I was inspired to run a Boer War scenario from a wargaming friend who had been reading a book about the Boer War. I have not run a Boer War battle in a long time so figured I'd give it a go again. This time using the Bloody Big Battle rules. It turned out the Spion Kop scenario would work out good because I had all the miniatures for the scenario painted up and based already. This would also be my first foray into the Bloody Big Battles rules. I played in a Franco-Prussian War game awhile back, but really couldn't get into the rules as a player.
In all the Bloody Big Battles scenarios, you will notice a lot of terrain. They are not simple throw down a few terrain elements, these can be elaborate winding rivers to expansive hills. I wanted to see if I could come with a way to simply create these features for this game and future games. I don't want to spend a lot of time building fancy terrain when I will only use the setup for a couple sessions and then I'm onto the next battle with a different layout. I also really don't have the room to store the terrain.
I have a lot of future Bloody Big Battles scenario options that I want to do in the future in periods I already have a lot of 15mm miniatures for: Crimean War, 1859 Franco-Austrian War, and Boer War.
The Spion Kop, Boer War scenario by Anton van Dellen is a good one. I would drop the British artillery can not fire at a Boer target if a British unit is within 9", British artillery suffers a left shift because of Boer camouflage, and British artillery suffers low ammo if they roll a 10 or more.
It is certainly a challenge to figure out visibility between units when you have hills in the battle. I need to build a diagram to explain when units can see each other and when they are blocked by contours.
In the playtest and at the club, the British has it hard. I was able to get to a draw in the playtest. The club game we only made it through half the scenario turns and the British were struggling to take any of the objectives.
