One of my latest projects has been skirmish gaming in Modern Africa -- in particular, the period of The Congo's independence in the Early 1960s. I'd wanted to do this period of quite some time, but never found a set of rules that caught my fancy. I'd bought and read Peter Pig's popular "AK-47" rules, but thought the combat system was "ho-hum" to the extreme. Then, one night a friend of mine staged a game using the Sci-Fi/Fantasy skirmish rules, Heroscape. He'd raved about how it was a perfect kind of Universal Skirmish system. After playing it and enjoying it, I began to see its uses for Modern Africa. I thought it merged quite well with AK-47's rules for troop types, setup and background information.
So, began a process of melding the two rules sets together to create AK-47 Heroscape. Essentially, it is a man-to-man skirmish game with men organized into units. Each player will control 3-5 units, which could be as small as a single vehicle or 3 infantry, or as large as a dozen or more foot. The rules are easy to learn, taking perhaps 15 minutes to teach. Building a force for AK-47 Heroscape requires no more than a couple dozen miniatures -- we use 20mm scale, which allows us to tap into the 1/72 scale plastic models and even the Corgi die cast vehicles for inexpensive jeeps, trucks or armored cars. Three others in my regular gaming group have also gone out and built forces for Modern Africa, which gives a real potpourri of troops and factions to choose from for our battles.
Go to the Gallery to see pictures of my own Modern African forces.
