As a few years ago we finished the campaign without the european v european games we'd intended we decided to pick this up and run it to a conclusion.
To get everybody back into the rules we decided to have a colonials versus Babbage game (one for each colonial power) before getting into the colonioal v colonial games.
First up was the Second Reich. Colonel Horst von Winkle was leading a punitive expedition into the tribal lands of the Baka'daqueue tribe who were being wooed by other colonials. Who needs a neo classical/ Aristotelian approach to persuasive discourse that leads to people being sympathetic to your cause when you can burn down their huts and kill their livestock!
Unfortunately, Von Winkle was saddled with his idiot nephew Captain Alphonse Von Winkle. The captain had clearly come bottom of every class at the military academy and only got a position due to family connections.
Horst put his idiot nephew in charge of the poorest quality native unit to hand and left him to explore the trees to the right of the track whilst he himself led the askari and schutztruppen into the village to fire the huts. Having no communication skills whatsoever the captain's unit milled around aimlessly until a native unit sprang from the trees and attacked them making them and the captain flee after two rounds of fighting. Fortunately, this had given the maxim HMG time to line up its sights and shoot most of the natives. Perhaps the captain did have a natural talent (as a decoy).
For their part the tribals were struggling to get motivated. Maybe this wasn't a prime part of their real estate. Maybe they didn't like the elder of this village. Whatever the reason the tribals mostly failed to appear and when they did most soon preferred to slink away after a brief showing.
Horst had fired all the huts before the Schutztruppen came under serious attack. Horst was inclined to then flee the village but some strange urging made him order the schutztruppen to instead try to fight. They were overrun.
With that Horst headed out of the village but now the tribals were appearing at the ford ready to block his escape.
Fortunately more lack of interest from the tribals allowed Horst the opportunity to escape though he sacrificed an askari unit and lost the HMG -his report will doubtless gloss over these facts and show him as a gallant victor with his idiot nephew bravely drawing the enemy away by fleeing,