HGA - September 25th 2011

September 25th, 2011: I ran a game of the 'Sword and the Flame' for my local gaming group (Historical Gaming Association of London [Ontario]). I decided to run one from a Scenario book. The book I chose was 'Colonial Campaigns: Ethiopia' and the scenario was 'Adowa: The Centre Brigades'.

Five players showed up which was perfect, the scenario seems to work best with that many (three Ethiopian and two Italian). I ran it once with six, three a side, the actual Italians enter on turn 2 and either take three to four turns to reach the fighting, which is desperate by that time, or they move to the West hill and see no fighting til near turn 9 or 10.

I made one change to the scenario to make it closer, I moved up all Ethiopian reinforcements by one turn, otherwise the Italians have to try very hard to lose.

To win the Italians must accrue more victory point than the Ethiopians, each side gets one point for solely occupying each victory hill.

The game is supposed to be 12 turns long, but you can determine by about turn 8 if the Ethiopians are going to win, which is where we got to.

By turn 8 the Italians had lost control of 2 of the the 3 hills and even if they kept the 3rd hill, the Ethiopians would accumulate enough victory point to win, the Italians didn't have enough troops to contest one of the hills, they used their reserves to hold the second hill as long as possible, if they could have contested it for one more turn we would have had to play til turn 12.

Turn 2: The Askari (Eritrean fighting for the Italians) move onto occupy 2 of the 3 victory hills, but Ethiopians cavalry is already on North hill at top of picture.

North hill being assaulted.

Last stand on North hill, the only survior will be general Albertone (on horse near South edge of the hill). The markers denote that a unit has moved  and the different colors which player is commanding said unit.

Italians reinforcements arrive to contest the South hill, constant sniping and rushes have reduced the defending askari to 3 figures.

Turn 8: Italians just about to be pushed off the South hill. Ethiopians assault the reserve to prevent if from counter attacking.

For the most part we played The Sword and the Flame' rules as written except melee resoloution and officer casualties.

Melee: I had each side start with1d6 per figure, or 1d8 per leader then add or subtract for various factors. Roll the dice with any result of 5+ inflicting a kill, the side with the most kills win, ties go to defender.  

Officer Casualties: when a unit takes casualties for each casualty roll 1d12 on a 1 unit suffers an officer casualty.