German East Africa

Too many games, too many unpainted minis but eventually found my way back to some Blood & Valor. Today we played the river crossing scenario from the End of Empires supplement. 200 points French vs a Schutztruppe.  The Germans have to cross the river via the bridge or a ford and have two unengaged, unshaken units in the defenders half at the end of turn eight.

Despite excellent artillery support, first rate shooting and the undaunted courage of the Askari, the Germans couldn’t quite shift the French

Firelock Games hosted an eight player game at GenCon this year.  The aliens were represented by two French armies, one American army and one Russian army. The Central powers had three German armies and one Ottoman army. Armies averaged their initiative pool and then bid collectively for their side. The win condition was to control two of the three objectives at the end of any turn.

My Schutztruppe faced off against the Russians but everyone took fire from everyone else. It was a very much a back and forth affair all day but the Central powers won the day by claiming two objectives. My Russian counterpart pretty much got shot off the objective multiple times.

Here’s some in game photos.

The true, and bizarre, story on the origins of The African Queen.

https://youtu.be/i5cp-QFzfxU

At the end of 1915 up to July of 1916 there were several naval battles between the  British and German navies on the waters of Lake Tanganyika. One rather eccentric British naval officer took two small gun boats from South Africa and carried them overland and through the jungle to reassemble them on Lake Tanganykia. The series of battles served as the basis of a book written by CS Forester

Forester wrote a number of novels  about naval battles that later became movies. Several featured his most well known character, Horatio Hornblower. One of his lesser well known books, The Good Sheppard, became the movie Greyhound starring Tom Hanks.

But the subject of today’s entry was his novel, The African Queen.

In 1951, director John Houston decided to turn the book into a movie and film it on location. While scouting locations he came across the Steam Launch (S/L) Livingstone. He renamed it The African Queen and it was one of two boats used in the film. S/L Livingstone was built in 1912 and served with the British East Africa Railway.   It was still active until the late 1960s. It eventually found its way to the US and remains afloat as a tourist attraction in Florida. You can read more about her here:

http://africanqueenflkeys.com/history.html

I plan on using the boat as an objective or terrain piece. Made of metal and resin, it’s rough and is going to need a lot of cleanup.

With two of the three scientists in German hands, the quinine formula is obtained, German victory. Heia Safari!

The three objectives are the scientist figures.  One each in the building, the termite mound and the jungle. The building follows the standard rules for buildings. The termite mound counts as hard cover and the jungle as soft cover.