The biggest WWI battle in Africa: Mahiwa (1917)

On Easter Monday, we returned to the fascinating sideshow that was East Africa in WWI, where von Lettow-Vorbeck's German Schutztruppe led vastly larger British Empire forces on a merry dance for the whole duration of the war.

This book has been on my shelves since I was about 15 - now at last I am wargaming it!

Anton has already given us two African WWI offerings: Tabora and Otavi. Those were mere appetizers for this week's game, the largest battle of the campaign: Mahiwa. I think many wargamers are familiar with Tanga, the 'Battle of the Bees', but few of us will know of the larger and bloodier engagement at Mahiwa - I certainly had not heard of it.

The gist is that British Empire forces were chasing much smaller German columns around what is now southern Tanzania; three Nigerian battalions bumped into a column under General Wahle; von Lettow saw an opportunity to inflict a serious defeat on this Nigerian force, did so, but this then developed into a more general battle as more British Empire forces arrived. Although the Germans inflicted 2,700 casualties for the loss of only 500 or so of their own, the German losses were irreplaceable, whereas the British were not. Nevertheless, von Lettow continued to cause mischief all across East Africa for more than a year thereafter.

How did our game go? Herewith a dozen or so annotated photos, followed by some reflections. (Actually, we played it one and a half times, with a few scenario modifications after the first full go.)

First, a treeless and troop-less panorama just to get you oriented. Top edge is north; 5'x4' table is about 6 miles x 5. Bush gives cover everywhere but without limiting LOS. The Nigerian brigade starts dug-in on the two hills north of the central marsh. Buildings are landmarks. Wahle's column deploys within 6" of Nyangao, on the east edge, ready to attack the Nigerians. Von Lettow's column arrives along the road via Mkwera, lower left corner. Mahiwa itself is at the southern end of the marsh. The other three British brigades will arrive from the east edge on Turns 3 and 5 (later amended to 3 and 4).

Trees and white objective counters added. There should be one on the top hill as well. Also, the Germans can earn one or two objectives for exiting one or two units off the SW corner at the end. The Nigerian-held hills are 'highwater mark' objectives - i.e., the Germans get a victory point just for taking them, they don't have to keep them. Germans needed 3 for a draw or 4 for a win (later amended this to 4 for a draw or 5 for a win).

Colonel Mann motivating his 1st & 2nd Nigerian battalions. Figures are Baccus 6mm Colonials from Mark's collection. (Before you complain about his unflocked bases, be glad that they will make it easier for you to follow the action in this game, as the Germans are on green ones!) Troop scale for this scenario is 125 men per base, so these British battalions have 600 men each.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck leads his column into Mkwera. Figures are Irregular 6mm Boers from Anton's collection - suitably scruffy for the Schutztruppe after three years without any supplies from home. They are skilled veterans by now, though, so they get the Skirmisher rating and are far superior to the mainly Raw and Fragile British forces. It's quality versus quantity - the Germans are outnumbered two to one in this battle.

Wahle's force deploys to assault the Nigerian positions. No subtle tactics from Anton here! The German units are 2-base companies of ~250 men. The base with the red fluff is a half-base MG unit representing 2 or 3 machine-guns.

Anton's force has crossed the river (top right) to advance into the teeth of the Nigerian fire. The northernmost Nigerian battalion has descended on Anton's flank. Three of his six companies have been wiped out on the first turn. Fortunately, Von Lettow's column is shaking out (lower left) and lending fire support, so two Nigerian battalions have also suffered serious casualties and are Spent (black fluff)

'The African Queen'! This is one of the 6" guns the Germans salvaged from the cruiser Koenigsberg (an episode that doesn't really have much to do with the classic movie, The African Queen, but I like to think it does).

Turn 3. (Looking east now.) Masses of Brits (actually mostly King's African Rifles or Indian troops) have appeared behind Anton, whose remaining two companies nevertheless fight a game delaying action on the hilltop road. Mark's Nigerians are mostly wiped out too. As von Lettow, I have started pushing a couple of companies left through the marsh to try to sneak onto the Nigerian hill, while most of my force screens the line of retreat back through Mahiwa and Mkwera.

