, who has become the official Truants photographer.  Thanks.