Green lieutenant Aubrey James is new to the Gold Coast of West Africa. It's his first overseas posting, and as luck would have it, he's not a military attache in the embassy in Paris (as he would have hoped), but instead seconded to the West Africa Trading Company at Accra to provide 'military advice'. That involves commanding the rag tag group of European mercenaries the WATC has managed the gather together to provide it with 'security'.
The WATC has territorial 'responsibilities' in the interior. It can't trade with the chiefs there if their villages are being burned down. Raiding by tribes further north is to be investigated and 'discouraged'. A sharp word may be needed. Failing that, something more...forceful.
In this case Lt James has been sent to investigate attacks on several villages under Company purview. He is accompanied on his trip by two seasoned WATC traders and rabble rousers, 'Rob' Roy Urquhart, an irascible Scotsman, and Venlo Siegfried, a taciturn Belgian adventurer. The two men, he suspects, have been seconded to keep an eye on young James and ensure he doesn't end up with a spear in his back.
The patrol encountered a war band under the command of Tai Wengi and his witch doctor Wakimba. The warriors were lying in wait in the jungle for their first crack at the foreigners. Difficulties emerged for Wengi from the start. He was well concealed in the undergrowth with his prized musketmen, but at sight of the British his soldiers suddenly began to reconsider the wisdom of advancing against the British.
James' local scouts quickly spotted the ambush and began sniping away at Wengi's men, killing a couple of them. The range was just too great for Wengi's untrained shooters to stand any chance of hitting a target with a smoothbore.
On the left, Wengi's comrade in arms, Mapigo, decided to test the mettle of his warriors and charge the enemy down the trail. This proved...unwise. The Africans were driven back in a hail of lead from well-trained marksmen. They did not have the numbers to get into close range. Mapigo dropped back to take cover behind an abandoned hut.
On the right Kambi advanced with his elite white shields. These warriors were considered the best fighters in the raiding party, but again, they were spotted and started to take losses. They tried to fight their way through the undergrowth to get to grips with the WATC scouts, but several were hit and fell. Some of Kambi's men started to slink away, quite sensibly. Soon the whole formation was in retreat. Kambi sought to rally the survivors, but as he was giving his men a sound dressing down, he was hit and killed by an enemy bullet. That proved to be the last straw.
At this point Wengi himself decided it would be prudent to make himself scarce. With their commander gone, the musketmen decided to execute a 'tactical withdrawal' themselves, but bumped into Mapigo as they moved back through the jungle. Mapigo was not impressed. He carolled them into his unit, and plotted a second run at the enemy.
Once again, the charge across an open trail proved - unwise. The musketeers followed up behind the warriors, and just managed to let off a small volley of balls, which took one of the European mercenaries in the chest. He proved to be the sole WATC casualty of the evening.
With Mapigo down in the dust and the remaining musketmen running for the hills, Wakimba decided to enter the fray from where he and his warriors had been hiding. As they emerged, they also came under long range fire from native scouts and some mercenaries.
Wakimba had seemingly cunningly positioned his unit at a point in the trail where it could be used to support either flank of the African position. He was essentially the strategic reserve. He ended up in a crossfire and his unit was quickly decimated. Wakimba fell to a bullet and the rest of the unit fled into the jungle, with no surviving leader to rally them. There was no sign of Wengi at all.
"Right ho lads," said James, flicking away some flies with his whisk. "On we go."
This was a play test of some rules currently operating under the working title Sons of the Forest, themselves a derivative of the French Foreign Legion wargame Sons of the Desert. The scenario was loosely derived from the patrol scenario in the sister wargame to SotD, Warpaint, which is about the American Plains Wars. In this case we were using the Gold Coast and the fictional West Africa Trading Co as our background.
I'll be going into the rules in more detail later and will report on my progress towards writing a home brew rules set which I'm happy with using. I may even post a link to them here. Lieutenant Aubrey James will return.
This was great fun!
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