It's been more or less decided. We are heading off for the Soodan.
I am am member of a loose group of gamers and megalomaniacs who get together twice a year at CanCon and now WinterCon to put on a massive wargame of one sort or another.
We did a large 55 Days game at WinterCon this year and will follow up with it's big brother at CanCon over the Australia Day long weekend.
Next year's CanCon will be set in the Sudan and it looks (not to put too fine a point on it) MASSIVE.
Ideas being kicked around are a three-days' long campaign involving:
The River Column
The Desert Column
The Seige of Khartoum
or
All three!
At the moment, all's to play for but my money's on the "all three" option.
So the preliminary work involves looking at the historical orbats and then juggling figure numbers to get appropriate unit sizes - if you want bit briish Units, you need 4-8 times as many Mahdists and we are wanting 200 or more British and a similar number of Egyptians in Khartoum! 1500 or more Mahdists might do it. Even with some Gilderesque tricks, that's still a formidable number of troops. Oddly though, if enough of us pitch in, our existing collections will take us most of the way there (especially for the British) and well, there are always the Perry Mahdists in plastic...
Then there is the planning. How are we going to put on the game? What sort of game will it be? For myself, I'd like to see a co-operative game with the players all on the one side (which one :^)) with the Mahdists either run by the Umpire or (another Gilder touch) some species of reaction table. Then there are the rules - probably home-baked and based on the 55 Days ruleset we've written. And the terrain...
Where's MS Project when you need it?
4 comments:
All of that seems good to me . . . except that you should bring the game to Vancouver Island, Canada (where I live) . . . but I suppose you want to keep it in OZ, eh?
-- Jeff
Selfish beggar, ain't I?
I'd suggest a T shaped table - with Khartoum at the end of one 'limb', the river column advancing from directy opposite, and the desert column coming in from the side..? Also, as the British strategy and tactics are so obvious, why not make the players all Mahdists? That would be a nice twist. Cheers.
Hi Doug,
I'm looking for an approach to integrate all three into the one game, so I'll take a hard look at your ideas.
I also wanted to bring in a scrolling terrain. Has anyone done this in the past? I could use some advice on the practicalities.
Greg
Post a Comment