Congo: The treasure of Makoko Mbe (game 3)

I was going to write up our second game, but it was simply a reversed players version of the 1st game. Not that new or exciting. Instead this is our 3rd game (2nd mission type). We played this the next day and another nerd came down island to join us. Rob/Codsticker took up the mantle of the opposing forces, with Doug kibbitzing and offering advice. 

 

 The mission this time is to get to treasure buried in the centre of the map. Inconveniently, the opposing forces are racing you AND there are fanatical warrior guardians protecting the treasure. Which is buried/hidden. Both sides march on from different corners and need to get to the centre mound, and spend some time trying to dig up the treasure. There is a time limit. VP's are awarded for defeating enemy units, getting the treasure, and (I think) escaping with the treasure. Everyone is in the deep jungle so they need to find some clue tokens which will tell them where they need to exit the table. It's a lot to do in a short period of time.  

This time the sultanate of Zanzibar slavers (boo hiss) are facing off against the white mans expedition (partially painted....boo hiss). Having learned my lesson the day before I tried for a mix of larger worse units, and smaller elite units (high-low mix I believe they call it when applied to jets). Unlike the previous mission where there was action almost immediately, there was a lot of movement initially. 

 

 

 

 Moving into terrain requires a roll on a hazard table unless there is already a FRIENDLY unit in there, or unless you have scouts. I think we were both pretty scared of the table....and rightly so, there's some situations where nasty predators drop onto the table to give you grief. This probably slowed us down a bit though. 

 

 

 

The 'fanatical guardians' also sounded a bit fierce so we tried to shoot them off the table, and we were both trying to get the other side to do our dirty work for us. Weaken the guardians so we could swoop in and poach the treasure. Needless to say when given an opportunity to fire at the enemy vs the neutral guardians we opted for the former. 

 

Once again it was interesting to see how the elite units could seriously dish out the hurt, but were glass cannons. The white man's expedition has some crack troops with ranged weapons, but they are only 3 and 4 models...so a single loss is notable. Then you ruminate about the value of using an activation on a reduced unit. The action economy is one of the main decisions in this game. 

 

 Once the guardians were worn down we started to charge in. Unusually, if you didn't destroy them you'd be thrown back (normally the victor drives the loser off); fanatical indeed. My trained zanzibaris, with a leader, try going in again while their flank is held with covering fire from the slightly larger unit to their left flank. The sikh soldiers in the background are coming off a bit worse for wear. 

 

It's not all roses for the zanzibaris though. The trained askaris of the expedition close aggressively with their enemies and had some incredible luck, managing to vaporize them. I set up a photo to remind me as they bayonet the last one standing.  

 

 

 

 

 

Blood spatter/dead markers show where the conflict has been most intense. There has been some lulls as the lead elements managed to destroy themselves, and sometime enough activations had been focused on them that the trailing forces still took time to get into combat. 

On the right flank the expedition and slavers had been playing cat and mouse around a cluster of jungles with their larger spear armed units. But now they are driving in on the slavers. Numerous 'stress' tokens (in white) have been accrued which debuff your units. If you get more than 3 or 4 (I forget) then each additional one simply removes a model instead. The spear unit (dark because they are only partially painted) is pretty brittle, but could definitely mess up a unit of, say, 4 figures purely armed with ranged weapon. Ah yes, the one in the bottom middle. This is there the card playing with initiative rank starts getting interesting. There is a 'priority' token that gets handed back and forth when their initiative rank is tied/matches. Player holding it can decide whether to go first and hand over the token, or go second and retain. 

The expedition goes in with a hail mary charge to try and edge out the slavers. Bow armed locals don't fair well against even 2 fanatical warriors and are thrown back. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Thank you for your service gentlemen' I cackle as I go in immediately after and destroy the defenders. The treasure is mine.....er....where is it? Start digging you fools!

 

 

 

 

 

Alas, darkness falls quickly in the deep jungle. The slavers are unable to locate the treasure, and the increased hubbub of the noctural animals and predators encourages them to leave. 

