The Mungo Mah Lobeh Congo Campaign - Background

Campaign Journal compiled by Alan, of Tring Wargames Club

As many wargamers will already be aware, Studio Tomahawk’s Congo rules have been with us for a number of years now, and provide a mechanism for skirmish gaming in nineteenth century Darkest Africa, in the narrative style.

The published Mungo Mah Lobeh campaign booklet traces the exploits of a real-life adventurer – specifically, the experiences of Mary Kingsley’s second African expedition, in what is now the northern Congo, Guinea and Cameroon during 1894-5.

Martin and Alan, of Tring Wargames Club, have been wanting to play this campaign for some time, but lack of time and a preoccupation with other wargaming projects has made it impossible until recently.

This campaign consists of six adventures (i.e. tabletop games) between two Congo factions, followed by an endgame phase, to determine the overall winner. It is nominally written for the “White Men’s Expedition” and “Forest Tribes” factions, and we chose to play it that way, although guidelines are also included for substituting the other “official” Congo factions if desired.

The two sides may receive reinforcements during the campaign, and can also see their lead characters develop their abilities. These leaders (figures for which are provided with the campaign pack) have very different overall objectives for the campaign, and each adventure has its own summary sheet which, among other things, defines adventure-specific objectives for each side within the campaign framework. In this way, the campaign becomes considerably more than a simple set of shoot-em-up encounters, and some thought will need to be given to the duration of the expedition, and to the acquiring and husbanding of resources that will be required for later in the campaign.

Travel time between the adventures is handled using a set of Encounter tables, which describe the pros and cons of various means of transport.

Terrain, Figures, and Animals

One of the attractions of Congo is that, once the initial outlay on the rule-set and the campaign supplement is made, games in general and specifically this campaign can be successfully played for relatively modest cost. Both sides start with a force of about 30-40 figures, depending on the faction and the initial reinforcements received, and it is unlikely that more than a dozen additional figures will be needed as the campaign progresses.

A lot of African terrain lends itself quite well to scratch-building, and as wargamers entering what we like to consider our late youth, we both took some pleasure in delving back into this almost-lost art within the wargames community. We found the results to be perfectly satisfactory for our purposes; hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves.

Incidentally, all the pictures included in this campaign journal have been shot while we played out the actual adventures, either with a camera-phone or with a compact 35mm digital camera. Most were then cropped in Photoshop, but there has been no additional manipulation of the images.

Almost all of the African terrain was scratch-built by either Martin or Alan; the huts were lengths cut from heavy cardboard tube, with conical roofs made from plastic topped with either straw or horse-hair white-glued into place. The jungle and long grass pieces were made from plastic plants obtained from a number of sources, then cut up and re-based.

A small number of minor terrain accessories were purchased specifically for the campaign, with a view to providing a little more “African” flavour. The termite mounds were purchased from Warlord Games, and some of the temple accessories are from the Monolith Designs and Wargames Foundry ranges.

The temple and architectural ruins which appear later in the campaign have been scratch-built from Alan’s “parts bin”, fleshed out with some acquisitions (a papier-mache spider, no less!) from a local art shop.

Other terrain pieces – tracks, hills, rivers, etc – were generic wargames terrain from a wide variety of sources. The tabletop mat was an “Arid Green” 6’x 4’ cloth mat from Tiny Wargames , folded to provide the 4’ x 3’ playing surface which is standard for Congo games.

All of the figures used for our campaign were a nominal 28mm scale, although there is no reason why other figure scales would not work equally well.

Martin’s “White Man’s Expedition” force consisted of the Northstar figure pack intended specifically for Congo, with the addition of some Victorian ladies in explorer garb.

Alan’s “Forest Tribes” force was a much more varied lot.  The Pygmies belonged to a former Tring club member now sadly no longer with us, and were probably originally from the Wargames Foundry range. The masked Warriors and Archers were from the EMP Games “Pineapple Tribe” range (the latter equipped with blowpipes in lieu of bows). The Bundukis were borrowed from his own Northstar “Sultanate of Zanzibar” faction, while some Bearers and the masked Sacred Warriors were from Wargames Foundry.

The campaign does call for some African animal figures. There is a wide selection of exquisite metal and resin models now on the market in almost any scale required, but as an alternative we found that many acceptable animals are also available much more cheaply and in a suitable scale, as children’s toys; in most cases, they are already painted or coloured.  Most of the animals in our campaign were therefore acquired by Martin rummaging through second-hand shops, while the few pieces we had difficulty finding in the right scale – specifically the hippo and the hyenas - were acquired and painted by Alan from Wargames Foundry’s African Animals range.

The snakes came from an accessories pack originally intended for Dungeons and Dragons; they were simply painted in attention-getting colour schemes, rather than attempting to represent any particular species.

The paddle-steamer model which appears in one adventure was a scratch-build which Alan has had lying around for many years; some crew members and deck equipment have been added from Sally 4^th’s Pulp Figures range. The smaller boat models – rowing and sailboats, dugout canoes, and a log raft – are from several different sources and were acquired by Alan over many years of wargames model-collecting.