ZULU
by David Perez, are intended to be used to represent large scale battles during the hey-day of the British Empire, and have been kept 'as simple as possible' to facilitate easy play. They include recommended base sizes, a clear sequence of play and the basic principles of movement, firing, melee and morale. They give a quick, exciting and fairly accurate game, and as such will be most useful to beginners both to wargaming in general and the peculiarities of the Colonial period in particular.
I cannot help but feel, however, that this very simplicity will prove unsatisfactory to more experienced players. Firstly, they labour under a misconception that has plagued the Colonial period since it first became popular with wargamers, namely that all battles were fought between small groups of highly trained European regulars and masses of poorly armed natives who fought in disorganized mobs.
There can be no denying the disparity of armament and numbers, true, but any white man who fought at Isandhlwana would hardly be impressed by the description of his foe as as loosely organised group' as he watched the Zulu regiments advance swiftly, in good formation, over rough ground despite heavy casualties!
Secondly, the brevity allows no scope for introducing some of the factors that make this period so fascinating; there are no allowances for native levies or Volunteer units, no mention of rockets (ineffective, admittedly, but fun!) and no rules for fighting in or around buildings -- Rorke's Drift, anyone?
Of the 32 pages, a couple are devoted to rather hazy descriptions of the armies and uniforms of the period, four are completely taken up with unspectacular drawings (which "pad out" quite a bit of the rest of the text too, incidentally), and two are left blank for notes. At $4.00, I really can't find it in me to say they are good value.
Colonial Skirmish Rules
I have no qualms, though, about recommending the second set, Colonial Skirmish Rules by Edwin Herbert, the late Steve Curtis, Michael Blake and Ian Colwill. The latter two gentlemen are the foremost exponents of skirmish wargaming and Ted Herbert is an expert on the period; he is Wargames Group Secretary of the Victorian Military Society and author of their Colonial Wargame Handbook. Skirmish gaming is different from ordinary wargaming because it seeks not to reproduce huge set-piece battles like Omdurman or Isandhlwanda, but rather highly personalised smallscale incidents like the death of the Prince Imperial.
Individuality is the essence; they are best played with a group of gamers each controlling one, or at the most two, figures on the table. Each period represents a very short space of time -- it takes two phases, for example, to unsling a shouldered weapon! Movement is measured in terms of one or two yards per phase, and every action from kneeling to striking a match catered for.
Since the time scale is so short and the potential for action so varied, there are, inevitably, quite a few charts and lists that have to be consulted but the finished game more than justifies the effort The potential for scenarios using just a handful of figures is practically unlimited and the rules are a joy to play with.
A deep knowledge of the subject is evident in the assessments for the different types of weapons that can be used; the effectiveness of everything from a Sikh throwing disc to a Nordenfeldt machine gun is considered. Thorough and enjoyable, and including several pages of scenario suggestions, uniform details and available figures (out of date now, though, as these rules first appeared in 1972) they are unbeatable value at $5.
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