Always on the lookout for a new colonial rules set I ran across Battles for Empire: 1870-1902, Rules and Scenarios for British Imperial Warfare in Miniature by Chris Leach at Morningstar Games (in Savannah), where Ben drags me, kicking and screaming (yeah right!), when I take him back to university each semester. I think the price was $19.95.

I will say upfront that I have not play tested these rules yet, and probably will not. Since I generally only skirmish game, even with units as large as brigades and once a division, but generally just a regiment or less at a time, these rules don’t really fit my style of play. These are brigade (and probably larger) level rules where a stand of four figs in 25mm is a company. I do have some fundamental problems with these rules and if you can get by or rewrite them great. It does not matter what imperial or native power the stands represent all units are the same size whether they are 70 or 150 men in size. And they all die the same.

Some of the contradictions I found within the rules include:

“Distances are not relevant as long as they feel right”, although there are movement and firing distances.

“Trenches and sangars do not provide melee benefits”, but walls do.

“Only Boers have hill sangars” (there are no hill sangars on the Northwest Frontier where there is only rough terrain (with sangars). As I remember the NWF is rather hilly, rough, and mountainous and the Pathans and Afghans do use sangars on hills and mountains.

“Native armies should generally outnumber Imperial forces by a significant margin. Zulu and Dervishes may out number the imperials by a unit ratio of up to 4 to 1.”

“Skirmish order is the only effective way to deploy Dervish or Zulu firepower...Changing to skirmish formation takes the entire turn...Dervish and Zulu skirmish lines may never move.” As opposed to the imperials who are only penalized 3” of movement to form skirmish order. There are no first rate native units. All imperial troops are 1st rate, including all Indian Army units. All other trained native troops are 2nd rate. Nearly all natives are 3rd rate. There are four scenarios provided in this 55 page booklet.

Would I recommend these rules? Well if you already have your figs based consistently for some other large scale system sure try it. But individually based figs won’t work here. For me there are too many assumptions I don’t like, so I wouldn’t buy these again. If someone would like to try these rules buy them from me at a discount.