Afriboria
Fastplay card driven colonial wargame
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Comments by Chick Lewis (well-known colonial wargamer)
24th May 2005 - At the Bengal club last weekend we played Rudi Geudens' "Afriboria Fast Play Colonial Rules", and had a good time with them. The components are beautifully done with lots of color and colonial-theme illustrations. They consist of decks of command and event cards, and of stickers for the faces of your battle dice. Rudi has made the components and rules available online for free download, which pushes "value per dollar spent" to an extreme high.
Six players, completely unfamiliar with the rules, played an interesting game using 27 units on a 6 by 8 foot table to satisfactory completion in only 2.75 hours, including rules explanation! As familiarity with the rules grows, and we get more familiar with the command cards, I'm confident that a similar game will be playable in 2 hours. This really amazes me. Figures are individually based and movement is by hex-shaped zones, so no fiddly measurements or tape measures are needed, which speeds play quite a bit. No record keeping of any kind is necessary, which is another plus. Everything works well using the number of figures remaining in a unit as the quantifier. The cleverly-designed battle dice work very cleanly, are intuitive and easy to understand, and make for a deadly game, especially as range closes. The symbols on the battle dice represent the type of ammo/weapon used, whereby the more modern weapons have a better chance of scoring hits than outdated ones. This may be a paradigm-breaking system, and certainly is an effective one.
The heart of the rules are the command cards which limit a player's options and force many decisions as to which units to "activate" on a given turn. Should we use these activations to fire and inflict casualties, or should we use one to withdraw our depleted unit before it is wiped out? Can we hold for another turn on the left so that additional activations on the right can turn the flank? None of these decisions are easy ones. The movement rules and battle results just feel right to me. The combat results also have a nice historical feel. In our game two units of royal marines with a sergeant-major figure were packed into the same zone with plenty of open ground in front of them. These were rushed by five larger units of spear-armed warriors. Command cards were spent freely to activate the Royal Marines on a few consecutive turns, and these stood their ground and shot apart the attackers in a very historical fashion, suffering no casualties themselves. A hearty cheer went up as the remnants of the native units fell back into the concealing rocks and scrub. Meanwhile on the other side of the table, the Royal Naval landing force was in trouble as a larger group of Zanzibari slavers whittled them down with one force, then hit them with another fresh group as the first pulled back. The volleys of the naval landing party grew more and more ragged as they dropped one by one. The Slavers won by completely destroying four of the British units before losing six of their own. But it was close and could easily have gone the other way.
Of the six folks playing, five were enthusiastic about the "Fast Play Colonial Rules", and seemed eager to play them again. The sixth is our guy who never likes any rule set no matter what. Overall I like the rules, and will certainly be using them again. Next time I'll try playing a scenario twice back to back, switching only the commanding players, so that everyone gets to command each side once. This should balance play perfectly, and with the speed of these elegant rules, is possible in a single club evening! Chick says "Download Rudi Geudens' Fast Play Colonial Rules and try �em!"
Chick Lewis
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