The Roghan Valley, North West Frontier, 1895....Part 2

Of Gaming Considerations

The early foundations are in place in respect of the background to my NW Frontier adventures and there will be much more to follow in due course. the one thing I wanted to get 'bedded down' at this early stage though was the type of actions I want to be fighting with the 54mm set up and indeed, other mediums. At the base level there is the skirmish game and not only is 54mm an ideal scale for such activities but there are also a couple of very welcome additions to the idea of such an undertaking. To begin with, the Colonial era is a very fertile source of inspiration for small scale games at skirmish level and so the prospect of table top deeds of 'derring-do' straight out of G.A. Henty and  others would be hard to resist. There is also the compelling factor of not needing many figures to be feasible and this is a very important consideration given the number of figures I shall be needing overall. At this point in time I do not have a suitable skirmish rule set I can use but am sure that I can find something suitable from somewhere.

The skirmish level game obviously lends itself nicely to the continuing back story of the Roghan Valley in particular the exploits of the main characters (and those yet to appear). It also serves to give me a short term focus in respect of what I need to paint and so the collection will be used as it grows.

The next level up will be the 'unit' based game and I am spoilt for choice for rules to use for this. At the moment using a hex based system such as Bob Cordery's Memoir of Battle is my preferred choice but any one of a number of other sets could also make an appearance as the mood takes me. Funny Little Wars will feature in due course - hence the recent acquisition of some 'firing' artillery. I also have in mind a large scale frontier uprising which will probably be fought using the blocks and involve map moves and all the paraphernalia of a full blown campaign.

The first priority though, is to tackle the figures themselves and for that I shall need to invest quite substantially in some acrylics....;-)