What's on your workbench?

[Buff Orpington]

The other war.

[Norman D. Landings]

Hate to quibble, but surely the defining point of the French patterns is that they originated at the factory, and had nowt to do with the unit organisation - making it entirely normal to have different patterns within one unit.

[grizzlymc]

The other war.

You mean the one they lost twice?

[Jeremy]

The start of Farsends.....

Test bases for iNdluyengwe and iNdhlondhlo regiments. Each Regiment will consist of four bases and both will be making an appearance at Rorkes Drift in a few weeks. I’m shite at taking photos.

[Count Belisarius]

Very nice. Look forward to seeing pics of them dying by the hundreds at the game...

[garyp]

Very nice indeed Jeremy. I represent a Zulu regiment with 3x4 base warbands and a unit of 9 skirmishers. Just sayin' . . . . .

[Jeremy]

Thanks Chaps. Hmmmm... Gary, I think you’re calling multiple units a regiment. I was referring to a single unit. I wasn’t going to do skirmishers. Just doesn’t feel ‘right’? Who knows. That may change after next weekend!

[garyp]

Given that a typical Zulu regiment had around 1500 men I decided to break them down a bit. My limited understanding of Zulu regimental organisation suggested that the smallest tactical unit was the Iviyo, which was 50-100 men. An ibutho was made up of a number of these and tended to form a 'horns of the buffalo' formation when attacking, with the chest screened by 1 or more Iviyo in extended order - sometimes these warriors were given firearms. So given that I wanted a regiment represented on about a 1:20 scale, 3 close order warbands screened by skirmishers seemed to look about right. For Rorke's Drift I probably won't use the skirmishers because the firearms were mostly sniping from the Oskaberg.

[Jeremy]

Thanks Gary. Makes sense. I suppose I should start referring to them as Impi. At this stage I can bring 8 bases of Zulus. There’s a small chance of another 4

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

My limited understanding of Zulu regimental organisation suggested that the smallest tactical unit was the Iviyo, which was 50-100 men.

Did they ever break away and form an Iviyo League?

Ah, I believe that's my coat lying in the gutter out there....