Start of German Turn 5. The British line has advanced, but slowly, delayed by Anton's valiant rearguard as well as by the terrain. (We later deleted the minor stream branches on the right of this pic.)

On Turn 5, my lads have got into the marsh but they won't be advancing out of it - too many Lee-Enfields lined up in front of them. But at least we've diverted several British battalions away from pressing down the road.

That said, the last British brigade - including the cavalry and the best British battalion on the table (55th Rifles - they get flags and skirmishers!) - is doing its best to push through the middle.

Slow going for the British left on the southern flank.

But now the British right outflanks my left. Those two companies in the marsh are doomed. Will the Brits be able to seize the strategic height of Mremba Hill behind them? Fortunately, my reserve company bottom right will preempt the British advance and hold that objective.

And on the right, the British advance grinds to a halt, as two battalions suffer heavy casualties and are Spent (which is why the Germans are now Low on Ammo - brown fluff).

The first game therefore ended in a German victory. We agreed it was a little too hard for the British even to get a draw, so we made a few changes. Anton and I had time to push units around for another half a game, with different plans and scenario tweaks - not enough to absolutely confirm that the tweaks balance it properly, but enough to demonstrate that different plans are possible and the game can go very differently. Well worth playing again.

Reflections

Battlefield geometry. Anton really has an eye for the shape of a battle and the resulting structure of a scenario. In last week's report on Braga (1809), I commented on the virtues of games that 'use the whole pitch'. That very much applies to Mahiwa, where first the Nigerians are sandwiched, then Wahle's sandwichers become sandwichees. The 'highwater mark' objectives, plus the end-of-game retreat objectives, also stretch the action across the pitch. That complex geometry makes for lots of options and lots of decisions.

Multi-day battles - greater than the sum of the parts. Mahiwa was not a single-day, set-piece battle. It was a series of actions spread across 15-18 October 1917. By taking advantage of BBB's elastic scale and compressing all these into an 8-turn game, Anton has made a great scenario and managed to represent an important but neglected battle, whose component actions would not have been nearly as interesting if tackled individually.

Hurrah for the esoteric and obscure! Of course, we all want to fight Waterloo, or Gettysburg, or Borodino, or Koeniggraetz - surely no serious historical wargamer's gaming career would be complete without the likes of these on his CV - but it is also wonderful to game battles we've never heard of and know nothing about. There is the joy of discovery, the pleasure of learning, often spiced with unique or bizarre incidents or larger-than-life characters. And the tactical challenges are entirely fresh too (no more "of course he should never have attacked Hougoumont"). Thank you, Anton, for helping us to explore another hidden corner of history.

WWI East Africa: Belgians at Tabora (1916)

For our last game of the year, Anton turned up and gave us a Christmas treat: Tabora. This is one of those obscure corners of history it is such a joy to explore.

The background is that the Allies were trying to eliminate the little German colonial army in German East Africa (now Tanzania). The main attack was by a British Empire force pushing south from Kenya, but an important supporting attack was provided by a Belgian force coming from the Congo. Two Belgian columns totalling some 10,000 men converged on Major-General Wahle's 5,000 Schutztruppen and askaris at Tabora, on the east-west railway line connecting Lake Tanganyika to Dar-es-Salaam. After several days' fighting on successive defensive lines, punctuated by some aggressive counterattacks, Wahle finally abandoned Tabora and marched away to the southeast.

The game was a playtest of Anton's draft scenario, which will probably be included in a forthcoming scenario book, Bloody Big Battles in AFRICA!. (See also his previous WWI African excursion, Otavi.)  We anticipated it would need some tweaks, and so it proved. We spent half an hour or so on an initial false start that confirmed a couple of the tweaks we'd considered were indeed necessary. We quickly reset and fought the whole game through to a very satisfactory conclusion in under 90 minutes. 15 captioned photos illustrate the course of the action, followed by some Reflections at the end.

