Zulu Is Coming to Black Powder Epic Battles as Warlord Games Drops New Teaser

If you missed it over the weekend, Warlord Games dropped a teaser for their next Black Powder Epic Battles range, and it's one that Gerry may be very keen to see! The Zulu are coming

Zulu Black Powder: Epic Battles // Warlord Games

This coming Friday the 24th, Warlord are going to spill the beans, but based on the image below and some comments from the interweb, let's take a moment to speculate wildly about what we'll see in Zulu: Epic Battles.

First off, as we can see from the photograph, they have the defence of Rorke's Drift front and centre, which has sent the commentators into a frenzy, screaming blue murder at a lack of massed battles. Got to love the internet.

So I'll address this firstly by pointing out that the 2016 Black Powder Zulu! supplement also had Rorke's Drift on the cover; however, the book itself covered all of the Zulu War with six specific scenarios and a breakdown of the entire campaign. So just because the image is the Drift it doesn't mean that it will only be for that. Secondly, Warlord commented on someone belabouring the point that if they "hadn't only done Rorke's Drift, then we could have had all the Natal troops, police, rocket troops, cavalry etc" that they should check back this week.

Rorke's Drift //  Zulu: Epic Battles

The miniatures themselves are on the Epic Battles 60mm x 20mm bases, although the miniatures themselves look a bit bigger than what we've seen previously. I've seen people claiming these are 28mm for the publicity shots; they're clearly not. It may just be the way they're photographed; time will tell on that one. The Zulu look to be eight figures to a base, while the British are ranking in fours with some singles presumably for NCOs and officers. The sculpts look very tidy indeed and should be a whiz to paint up.

You may notice there are two types of terrain here as well; the store and the kraal are laser-cut MDF, which look spot on for the job in smaller scales. The mealie bag and box walls we can't be sure of; my guess would be resin. The 28mm version of the set, waaaaay way back in the day, came with the same mix of MDF buildings and resin bags and boxes. They could be plastic, mind you, which would be a great touch but may be too specific to get enough use out of the cost of tooling.

Finally, conjecture and rumourings: two interesting points have come out from the chat on the book of faces, and that is Zulu will have two boxes at launch. Rorke's Drift will contain 3000 Zulu and 100 British riflemen. I had a quick look at some of the other big boxes like the American Revolution, and it contains 2097 minis, so this doesn't seem outside the realms of possibility. Throw in the buildings and terrain pieces, and I can see it being a large "one-and-done" set for people who just want to play that scenario out.

The second set is supposedly Isandlwana. Currently, there is no information about this set at all, but my feeling is that this set will be smaller than the Drift, with no terrain but the plastics for both sides. Making it the ideal starter set, just branded with that name of the battle. I'm sure we'll find out more come this Friday and see what direction Warlord go with the Zulu Wars.