The turn limit being hit we count up points and discover the slavers have edged out the expedition by a couple of points. There was some big points to be had if they had another turn to find the treasure.  

I think the game was generally well received and Doug suggested that I should keep these minis and rules (I'm trying to thin things out these days). So that's a good sign. Not sure when CONGO will hit the table again, but I imagine that it will at some point. 

Congo: The Last Queen of Aksoum (Game 1)

 Back in October I had a weekend of visitors and gaming. I decided to use my captive audience to test out some games I had on the bookshelf but hadn't played yet. 

 

Studio Tomahawks CONGO was one of these.  They are, largely, a pulpy darkest africa mission based game with small units. 

 

 

There are about 10 different missions provided with the base game, which come in the form of 'newspaper' publications. While it's fun and looks good, the oversized loose sheets do irritate me for storage purposes. I do wish they have been included in a condensed format as well. Forces are based on points buying, and there are 4 factions/armies (white man's expedition, sultanate of zanzibar, forest tribes, and african kingdoms). 

This particular mission has one side recently acquiring/excavating/discovering a treasure. The other side is trying to prevent them from leaving the table. A classic breakout scenario. Turn order and player alternation is interesting, each side selects 3 cards (from a total of 9 or so) which will given them 1-3 specific actions (move/no charge, shoot, rally/terrify, move/charge) but also a priority number. So if you really want to go early, you may choose a less optimal card (which accomplishes less). Each player flips one card at a time in 3 rounds, with higher priority going first for that round. After 3 rounds a turn is complete and end of turn stuff happens (reinforcements, some table cleanup, etc). 

 

The treasure had to be carried by a unit with a leader (only 1 per side in our setup) or with an auxillary porter. I spread my porters around so that it wasn't clear with unit was carrying the treasure and everyone largely split up. 

Having never played with had no idea how combat and shooting would pan out, and a technical idea for movement (but not yet any intuition). 

 

 

Spear armed units are able to throw their spears at short range. Muskets (med range) caused morale effects, but had to be reloaded. Bows were also med range. Jezzail muskets and modern rifles had long range. 

 

It quickly became clear that while smaller more elite units (which had larger dice to roll to achieve successes [always on a 4+]) were more reliable they were super brittle. Large units of low competency units were solid in both soaking up hits as well as being able to get good results at times (lots of dice with 50% odds can sometimes swing nicely in your favor).  

 

 

 

My initial build/purchase for the sultanate was a bit too elite and suffered for it. I was quite handily creamed and no invader managed to escape the territory of the defending forest tribe. I don't remember the victory point totals but it was embarrasingly not in my favour. 

 

 We talked a bit about things we learned and setup for a second game with our commands reversed (Doug taking the sultanate trying for a break out). Those pictures and results will be forth coming in the next post. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hammfilade 2026: Firelight Dark Ages Skirmish

 The final game I was involved in (I skipped town early Sunday) was another convention ruleset. This time it was developed by Seth, riffing off the '6's are bad' structure that a few of the group have been working with/on for a couple of years. 

 

 

 

 

In this particular instance there is a mechanic somewhat like 'what a tanker', where you need to allocate dice to units to get them to do different actions. You can always choose to 'roll up' the die to a higher number. In the theme of 6's are bad, the higher numbers are generally less useful. One nice aspect  of this is you call out over the whole table, 'activate all 4's!' and everyone can move (although technically you alternate each sides activation so I suppose there are two 4's activations). 

 

 

Units gain BAPs (bad action points) which functionally reduce the size of their unit in terms of effectiveness. Once BAPs get too high any further gains mean that models start getting removed (fleeing I suppose). 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the most difficult aspect to wrap your head around is that you roll damage on your own unit.  If 12 vikings attack your unit, you are rolling 12dice (ish) and hoping you don't roll 6's. You never actually roll to hurt the enemy....you kinda set up an environment where bad stuff can happen to them, and then they roll. It definitely made the rules a bit hard to grok when I first starting proof reading for feedback/understanding. 

