Isandlwana - a Small Update

 

Prone Zulus, taking cover from the British fire...

Casualty Markers

Zulu bases, in progress...

amaTutshane

A few things to report for this update. I've been snipping out figures for both the British and Zulus at a good rate, the casualties and prone figures shown being the easiest to do. The combatants are being worked on, but are not based yet.

The bases for the Zulus are going to be 120mm rounds which I have cut from corrugated cardboard. Being a bit paranoid about them warping I have been trying various things and recently realized that I needed to paper mache them to cover edges where the corrugated cardboard shows.

I've also been working on a couple of larger square or rectangular tents for the camp but not found a design I like yet.

I decided that my version of amaTutshane was too tall in relation to my version of Isandlwana itself so I have cut it down and trying to get the approximate shape right with paper mache. By my estimation it needs to be about 1/4 the height of Isandlwana

Isandlwana - The Camp Takes Shape

 

Left-to-Right: 1st/24th, Mtd & HQ, 2nd/24th, NNC, NNC,

wagon park on the nek.

Question: Where do the oxen and mules/horse go?

(They seem to get left off maps of the battlefield all the time!)

Isandlwana - the Lower Storeys

 

The lower storeys take shape...

This is where the rock face ends...

 ...and the steep slopes begin.

The Eastern slopes, with that 

prominent knoll overlooking the nek.

The Western Slopes.

The next step: paper Mache!

The amaTutshane kopje, 

another prominent landmark on the battlefield.

Isandlwana Takes Shape!

 

Constructing Isandlwana...

The Battle of Isandlwana: Some Battlefield Research

The Isandlwana Battlefield - via Google Maps

I am preparing to run a wargame version of Isandlwana later this month and have been doing some research to figure out how to set everything up. Luckily, a friend is allowing me to use his 6' x 15' table which, with the ground scale I've adopted works out at just about 4 kilometers. Google maps has a little measuring utility that allows me to measure and display that on the map, as shown above.

Isandlwana topo

Edit: ignore my tentative Chelmsford placement. 

I mistook the name of the hills. 

His force is down off the SE corner.

The University of Texas has a really good map library: 

https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/

This is The Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) Map Collection. Apparently they have decided not to update it further and it was archived this year. Hopefully it will stick around as there are some really great maps there!

Anyway, I located a topographical map of South Africa and cobbled together the above image in PowerPoint. Comparing it to the Google satellite imagery one can see why it's reliability is only rated "fair"! Still it does give a rough idea where things were, and, more importantly for me, it gives me an estimate as to how high the ridgeline was. Going by the above map it is somewhere around 250 feet above the surrounding lowlands.

I'm still trying to work out how high the Isandlwana "mountain" is. It's not that large, actually. The footprint, I mean - see the image below. According to Google its only a couple of hundred meters long and less than 100 meters wide.

The above image shows a possible table layout. I realize now that my arrows for the Zulu Right Horn and Reserve are probably wrong. If the Right Horn was seen sweeping across Cavaye's front when his company was up on the ridge - and 600 yards to that front - then the sweep of the horn must have been much further westwards, leaving the map probably still on the ridge, then descending and doubling back. the end of their arrow would have been moving eastwards over the gap.

More to follow...

Lohwand: The Tharkallan Legions Revisited

 

Detail of the 1st Cohort

Cohort Organization

After a year of focusing on 60mm figures, I have determined that the sort of battles I want to fight will require more units and larger numbers of figures. The 60mm figures are great and I still intend to use them for smaller battles, skirmishes and Gangs of Rome style games (I'm getting GoR bases printed in the correct size) however, I've decided to go down in scale for the large battles.

After a tentative stab at 25mm, which didn't work out to well (the figures received actually measuring 30-32mm!!!), I've settled on 15mm. The above EIR miniatures are from Museum Miniatures. I like the poses and I especially like that they have the same helmet crest as my 60mm plastics. 

Now that I've decided on a smaller scale figure I've been tinkering with organization and figure ratio. Another thing that has changed is that I know a little more about Roman legion organization than when I started the Lohwand Campaign. Following on Peter Connolly, I now know that the cohortes were organized in six centuries, each of eighty men, and that a common formation was three lines of two centuries each. Each century would be formed in ten files of eight ranks deep. So the whole cohort would be twenty men wide by twenty-four men deep. 

Quite a change from my original proposal which had a longer frontage rather than depth. Above you can see what I've more-or-less decided upon using a 1:40 figure ratio so each century is two figures strong. I found some nice bases - via the Big Red Bat (To The Strongest) - that are aligned the way I want them, short edge to the front.

I put the centurion in the front rank, and behind I've made a little command grouping of Optio, Signifer and Cornicen. I'll have to make sure the first cohort gets an Eagle! And for the overall legion I'll have to hunt down a Legate and an Imagifer.

The thing I'm wondering now is whether I should leave it as that, with the cohort the smallest element of maneuver, or should saw the bases so that I can array the centuries all in a single line? I'm thinking if I got a metal plate and then used the magnets with the holes already provided, that would hold the three-part cohort in place if I did cut it up, but still allow me to split the centuries up if required.

The pics below show the whole hypothetical legion arrayed in the triplex acies formation:

The triplex acies

The full legion of ten cohorts

Armatura X

 

Armatura X - Front

Armatura X - Back

The latest version as of Aug 11, 2021. The final version? Who can say?!

Note: I find that by opening each page "in it's own tab" (Right Click option) I can enlarge it to make it easily readable.

I have to start thinking about Battle Magic and about doing a functional "Cheat Sheet". My goal of getting a complete set of rules onto a single sheet of paper (back & front) is almost complete. Paper size: Tabloid (11" x 17") - which might be considered "cheating" b/c it is so large but I don't care. ;-)