​THE BATTLE OF TANGA 1914
​By Legion Wargames
 
Background
The Battle of Tanga, sometimes also known as the Battle of the Bees, was the unsuccessful attack by the British Indian Expeditionary Force "B" under Major General A.E. Aitken to capture German East Africa during the First World War in concert with the invasion Force "C" near Longido on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. It was the first major event of the war in Eastern Africa and saw the British defeated by a significantly smaller force of German Askaris and colonial volunteers under Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Introduction
During the Cold War a ruthless conflict was waged on the Angolan border between the South African Defence Force and communist insurgents. Border War is a solitaire game by Decision Games that puts you in the middle of the fighting as commander of a South African battlegroup based on the frontier.

Throughout the Cold War hi-tech mechanized armies faced each other across frontiers. I really like this game because it recreates a war in which this high-tech military technology was actually used by both sides in real battles!

MIKE’S LOG

Mission Briefing
The Congo, 1964. It’s a ‘Race for the Wreckage!’. Two pilots of a fixed-wing spy plane have gone down whilst flying on a northern flight path to investigate Paulis, rumoured to be a Cuban base. These two pilots must be recovered. The plan is to follow the flight path by land. The route will follow possible crash sites at Albertville on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, then inland to Kindu, Stanleyville and finally Paulis.  The Task Force assembled for this mission at Elizabethville, the Merc (mercenary) Base, consists of:

Leader Mike (command  & signal)
1 Armoured Car Section (recon)
2 Commando Platoons (transported in jeeps)
1 Heavy Weapon Platoon (heavy weapons mounted on half tracks)
1 Sapper Section (combat engineers)
1 Supply Column  (various logistical vehicles)
1 Fixed-wing Air Strike (on-call air power)

“Mein Gott, dieser ist hölle! “.

Inspired by my joining of a 1942 German Fallschirmjägers Squad re-enactment unit, I bought Field Commander Rommel from dvg.com. I played the 1940 Ghost Division Campaign 7 times in November, 4 times in December and 3 times in January and was defeated each time! This is the first solo boardgame I have not managed to be victorious in.

I decided to buy Frontline D-Day from dvg.com because I needed a solitaire game I could take with me on camping trips and presumed a card-based system would be ideal. On setting the game up and playing a couple of solitaire scenarios, I was disappointed to find that the set-up was cumbersome and took up a lot of space so wasn’t a game to be played outdoors. I streamlined the system, but though this was effective, it took away a lot of the visual beauty of the game.  Finally I gave up and decided to play a standard campaign, though I am keeping my modifications to the Morale counters. I chose U.K. Infantry for the campaign.