Omdurman in 6mm

Mark hosted a whole weekend of colonial wargaming for our group. They fought four scenarios, mainly playtesting towards Mark's planned book of BBB scenarios set in India (Sikh Wars, Indian Mutiny etc). But the one game I was able to join in was his fine scenario for Omdurman (1898).

The Anglo-Egyptian force ensconced in its zareba.

Like many colonial battles, this offers a nice contrast of quality versus quantity. The Anglo-Egyptian attackers have devastating firepower, while their Mahdist opponents are far more numerous and dangerous if they can close to fight hand-to-hand. The scenario is a good one because the A-Es cannot just sit back and shoot, they need to move out of their entrenched camp and march up the Nile to storm Omdurman, while the Mahdist army descends on their flank.

This was a lot of fun for both sides. The A-Es were able to blow away large numbers of Mahdists nearly every turn, especially with the destructive fire support offered by their gunboat on the Nile. But there were always more, and the challenge for the A-Es was to move fast enough to take enough objectives before game end.

For us Mahdists, there were interesting tactical choices to be made. We had to rush some troops directly over to Omdurman itself. But we also had to decide where and how to delay the A-E advance: shoudl we push towards their camp and threaten their baggage train? How hard should we fight to hold the Jebel Surgam hill halfway along the enemy route? How much should we let ourselves be distracted by trying to wipe out the 21st Lancers and Winston Churchill? Etc.

In retrospect, the A-Es probably lost the game in the first couple of turns, when their Egyptian player chose to leave half or more of his force inside the zareba doing nothing. Come the endgame, when the furthest forward British troops were trying to mop up Mahdist resistance in Omdurman, some extra Egyptian support nearby could have made a critical difference. As it was, they had too little, too late, and we were able to hang on for a Mahdist win.

In post-battle discussion we agreed the scenario needed a little tweaking just to allow more ways for the A-Es to win than just taking all 4 objectives. But even untweaked it gave a fun balanced game.

Mark's new 6mm armies of Irregular Miniatures figures looked very effective. A few more photos are on Flickr.