The Mahdi Zooms in

As our Marengo campaign hasn't produced any battles yet I set up Colonial battle as further Zoom training.  Dale (in Canberra) commanded an Anglo-Egyptian force v. Mark (in Lenah Valley) as the mad Mahdi.  A few others dropped in to observe for all or part of the game. 
The Mahdis outnumber the Anglo-E's by over 2 to 1, but the latter have breach loading rifles while the Mahdists have spears, swords, bows, javelins & the odd obsolete musket.

The British have to take the Oasis or die of thirst.  Mahdi infantry block their path while Mahdi cavalry attack their right flank.  The Brits & Egyptians have deployed facing front & right as the Mahdi's men swarm forward.

The first wave of Mahdist cavalry was pretty well shattered by cannon, gatling & rifle fire plus countercharges by the Brit cavalry.  Their only success was to force one Brit cavalry unit to fall abck.

The second wave of Madist cavalry took out the cannon, but otherwise followed the fate of the first wave.  On the far flank the Madhi's infantry is learning about modern firepower.  

The Mahdist infantry on the far flank has some success against the Egyptians at the end of the line, but otherwise the Brits fended off the charges & sent the Madhi's off the find their virgins.

The Mahdist cavalry, right flank infantry & centre infantry have all broken.  Their left flank infantry has not been engaged but has to withdraw under the army break test.

The battle looked very one sided, but maybe the Mahdi just did it all wrong.  He could have split his cavalry so the Brits were attacked from both sides.  He could have waited for them to advance to expose their flanks.  He could have avoiding have a whole division not contribute.

The last shot shows our Zoom set up.  A tablet on tripod giving a fixed view from the west end. An old smartphone on a stand (just on edge of pic) giving a fixed view from east end.  Both Chris & I have a smartphone (mine on a mini-tripod in shot) to provide close ups on demand for their commanders (including shots of the dice being thrown).  The remote players can either have a gallery view of all 4 cameras, or make any one full screen.  There are dangers of feed back having multiple devices in the same room, but we only had audio on the two tabletop cameras & with social distancing keeping them on opposite sides of the table the worst we got was a bit of echo & everyone good reasonable sound.  Allied remote players can also communicate secretly either by using Zoom Chat or a separate phone link.