 

 

 

Seth, James, and Ron all brought up minis and Doug had some as well. The Vancouver Island contingent free loaded on others painted minis. Dark ages minis (and ancients) with metal spears are definitely hazardous to play with and I think a few of us got some decent battle damage to our hands.

Seth had previously run the game at Enfilade this year, and got Ron to design and laser cut all the buildings. They are a clever modular build which allows you to have some fun making them in different ways. 

 

 

 

 

SHAMELESS PLUG: Check out his stuff at 3D-Dzyn . He doesn't have everything up on his website so if you are interested in the buildings just message him (or really anything. He does a lot of custom work). I got him to whip up the blood tokens for me (in acrylic) and happily was dropping them everywhere models died. It helps to show where the action is. 

 

 

Battle wise the vikings are raiding and pillaging. The angloSaxons (maybe just angles?) happen to have a VIP in town and are defending. The defenders started in a few set locations, and the attackers were coming on at random points. Technically the attackers just want to pillage, but anyone close by wanted to get stuck in a start fighting. Doug and I each had a unit on the far side of the table so were just looting the mostly abandoned houses and fields. The lack of two units was eventually telling, which allowed the defenders to drive off the attackers in a fairly decisive manner. 

Movement we decided might be a bit short. And there was one hilarious charge with javelins that vaporized a (small) unit of archers, so we nerfed thrown pointy sticks a bit.  Berserkers needed some more tuning as well. 

Hammfilade 2026 - Saturday. General du Corp. Battle of Siebenkiefern (pt3/final)

 Late in the afternoon the Prussians have finally captured their objective town. The original formations (Prussian and Russian) are very brittle at this point, and players are doing their best to be threatening but not actually get involved in combat much (ever combat you fight drops you by a strength point, win or lose. Most units have 3, sometimes 4, points of strength). 

 

The latest prussian command (top of the photo, angled marching to the right) is marching to intercept the latest Russian arrivals (off picture to the right). My own command (centre right) is uncomfortably positioned between the Russian reserve (now active) & another small Russian arrival force bottom centre, and those off picture Russians marching at my back. 

 

 This second photo shows the latest Russian column and makes it clear this is going to be a large clash. My command is attempting to give ground, falling back towards the objective town, as Seth's command (centre top/top right) marches direct on the Russians. 

 

Overall in the battle every corp (even the late arriving ones) have brittle morale. Losses of whole commands (corp) reduce every other corps on the tables morale. Some bad rolls could have a dramatic effect.  

 

 

 

 

 

 Battle lines forming by the second town. You may notice the black cubes (top is grass covered) on some Prussian infantry. This is the square formation marking (cube = square). Good call as that's a serious amount of Russian cavalry. Unfortunately square makes the cannons much more effective. Choose your poison I suppose. 

 

 

 

 Most of the commands have been whittled down to irrelevancy. Combat is just too risky. Cannons have been depleted. The only action that's really happening is the big clash on the right. Around this time we were discussing rules adjustments and such so I missed taking pictures. This game flies along, turn wise, in the late game. 

 

 

We eventually call it based on turns passing and easily predicted outcome. It looks dubious that the Russians will be able to evict the Prussians from the objective town (in a timely manner, and possibly at all). Victory points are calculated (comparative losses plus bonus points for holding objectives). 

 The Russians managed to squeek out a marginal win, despite the Prussians achieving the objective. Holding the second town (left in the pic below) was just enough of a points swing to be the deciding factor. Interesting what-if to contemplate if my command hadn't zoomed down the road on it's outflank and instead needed to shack up/defend vs the massive Russian column. 

Another exciting and enjoyable General du Corp game at another year of Hammfilade.  

Hammfilade 2026 - Saturday. General du Corp. Battle of Siebenkiefern (pt2)

 Following on the previous report, we have the Russians and the Prussians struggling over the first town (can't remember the name), which is an important victory point for most of the commands. 

 

The Russian reserve is stalled in the background (there's some sort of conditions for them to activate I wasn't and still am unsure of). Prussian reinforcements have arrived on the flank and are threatening both the Russian reserve as well as the defensive line of the first town. 

