Back to the Future with Colonial Gaming

Fan's of Osprey's war-game rules will recognise the name Daniel Mersey as the author of such excellent titles as Dux Bellorum and Lion Rampant as well as the upcoming Dragon Rampant .

On his blog over the weekend, Daniel laid out his very impressive writing schedule for the next year.  Dragon Rampant has a lot of people getting very excited (and so they should be I think) but what really caught my eye was The Men Who Would Be Kings.  Planned for an August release, it will be a colonial 'big skirmish' game using the Lion Rampant engine with some modifications for gunpowder weapons.

Not the real cover - a mockup by the ever amusing (and talented) Dalauppror 

You can follow posts about this game at the author's blog here

'So What?' I hear you ask.  Well truth be told I used to be a bit of a colonial gaming affectionado.  Me and the lads used to do a mean bit of Zulu War gaming pretty frequently back in the day.  That day was around 25 years ago now, but I do have my complete collection of 15mm Brits and Zulus and other odds and sods.*** So while the game looks geared toward units of 28mm figures (and there are some nice plastic options there) as long as you can mark off individual casualties, 15mm should work fine.  Could it be that all I have to do is dust off my exciting collection to play a new game without having to expend vast sums of money and spend hours of painting? That will never catch on...  In any event it might reawaken an old flame.

So still a year to go but I'll be watching out for this with interest.  
And its not like I don't have any other gaming diversions on the go in the meantime...

*** However, I do fear for their condition.  In the more than two decades since their last love, they have been deep storage three times and moved more than a dozen times in the same box.  I did consider selling them off several times, but resisted.  Lots of great memories in those figs after my friends and I played an ongoing cooperative campaign.  We each had a character Officer figure and commanded British/Allied units with the Zulus on 'auto' style reaction rules, painted medals on chaps who did particularly well etc.  I recall that I commanded the Naval Brigade (include a fine Gatling gun) as Commander Hornblower!