..hot dry desert sands.. post match analysis

...so with the game all over bar the shouting (and those questions in the house!) what were my initial thoughts on version 1 of the Sudan rules.... plainly some things went contrary to what one would expect to have happened in the Sudan in this era of warfare, or at least what my limited reading (so far) would have me believe happened, and in essence I will be making two major changes to the rules:

Small arms - all the reading I've done has indicated that the majority of Dervish attacks would be stopped/turned away as a result of concentrated small arms fire up to 200 or 300 yards out. There were some occasions when this didn't happen, but the norm was that it did - what I found in this run through of my rules was that the small arms ranges were far too short, an oversight on my part when I cobbled the rules together from the various sets I used as input, so I'll be increasing mine forthwith...

Reaction tests - the reaction tests in my rules were lifted directly as is from "Pony Wars" set, and thinking about what happened afterwards I think that on the whole they are not 'aggressive' enough - my reading would indicate that the Dervish would come hurtling at you the moment they scented an opportunity to get to close quarters, and in some cases even when there wasn't! On the other hand my assessment is that the average plains Indian, while undoubtedly equally brave, was more a skirmisher than a close quarters fighter.. there are a number of "withdraw to skirmish range"/"withdraw to cover" results in the reaction tests which would seem to bear out this view, so over the next few days I'm going to go through the tests and generally increase the number of 'aggressive' actions.....

All in all then not an unmitigated disaster (though the British commander might think otherwise!) but some clear modifications required, and I'm now looking forward to the next game...