Having done both Cassinga at the HMGS Fall In Convention last year and "Blackboots on the Trail" at Cold Wars I thought a bit about other scenarios I could do in Modern Africa for Historicon. Modern Africa always seems to bring out some fun and enthusiastic gamers.
The War in Angola website has several scenarios, but they are really designed for 6mm and are quite large for a 15mm gamer. Not that it hasn't been done. R. Mark Davies and some other wargamers did some of the Lomba River crossing games in 15mm using a modified version of the Battlefront WWII rules (see here and here).
While I have a platoon of Ratel-20's and one of Ratel-90's, I don't have entire companies. So I have been thinking of playing some of those scenarios using 3mm figures believe it or not. The cost would be very low and the ground scale more reasonable.
But one of the scenarios has always looked more attainable to me, Operation Colosseum. Colosseum was a raid on a SWAPO base camp in Angola 300km north of the South-West Africa (Namibia) border. Eight years earlier Cassinga was raided just 30km to the south by a large airborne force. In November 1986 a South African Commando Unit (5 Recce) had to accomplish a similar goal using only a company of men in a column of Casspirs and heavily armed Unimog trucks. (here is the link to the original scenario )
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| This photo is from Peter Stiff's book "The Silent War" I have a copy on order. |
Now I don't have 10 Casspirs, but I do have 4 and one that I've almost finished painting. I also have 4 Buffels to fill in for the rest. I have two heavily armed Unimogs I've used for my Rhodesian external ops games, and I have all the troops I need for both sides. I have a Landrover with a 106mm Recoilless and an unarmed Unimog. So really I just needed to pick up 5 more Unimogs and put 2 ZPU-1's on them and 3 Recoilless Rifles on the others.
It was really the Unimogs with the 106mm RR that sold me on this. This is one seriously ballsy operation with a heavily armed but lightly armored flying column. It's like wargamer crack, and I've fallen hard.
I've already submitted it as a game to run on Friday afternoon and I'm considering running it on Saturday afternoon if I hear from enough people. It's a 4 person game since I've found that to be a sweet spot.
You'll be seeing some WIP photos in the coming week.
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