By Paul Comben
Designer: Godfrey Bailey, Geoff Noble
Publisher: Legion Wargames
Is there fun in total failure?
Some military ventures are simply wrong from the start. Everything about them is inauspicious and ill starred, with calamity and disaster simply awaiting their cue to show themselves to full effect.
Colenso, the subject of Legion Wargames Redvers’ Reverse, is about as good an example of this as you can get. A British army of over sixteen thousand men was meant to be lifting the siege of Ladysmith in the last days of 1899. In their way were several thousand Boers with German rifles, a small number of German-supplied and German manufactured artillery pieces, a winding river the British had not positively identified the fordable regions of, and a fair amount of high ground overlooking the British low ground.
