I'm starting to think that XTR has gone out and dug up Marlon Perkins and placed him in charge of marketing. What's with all these animal titles? Fighting Eagles, Tigers, and now Lions. It's almost as if everyone at XTR watched endless reruns of "The Wizard of Oz" and came out humming, "Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my … lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"
Like Lions They Fought, a title derived from yet another book on what must be the most over-covered, minor war in all of history, is a game on the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879… with the emphasis squarely on "game". The mechanics are simple (almost as simple as the ones at my car dealership), and the design emphasizes action and entertainment, especially if one is partial to rapine and pillage. Much like the first of the two major movies on the subject, Zulu, it sacrifices (judiciously, not wantonly) accuracy for the sake of action. The follow-up to Zulu, Zulu Dawn, went the other route. Which one would you prefer to watch, hmmm? Somebody has his pudgy digits on the pulse on the Great Unwashed out there. Thus, in its own way, and except for some glaringly wrongheaded rules, Lions succeeds in offering the players some sense of the Anglo-Zulu War along with a decent amount of fun.
In many ways, Lions is a standard, XTR, no-frills, Igo-Hugo production. However, onto this conventional framework, the designer has superimposed some unusual features that give the game quite a bit of character and meat. First of all, movement allowances are very high … 20-30 for the British and as much as 50 for the Zulus! This high MA creates a fluid and unpredictable environment full of surprise and ambush possibilities. Hordes of Zulu regiments stacked around Ulundi on game-turn 1 can advance all the way to Ishandlwhana and gang up on (and probably slaughter) the British column, advancing from Rorke's Drift. However, the Zulu war economy is abstracted into an activation rule that limits the Zulu player to moving units (single or stacked) from only 8 different hexes at the start of the game. Not only that, but for every four kraals the British burn, that activation limit is reduced by one.
Combat is mandatory between all adjacent, enemy units; however, regardless of whose turn it is, the Zulus is always the attacker! Essentially, what happens is that the British player moves next to a Zulu stack, requiring the latter to attack, upon which the Brits proceed to chew the Zulus to pieces with defensive fire. (James Longstreet would have loved this game.) Combat is fought in rounds, with units lining up à la House Divided, with the British Quality (weapons superiority) inveighing mightily against the Zulu's Quantity. Players can break off and retreat from battle, if they must. The Zulus do this for free, while the Brits suffer loss of supply wagons as well as providing Cetswayo's boys with a parting shot. (Mention of Cetswayo, reminds us that his counter contains a photo of the Zulu king, who was, most certainly no Shaka.) After any combat, be it victory or defeat, the Zulus that were involved go home for "ritual purification" - a religious reality which severely limited their flexibility - from which they may re-enter play, at their home kraals, two turns later. The victor of any battle gets an "advance" dieroll, more on which, below. A British defeat is labelled a "disaster", which is then marked on the map by a special, skull-indicator counter. Entry into such a hex by a British unit reduces its combat strength by one, a most curious design mechanic, again more on which below. To win, the Soldiers of the Queen must burn the Royal Kraal at Ulundi and capture Cetswayo; failure to do so provides the Zulu with the victory.
I liked Lions because, within the relatively simple format, it offers a lot of uncertainty and head-scratching. However, there are, as mentioned above, two, significant trouble areas, one of which is, potentially, a real show-stopper. The lesser of the two is the British Disaster rule. It's not that the idea of the rule is bad, it's just that the applicable result - loss of strength points - is not only a rather debatable effect but not one which has any real impact on the game. It would more realistic - and render the Zulus far more aggressive (which they certainly were historically), if the game gave Chelmsford a "three strikes and yer out" for disasters. Instead of the Zulus seeking to win simply by avoiding British victory conditions, they could win "actively" by wreaking three disasters on the British, a result which, in all likelihood, would have raised a public clamor, forcing Queen Vicky's government (if it survived a vote) to rethink the whole invasion.
The other problem is the advance dieroll, which, if one is to believe the large number of e-mail opinions flashing back and forth these days on this game, has succeeded in ruining the game for some players. The Advance DR allows the British to advance an equivalent number of hexes if victorious, placing them next to Zulu stacks, thus forcing the Zulus to attack the, giving them another win, ad infinitum … as long as they win (which they do most of the time). It is possible, if not probable, that what, in reality, was a tortuously slowly moving column of peer-lead, brain-dead British, could blitz their way to Ulundi in a single turn! We face a real anomaly in that an unopposed column spends its movement allowance and simply stops, while a fighting column goes from one battle to the next, almost as if its bar-hopping, with practically unlimited mobility. The likelihood of a single defeat turning into an uncontrollable African Chernobyl makes it foolhardy for the Guys with the Assegais to attempt to oppose, or even go anywhere near, columns they are not sure of defeating. While, at first glance, the advance dieroll seems like a simple, effective "pursuit" rule, it effectively throws the games mechanics - and the strategic situation - totally out of whack.
I do note that Lions is one of those games which half the players say the Brits can't win, while the other half says the same for the Zulus. This, alone, usually indicates a high play value, and there is no doubt that Lions is a fun game with a fairly high interest level. It's also refreshing to see conventional wargame concepts tweaked just enough to adapt them to an unusual topic.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
One of the more intriguing and interesting Command games, and a welcome respite from what is rapidly becoming bimonthly installments of "Krim and Punishment".
from XTR
One 22" x 34" map; 176 counters; rules book. Included with Command #28.
POB 4107, San Luis Obispo CA 93403. $12
Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 14 Table of Contents
Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1993 by Richard Berg
This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com