Wargames Weekend: Patrols in the Sudan

Following on from the Spanish Civil War game we decided to give Peter Pig's Patrols in the Sudan a go. As my Essex Sudan figures aren't quite based correctly for the rules we had to work around that (the wide Mahdist bases acted as two bases each for example).

Lenin took charge of the British forces with his mission to recce a village and report back.

It took a little while to get the hang of the rules, something that wasn't helped by the terrible layout, poor proofreading and limited explanations in the rules.

Lenin managed to get the column to the village relatively easily, largely because of my inability to get troops onto the table. When I did attack he managed to get his units to turn to face ir redeploy and shot my Mahdists to pieces.

But when he tried to return he had quite a few more problems. One unit attempted to scout some brush and was surprised my one of mine who managed to get into hand to hand and gave them a damned good thrashing. Another of his units marched in column past some broken ground and I took the opportunity to charge into his flank. Unfortunately for Lenin his column failed to turn to face and paid the penalty. I then turned to the next unit in the column and that suffered a similar fate to the first. The remaining unit was holding the village but unlike the others this was a veteran unit of highlanders and they were not going to be a push over.
I managed to get units into templates either side of it forcing it to move into square. But when I assaulted him it all began to go wrong. The highlanders managed to shoot the leaders of both of the Mahdist units which then stalled in rifle range and were shot to pieces. The highlanders then managed to march away and complete the mission.
Despite taking substantial casualties Lenin managed to score a victory mainly due to the losses by the Mahdists and having successfully completed the mission.
Patrols in the Sudan provides a fun game despite the poor presentation and will be hitting the table again.