This is just to orient you before the table gets cluttered with miombo woodlands and troops. Top edge is north. The east-west railway bisects the table. Tabora nestles among rolling hills at the junction of the railway and the road running south. The village north of it with the fieldworks around it is Itaga. Belgians will arrive on the west edge around Usoke station and on the north edge above Itaga. White counters mark the objective locations: Tabora itself, Itaga, Lulanguru (the first station west of Tabora) and the hill commanding the road.

Now we add some bush. This is just for scenic effect rather than defining particular wooded areas. The ground scale is large - 6km per 12", so the 5'x4' table is 30x24km. Consequently, between that and the frequent woods, LOS is limited to 6" (artillery can fire indirect out to 12" at half effect) and infantry are treated as armed with Repeating Carbines (RC) rather than Repeating Rifles (RR).

Note the green counters marking off the SE grid square. This is the German escape zone, of which more later.

The troops arrive. This was the abortive first go, so doesn't exactly match the positions for the definitive second attempt, but it gives the right general picture. Belgians are on the browner bases, Germans on the greener ones. Colonel Frederik-Valdemar Olsen's 'Brigade Sud' has arrived following the railway line from the west, while Colonel Philippe Molitor's 'Brigade Nord' is moving to pin and outflank the main German defenders entrenched in Itaga. Smaller German forces are screening Lulanguru and there is a reserve in Tabora.

The game proper. Troop scale is about 250 men per base, so these units are battalions of ~1,000-1,250 men each. I took command of Olsen's force. I was opposed by Crispin, who decided not to bother with a forward delaying force but concentrated around Lulanguru, committing the Tabora reserve as well, to set up a solid defensive line. I started by feinting towards his southern flank ...

... but then tried to work around the northern flank instead. This would have worked better if my movement dice had been kinder. Having the main outflanking battalion stall entirely wasn't helpful.

Meanwhile, Anton was attempting something similar with Brigade Nord, seeking to work around Dave T's left flank towards Tabora, as well as taking Itaga itself. Empty trenches outside Itaga show where some of Dave's askaris fell, but top right of pic is his audacious right-flanking counterattack. This significantly delayed a couple of Anton's battalions.

Olsen tries to galvanise his attack on Lulanguru. The German defenders are bolstered by a naval gun on a railway carriage.

Belgian Force Publique infantry are actually my Balkan Wars Serbs (Irregular Miniatures 6mm figures). Germans are Anton's Boer War boers (Irregular again). The railway gun is my conversion: an Irregular flat car with some Peter Pig 1/600 coastal artillery. Railway sections also Irregular.

Turn 6 of 8. Crispin's rearguard hangs on in Lulanguru, but his left wing is retiring towards the escape zone. This is important as the Germans can earn one or two Objectives by retreating one or two units off the SE corner on Turn 8, but may not enter the SE 12" grid square before Turn 7.

Anton finally sees off Dave's counterattack and takes Itaga. However, some Schutztruppen still hang on in their position above Itaga, with artillery support. Can Anton reach the objectives further south?

Like Crispin, Dave too has withdrawn a battalion towards the escape zone. Here we see the German commander, Major General Kurt Wahle, pointing out the green escape zone boundary marker to his loyal men. Sandbags by Irregular Miniatures. Veteran cardboard sabot base handcrafted by me 15 years ago and shows it.

Belgian Turn 7. My troops have suffered heavily (two battalions with black smoke on them are Spent), but we have stymied Crispin's attempt to escape (his withdrawing battalion centre right is Disrupted [white smoke] and can't move fast enough) and we are in range to capture both Lulanguru and the hill objective if we're lucky.

Also on Turn 7, Anton presses down from the north past Itaga to threaten Tabora. Not many Germans stand in his way now.

Turn 8. Crispin has judiciously withdrawn his battalion from Lulanguru to secure the hill (line of communications objective), leaving just a machinegun detachment to hold Lulanguru. One of my spent battalions gamely assaults the MGs but will perish in the attempt. The other balks and refuses to advance. My largest battalion is fresh and descends on the railway gun, hoping to exploit onto the hill, but will be repelled by German fire.

Anton seizes Tabora on the last turn, but it will not be enough.

