Avernos' Rorke's Drift

Now for a bit of research, not everyone’s cup of tea but an area of the hobby I adore.

Depending on your source numbers for the Zulus are given anywhere from 3000 – 4500 made up of the Undi corps that was the reserve at Isandlwana earlier that day. It comprised of approximately a thousand from each of four amabutho. They were the reserve because they were mostly older men between their thirties and fourties, with the average age of the uThulwana reportedly as high as the fifties, and a young ibutho of unmarried men.

After hitting the books I had the names and the shield colours of the four amabutho present.

• uThulwana ‘Dust Raisers’ White shields
• inDlondlo ‘Poisonous Snakes’ Red and White shield
• iNdluyengwe ‘Leopard’s Lair’  Black shield, with one white spot
• uDloko ‘Savage’  Red shield, with one white spot

Using this information I came up with the statlines for my four in game units, the snipers were drawn from iNdluyengwe so use the same statline with better weapons. One of the nice things about TMWWBKs is that there are two values used relating to activations, the Leadership value of the leader and the unit’s discipline. As I said earlier in a regular game you roll randomly for the Leadership stat, and if he becomes a casualty all units in the game default to a value of eight. This means a unit can have terrible discipline and a good leader and act until they lose him, at which point they’re more likely to disobey or run. Or have a terrible leader who is carried by the units discipline.

Since I want to recycle the Zulus I decided to give each ibutho set numbers it also allowed me to vary the units based on their experience. With the younger unmarried Zulu being the least disciplined and the married oldest having the best leadership and discipline.The unmarried iNdluyengwe I gave the fierce rule letting them hit on 4+ rather than the usual 5+. Each one is easily identifiable because of their shield colours, although they don’t precisely match so the red and white shields and red with white dot don’t get confused.

This gave me my original five units for version 1 of the game, I’ve subsequently added two more units. A second group of unmarried with slightly better discipline and a younger unit of unmarried with lower leadership. The shields for these are red and white unmarried and black and white married. It gives me the transition from Black being the lowest troop, through red, to white being the best. The more white the better 🙂