Peninsular Wargames Group recently playtested the use of Studio Tomahawk's excellent Muskets and Tomahawks rules for a Eastern Cape Frontier clash set in the mid-nineteenth century.
A small force of British regulars, reinforced by some local allies (Boers, amaFengu) attempted to raid on the homestead of a troublesome amaHleka neighbour.
On a table representing a settlement in the dense thicket of the Eastern Cape river valleys, the British sent their Mfengu and Boer allies forward to do the dirty work of flushing out the first defenders, and torching the buildings.
But their regular troops couldnt keep up in the broken terrain, leaving the irregulars exposed to a brutal counter attack as they attempted to torch the first huts.
The Xhosa saw off the Mfengu, and killed the Boer to a man, but once the British regulars arrived at the edges of the village itself, the Xhosa had no response to their volley fire, and would not have been able to put up much resistance had the game gone on longer.
As they fell back in the face of the British lines, the Xhosa were concentrating on getting their cattle off table. It was a good strategy, as if successful, it could have saved the game for them. But as it turned out the dice decreed that the game ended at that point.
Both sides had failed in their main objectives (for the British, to burn at least 5 huts, and for the Xhosa, to keep all enemy troops away from the village) so its was down to each officer's sideplot and the bonus objective (cattle) to determine victory. By that measure, the British were ahead 2-1, so a minor victory to the red soldiers.
Not a great deal of adaption of the rules was required - the Xhosa needed some revised stats, and we dropped the "one shot weapon" for thrown weapons, given that the Xhosa fought primarily with throwing spears. In hindsight we needed to tweak one or two of the Xhosa stats (they were a little too deadly in hand to hand) but otherwise the rules made the transition from North America to South Africa very well...