Dave needed 7+ for this battalion to get a full move and escape. He rolled 6. Thanks to the +1 for Wahle's presence, that was enough, so he earned an Objective

The Germans needed to hold two Objectives for a draw or 3+ for a win. As one German unit had escaped and I'd failed to take either Lulanguru or the LOC hill, victory went to the Kaiser's valiant troops.

Reflections:

Fighting withdrawals make for fun games! Obviously, they oblige a defender to move, rather than just sitting and shooting. That's more interesting for all concerned than a simple attack-defence. Good examples are Beaumont (FPW 1870) and 2nd Vac (Hungary 1849). Tabora gave Dave and Crispin tricky decisions to make about how to time their escape. Anton's rule that effectively required units to make two successful movement rolls in succession to escape helped to build the suspense at the end.

What a quick, clean game. Low unit numbers (8 Belgian infantry units vs 7 German on a 5'x4') make the turns pass quickly. Low troop density plus the LOS limit meant plenty of room for maneuver without being pinned down and decimated (though WWI firepower still made frontal assaults a daunting prospect). And Anton's gift for scenario structure made it a nice tactical challenge.

6mm is great for proxies! Not every wargamer has a Belgian or German colonial army for WW1. Certainly I don't, but it was easy enough to put some plausible proxies in blue and khaki on the table. As Dave commented, it might have been a bit harder if my collection was all 15s or 28s. (You could probably still get away with it in 10mm.)

And finally: Merry Christmas! And thank you for your attention during what, for me, has been another great year of great games with great friends. I hope 2024 has treated you kindly as well (and that you've enjoyed my pontifications on this blog). Here's to more of the same in 2025!

BBB = busy, busy, busy!

It's been a wonderfully busy few weeks in BBB world. Lots to tell you about, so this post will try to summarize it all briefly. In short: the Bash Day convention in May; forthcoming BBB scenario books; and recent games set in diverse conflicts ranging from Egypt in 1801 via Spain in 1813, the American Civil War, WWI in Africa, to WWII in East Africa - all using BBB!

Bash Day is approaching!

The next Bloody Big Battles convention, Bash Day V, will be held on Sunday 19 May at Battlefield Hobbies, Daventry. See full details in the previous BBBBlog post here.

New BBB scenario books

The next BBB scenario book will be "Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles!" (NBBB). See here for the table of contents. NBBB is with the publisher now. Can't tell you a publication date but hopefully soon.

In an advanced stage of playtesting is "Bloody Big Battles in Africa!" (BBBA). A nice companion to Mark Smith's excellent "Bloody Big Battles in India!" (BBBI), this will be a collaboration between Mark and Anton van Dellen. About half of it will be Anton's fine scenarios for the 2nd Boer War; the French campaign in Egypt (1798-1801) will also feature; the rest will be assorted major colonial battles in Africa such as Omdurman, Khartoum, Adowa, etc.

Further down the track: probably a Napoleonic volume of Peninsular War scenarios; then a magnum opus of American Civil War battles.

The rest of this post is five very brief summaries of recent games.

Alexandria (Egypt 1801)

One of Mark's scenarios for the Africa collection. (See "Colin the Wargamer" blog for nice full reports of the two preceding battles, Aboukir and Mandara.)

French assault columns march on from bottom of pic. British march columns are arriving from top of pic to form a line between the Roman ruins (centre left) along the central ridge to the redoubts on the Alexandria canal. British warships will sail the sea top left while their gunboats ply the bay top right.

This produced an absolute ding-dong scrap. The French converged on the centre/right of the British line at the righthand end of the ridge and made a big dent in it. The British second line arrived, hurled our impudent columns back, then pressed its advantage. The British right marched across to attack our left flank as well. Despite heavy losses, the French veterans rallied to the assault once more, their cavalry to the fore. French left and British right fought themselves to mutual exhaustion. In the centre, a last desperate charge forced the British defenders off the vital high ground and they could not muster the strength to contest it. All jolly exciting!

The best reason for doing the French campaign in Egypt: camels! The French dromedary corps, which spent the game skirmishing in the dry lakebed on the right to threaten the supplies in the British camp.

