The Great Anglo-Boer War
by
Cadet Games
This is from Cadet Games KickStarter page about this new game that will be starting its campaign soon. Here is what they have to say:
"Thank You to all of our Cadet Games Backers for making our last five projects successful! "They Were Soldiers & Dak To / Hill 875", "Nguyen Hue '72 - The 1972 Easter Offensive in Vietnam", "Linebacker II", "A&A Arnhem '44" and "A&A Blitzkrieg '40" are all challenging players on tabletops from Kansas to Singapore, Sweden to New Zealand - and everywhere in between! None of this is ever possible without YOU...so, Thank You All Again!
Our latest project is the culmination of a fascination that began in the old library stacks at New Mexico Military Institute back in 1984. Long before West Point or Army Special Ops, our designer, as a young cadet, ran across a large book with the famous picture of the hundreds of British dead choking their shallow trench on Spion Kop in Natal from Jan 1900. It looked like something from WWI, but it wasn't - this was 1900?
What war was this? Just what enemy had humbled the great British Empire in such stunning fashion - and where in the world was Natal? That book, and dozens more over 40+ years now, have provided the groundwork for a Grand-Strategy Tabletop hex-and-counter contest that we at Cadet believe will be THE definitive game of The Great Anglo-Boer War. And what a war it was! We at Cadet believe the Boer War was the most significant of all the Victorian campaigns and certainly the most important conflict to inform tactical, operational and strategic lessons in the profession of arms before WWI.
There are only a handful of wargames on the topic - Incredible, really. Many are only "magazine-type" games from long ago. The best yet made (in our opinion) isn't even available as its own game - but only included (almost as a secret) in the same box - as the "flip side" of "The Defense of Rorke's Drift" from the old 3W (you can still get a copy from Decision Games). It was this significantly under-developed and errata-riddled 3W effort from back in 1991 that we took much of our design framework from. We studied the two different Miranda designs, the Strategmata games, the ATO game, all the latest from Geoff Noble and Godfrey Bailey (Legion), and even a few files from the old "age of rifles" computer simulation from SSI (super old). We did a serious and detailed study of all "professional production-level" Boer War titles produced to date, and what we created is a Boer War grand-strategic-level simulation that honors the significance of the contest to both 19th and 20th century military history - and to the study of the art of war. Seriously, this is a really impressive game. We are very proud to bring this design to the community.
If you know the Great Boer War and have been wanting to wargame it- then this is the one you have been hoping someone would make. If you are curious about the war, you will likely get the "bite" and will then become someone who learns about the war because of this simulation. It is a fascinating bit of history - both for the profession of arms and for the world. The Boer War started as the first of the 20th century conventional wars (BOTH SIDES used bolt-action magazine rifles, Maxim machine guns, modern breech-loading artillery, trenches, barbed wire, smokeless powder, automatic rapid-fire cannons, telephone/telegraph communications, and more) - but after the first year it morphed into the first modern guerrilla conflict, foreshadowing many more to come in the 20th century (and also many parallels to both the American Revolution and the Vietnam War).
I will add here that we at Cadet know this topic is not likely the most anticipated or "profitable" idea for our next design. But we just love military history. And wargames. And it's about time someone made this. We sincerely hope you will support this one.
About the game - As already mentioned, we took much inspiration from the old 3W game from 1991, and the player familiar with that design will see many of those same key design choices in our game (odds are pretty good though, that most don't know that game even exists).
Some players disliked the 3W game’s off-map Arrow/Wheel unit strength accounting system by leader – but we loved it. Leaders on both sides were consistently in command of columns of widely varying strength from month to month during both the conventional and guerrilla phases of the war, and the system Erich Faust and Lew Fisher came up with to manage this dynamic was brilliant. Also, any realistic simulation of the war couldn’t use a traditional “step loss” dynamic to accurately portray the relatively small number of losses for both sides in a typical engagement, but here again – the off-map "number wheels" worked perfectly. The leader-specific initiative rating system, though hardly revolutionary in wargame design, was also particularly useful to model the Boer War – ultimately representing far more than simply a leader’s tendency to move or attack, but also his relative command influence for scarcity of resources, typical Victorian Officer rivalries, orders and communications variables, bad intelligence and other typical "frictions" in the conduct of war. Again, those two designers had some very good ideas for this particular conflict, and we took notice.
For our design, we wanted a more granular scale of both movement and combat than any other strategic-level Boer War game yet published. Rayne Kruger, in chapter 23 of his “Good-Bye Dolly Gray” pointed out that, perhaps more than any other Boer advantage, the Empire was fighting “a war against space.” We ended up having two 22x34 map sections at 9 miles/hex to pull this off. A large game on the table – but very typically “Cadet.” As it goes here, bigger is better. More hexes = more realism.
Scenarios - the game is designed with 3 scenarios: The Conventional War (from starting positions after Oct 1899 through Dec 1900) - 14 Turns; The Guerrilla War (from October 1900 through June 1902 - or perhaps ending earlier, depending on events); and the Grand Campaign (the whole war - from starting positions after Oct 1899 through June 1902 or earlier - depending on events). The Conventional War will be super-interesting for those who are keen on the main pitched battles of the war (Colenso, Spion Kop, Magersfontein, Stormberg, Paardeberg, Tugela Heights, etc.) while the Guerrilla War scenario will appeal to those who know that part of the conflict (Nooitgedacht, Bakenlaagte, Elands River Poort, the multiple invasions of the Cape, the Magaliesberg escapes, Tweebosch, Botha's Natal invasion, etc.).
The full campaign is THE ULTIMATE BOER WAR EXPERIENCE - from the first desperate siege defenses of 1899 to the treaty of Vereeniging (or maybe not?) - and everything tactical and otherwise in between. Battles, blockhouses, farm-burnings, evasions, escapes, raids, concentration camps, sieges, drives, armoured trains, 1-pdr automatic "pom-poms", surrenders, entrenchments, typhoid, barbed-wire, native spies, night marches, supply wagons and more. If it was part of the real Boer war - it is in the game. Again, if you know about the war - this is the one you've been hoping someone would make, and if you are learning about it - this IS THE GAME for that.
Please take a look at all the other games they have to offer below.
The Great Anglo-Boer War KS Page
0 comments :