Blast from the past: Congo

 Last week I dusted off a long neglected set of rules and figures for a game of Congo.  I had been about to write that I last played this a couple of years ago but when I checked I discovered it was actually waaay back in 2016... how did that happen!!?

Congo is/was a ruleset from Studio Tomahawk who also publish Muskets & Tomahawks and Saga.  When Congo was 1st published it generated a lot of interest and I had a couple of fun games but it then languished, unloved, in the loft.  I recently acquired some jungle terrain pieces at a very good price and this spurred me into digging out the rules and figures.  It's out of print now and, it seems, pretty tricky to track down.  Studio Tomahawk's other games are very successful so it's curious that this one seemed to burn brightly and then fail.  I guess it's maybe too niche a setting.

Action and Totem cards

There are some old posts about it here and here which give a bit of an explanation of the mechanics but, in a nutshell it's card activated with players selecting 3 cards from a hand of 7.  These determine initiative and actions.  You also acquire Totem cards each turn which give a range of bonuses.  Units use a range of dice to reflect quality, rolling from a D6 to D10 with 5's succeeding.  

Units acquire stress tokens which limit their actions and ultimately can cause them to flee if they acquire too many. A nice touch is that there are different types of stress token (drawn randomly) which affect melee, movement or shooting. Black powder weapons also cause a stress token even if they don't hit... all the smoke and bangs are intimidating for the natives. Units can also inflict terror attacks which cause more stress (the drums... the drums!!!)

The game is pretty fast-paced and very pulpy in it's approach to Darkest Africa... it's more "Carry on up the Jungle" than " Heart of Darkness".  As my son pointed out, no-one needs to accurately game the Belgian Congo!! The game comes with 8 pre-planned scenarios, nicely presented as newspaper articles... we played #1 which is the most straightforward.

In this scenario the evil explorers (played by Anthony) were making off with a valuable looted treasure with my African Kingdom warriors in hot pursuit.  The explorers pick up max points for escaping with the treasure and some minor VPs for wiping out units.  My objectives were the reverse but I could also pick up some points by exploring the huts where the explorers start to acquire more loot (although this never happened as I was too intent in going after the main prize.  

The huts are paper models from Peter's Paperboys

There was a frantic chase across the board with a final brave attempt by my Fanatical Warriors (who were pretty bloodthirsty) to wipe out the explorers.  Anthony played the game in true colonial style by sacrificing his natives and Askaris to protect the European explorers!  In the end the explorers were wiped out but the expedition leader slipped off table with the treasure safely tucked in his pocket.  I'm pretty sure Indiana Jones wouldn't have sacrificed his colleagues quite so ruthlessly!!

It's a fun game that neatly captures the pulpy feel of the setting.  There are quite a few 'special' rules for different units and scenarios which inevitably got forgotten although I'm not sure they would have had a huge impact on the outcome. It's also a game that relies on lots of on-table markers which isn't everyone's cup of tea. I really like the game but I suspect it's one that will only get an occasional outing... hopefully more than once every 9 years though!