Vitoria (1813)

This clash, the biggest battle of the Peninsular War, is a tricky battle to design a scenario for. I wrote one for Sam Mustafa's Grande Armée rules about 20 years ago and it wasn't a great success. The problem was I made it too easy for the French to concentrate against the separate Allied columns and defeat them in detail. Mark's BBB scenario doesn't make that mistake and produced a tense and close game.

I had command of Hill's column, seen here arriving from the southwest. Gazan's men await around Subijana, astride the road that is the French axis of retreat.

More British arrive on the left of Hill's vanguard. The other major British columns arrive beyond the top left corner of pic. It took us a long time for those to force their way across the river and menace the French line of retreat. Hill's force did largely destroy the French rearguard in front of it, but we weren't quite able to defeat the French quickly enough to claim a victory in game terms. Splendid good fun regardless of the result.

Champion Hill (1863)

The largest battle of Grant's Vicksburg campaign in the American Civil War. His victory here resulted in Pemberton's Confederate Army of Mississippi being bottled up in Vicksburg, where it surrendered a couple of months later.

Another of Crispin's growing collection of custom battlemats, making it super-easy to roll out a game at the club on a Monday night. The game started with Rebs trying to hold Champion Hill (top left) to cover the main road that runs to bottom edge of pic. White counters indicate objective locations (the hill, the bridge, the road exit). More Rebs screen the other road exit lower right; more Union come on from top edge to drive the Confederates back. In our game, the Union took the hill and the bridge but could not get any troops off at either road exit. However, the Confederates suffered so many casualties in preventing the Union pursuit that it was a Union victory.

Otavi (1915)

Anton treated us to something very different - a Bloody Small Battle, still using BBB (with minor mods), set in German Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia) in WWI. Perhaps 3,000 German Schutztruppen were attempting to fend off or, failing that, evade considerably more South African troops (mainly mounted infantry).

An austere, arid battlefield, looking north. Ignore the troops on the left - these have just got out of the box and are not yet deployed. Half the South African forces arrive from the bottom edge. The rest arrive in two flanking columns from the top corners halfway through the game. The Germans start with a third of their force in a screening position at Otavi (centre left), the rest around Tsumeh (top centre).

This was an unusual game in that the defender had three distinctly different ways to try to win the game. One was by holding Otavi. (This was important because the South Africans had marched a long way from any other source of water. If they failed to capture it by end of Turn 4, a significant part of their force would have to turn back.) Another was by holding Tsumeh. (They could entrench there and hope to hold on against South Africans at the end of long supply lines.) A third was by escaping off the top edge (an option they could not resort to until the last two turns of the game when they realised they risked being trapped).

We effectively played this two and a half times. First game was a really close draw. SA tried an enveloping move, infantry taking Otavi while cavalry raced up the right to attack Tsumeh. The Germans fed a unit forward to reinforce Otavi, which proved enough to prevent it falling until T5. The thus reduced SA just about managed to wipe out the Germans at the end but could not quite take the last objective in time to win.

Second game, the Germans got crushed. SA concentrated on Otavi from the start and rolled lethal dice. Germans in Tsumeh then opted to bolt off the north edge but were stymied by dire movement dice. Easy SA win.

Third game, we just experimented with how it would go if the Germans simply committed to escape from the start (albeit still not allowed to leave before T7). The arrival of the flanking columns still made it really difficult and they didn't quite get enough troops off to claim a German win.

Really interesting scenario geometry which posed tricky problems for both sides and could be replayed again and again and turn out in multiple different ways. Anton really has a gift for scenario design.

Gallabat-Metemma (1940)

Crispin's turn to get creative and write an unusual scenario for us. This time it was set in East Africa in WWII. Historically, a tiny Italian incursion from Eritrea into the Sudan provoked a counterattack by a mostly Indian brigade under the man who would later become famous as commander of the 'Forgotten Fourteenth' Army in Burma: Bill Slim.

