Organising the Zulus...

I've decided to start proceedings that I will try David Bickley's Washing The Spears rules as they seem appropriately old school but also contain mechanisms for the Zulus to be run by reaction tables with the player(s) commanding the Imperial troops. Accordingly all miniatures will be based in elements rather than individually.

For the Zulus I have decided to base the majority on 80x40mm bases with probably two elements per regiment on 40x40's. Having played around with the base sizes and some unpainted miniatures, five per 80x40 base seems the ideal, although I anticipate there may be some flexibility in odd instances.

So having purchased 144 married Zulus and 144 unmarried ones, this gives 4.8 regiments of each! A quick bit of maths showed that I could actually raise eight 30 figure regiments and two 24 figure regiments so I am going to work along those lines to start with...

Next I've done some research as to what Zulu regiments fought where during the Anglo-Zulu War. As I am not particularly interested in re-fighting the two big battles (Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift) wanting a more generic approach inspired by some of the smaller actions I have decided to raise the following:

Married: IsAngqu (30). uThulwana (30), iMbube (30), inDlondlo (30) and uDhloko (24)

Unmarried: uMbonambi (30), uNokhenke (30), iNdluyengwe (30), umCijo (30) and InGobamakhosi (24).

Arguably some regiments should be larger and some smaller, but I am trying to be practical from a tabletop point of view, with a thirty figure regiment having a 48cm width when in line.

Zulus charging (The Graphic, 2nd August 1879)