 

 And things get interesting yet again. A huge Russian column marches onto the table, outflanking the Prussian outflankers. Oooops that's my command. 

 I now face the charming conundrum of how to split my force between hitting the Russian reserve, turning the defensive line at the town, and slowing the juggernaut marching at my back.  

 

I push hard on the defensive line and some more reinforcements arrive: Prussian on the Prussian left. Between the two of us we rapidly unhinged the line, allowing Ron to push again and evict the original Russian defenders, taking out the emplaced guns.  

 

 

 

 

 

 Hilariously (for others) more Russian reinforcements arrive...on MY Flank. I now have troops in front, troops behind, and troops to my left. The troops I have are also rapidly attritioning from the push. 

 

I've been forced to move to a defensive posture and am turtling up, hoping the other Prussian players can push and get their forces into battle. 

Overall, each side is hoping that the other cracks. I think everyone is looking at actual routs on a roll of 1 each turn they need to test morale. Yet the morale holds for longer than odds would suggest.  

 To the left we can see Seths Prussians (background, middle back of the table) marching towards James (barely in shot on the right). 

They are the last two fairly intact formations, but have low morale due to a number of formations/corp already leaving the table (from dissolution rather than routing).  

 

 The focus of the battle now switches towards the clash near the Northern town (closest town in the shot to the right). Doug has a little arrow fence on the table to show compass direction (bottom right). 

 

In the background the crippled formations are all trying to preserve their strength and chisel away at the enemy enough to cause a morale check. One formation routing could cause a cascading failure.  Conclusion in the next post!

 

Hammfilade 2026 - Saturday. General du Corp. Battle of Siebenkiefern (pt1)

 Doug hosted a game of General du Corp. It's a convention ruleset for napoleonics meant to finish large battles in a convention time block (3-4hr) with historical results. It's notable for the attrition of units, large base basing, and easy to learn/remember rules.  

 

Most years Doug will take a historical battle and whip up an order of battle from it, along with battle directions to various commands. He usually hides what it is by changing place names, rotating directions, shuffle nationalities, taking battles from non napoleonic but still horse and musket periods. Usually the reveal occure around the 1/3 to 1/2 mark, after all the forces have arrived (we often have no idea where or when reinforcements, if any, will appear....which seems appropriate). This year we didn't even know who was commanding what as Doug had preselected our commands and only told us as we marched onto the table. 

 We found out (eventually) that this was based on the Battle of Seven Pines, an American Civil War battle. The real battle must have been pretty wild, as we had troops arriving from all around the table edge, often threatening to flank the previous command that had just arrived. Victory was generally determined by control of the central village/town. 

Garret started with a fairly decent sized force of Russians, including some emplaced/fortified guns. He was instructed to hold the town. Ron marched on the table edge and for a good 3 or 4 turns they smashed heads (2 hrs in pretend game time).  

 

Then things started getting spicy. 

 

A reserve of Russian troops arrived behind Garrets line. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Followed one turn later (30min game time) by my Prussian command. 

 

 

 

 

 

 I was given a roll to see how far down the road my clever flankmarch had managed (note: note my plan, it's the historical one I inherited. But still clever).

I aced the roll and was positioned to hit the reserve on the flank in short order, and was threatening Garret's dangling defensive line. 

Ron was low on manpower on the attack so this was a critical assist.  

 

  

 My command challenges were that I needed to threaten the dangling flank of Garrets town defense (my orders were to secure the town he was defending), while also taking advantage of my options against the Russian reserve (and not get murdered by his exposed artillery). 

 

 

 

to be continued.... 

 

FLASH FLASH FLASH. Late breaking front line accounts from Klendathu

 Post action battlefield analysis has salvaged declassified exciting front line imagery from the debacle bravely fought action on the Bugs homeworld Klendathu. 

 Post battle inventory of tactical nuclear javelin missiles has indicated a massive loss consumption of munitions. The bugs homeworld has had an questionably effective nuclear blow struck. Pity our Well done fighting men and women of the federation!