View from behind my command: the 10th Baluchi battalion (the three companies lower left of pic). Top left is the town of Metemma, with Gallabat village and fort next to it across the river that is the border between Eritrea and Sudan. Difficult country to manoeuvre across, with big patches of boulder-strewn elephant grass in between the steep hills. Disturbed patches of pinkish soil centre of pic betray the presence of an Italian minefield. Three Italian battalions have yet to be deployed in the fort and BUAs. 3rd Bn Royal Garwhal Rifles is astride the road, followed by our mighty armoured fist (a dozen A9s and Mk VIs), covered by 28 FRRA's 18-pdrs. A third battalion (1st Essex) will arrive from the lower right, as will the 4.5" howitzers of 7/66 RA.

Crispin had been inspired by a magazine article to create these armies and terrain specially. He obviously had to come up with a couple of rule mods to accommodate tanks, minefields and bombers (both sides launched air strikes). These worked fine and most of the tanks were taken out by mines and boulders in a very historical manner. Our attack with three battalions against an equal-sized force that was dug-in had as tough a job as you'd expect. Our artillery advantage and superior quality helped to even things. We managed to get into Gallabat village. Given more time, we might have defeated the Italians, but when the turn limit ran out we had not taken enough objectives to avoid defeat in game terms.

It was an entertaining game that did a good job of recreating the action and had a distinctive flavour. Rule mods and victory conditions will no doubt be tweaked but were pretty close for a first playtest. This and the four very different games above demonstrate how a single ruleset can serve to recreate a huge range of wars and give us a different flavour of fun every week - no wonder BBB has established itself as our regular fare for the last 15 years!

Raid on Suez (1915)

I only get to see my mate Anton about twice a year. When we do meet up, it is usually to fight one of the outstanding Boer War scenarios he's been very gradually compiling. With Anton, it's definitely a case of quality rather than quantity.

Since the New Year, though, he's had an uncharacteristic flurry of activity and bombarded me with several scenarios from diverse corners of history. There is another Boer War scenario in his ready-for-testing queue (Diamond Hill), but the one that took to the table this week was some early WWI action: the Ottoman raid on Suez in 1915.

 

 A lot of desert to cross! Ottomans arrive from the right,

approaching the Suez Canal left of picture.

(6mm figures from Irregular Miniatures - WWII Italians proxying for the Turks;

WWI Brits painted as Balkan Wars Greeks return to Imperial service.)

The history: an Ottoman force of some 13,000 men marched from Beersheba to the Suez Canal - about 150 miles. The Canal was guarded by 30,000 or so British Empire troops, so there was never any question of the Ottomans holding what they took. The aim was presumably more to stir up revolt against the British in Egypt. Still, with the advantage of choosing their point of attack, even though their approach march was detected, the Ottomans were able to achieve sufficient brief local superiority to get a few hundred men across. However, when Imperial reinforcements came up, the feeble Ottoman toeholds were soon eliminated. The raiders retired having suffered heavy losses.

Our game of it surprised everyone. Garry and Bruce arrived first, read the scenario, and decided the Turks had no chance so they'd play the British. David B and Dave W then turned up and fatalistically accepted their role as the doomed Ottomans. The first couple of turns confirmed everyone's prejudices as the Turks and their Arab irregulars struggled across the open ground being mown down by the intense fire from entrenched Indian troops with magazine rifles, artillery and gunboats.

Yet as the Turks doggedly pressed closer to the trenches and brought their own artillery into play, they began suppressing enough of the British fire to make it less lethal. Eventually the Ottomans managed to storm not one but two of the four British outposts on the east bank of the Canal. British reinforcements arrived: Rajputs, Australians and a couple more gunboats. The northern Ottoman force (mostly Arabs) was virtually wiped out, but its artillery deterred the Aussies from retaking Ismailia Ferry Post. In the south, the Ottoman 10th Division in the second wave had established a foothold across the Canal and could not be prized loose.

This was a remarkable turnaround in fortunes, and a result which had seemed extremely unlikely for most of the game. Hard to say whether it was down to dice or tactics (I was only watching the northern half of the table), but it was certainly entertaining. This scenario will be rolled out again, for sure.

Scenario is in the files of the BBB group on groups.io for anyone interested.