Asymmetric warfare is one of history's oldest problems, and one of the most compelling tactical puzzles a tabletop game can offer. It appears whenever two forces meet that do not share the same tactical vocabulary, when one side fights in rigid formations with centralised command and standardised weapons, and the other fights as dispersed individuals exploiting terrain, speed and local knowledge. The disciplined volley line is devastating in the open field; it becomes a liability in dense forest or broken highland. The massed charge that breaks a Redcoat square can be stopped cold by a single well-placed gun.
These encounters were not contests between equal and opposite systems. They were collisions between entirely different ways of making war. Aztec warriors trained to capture enemies alive for sacred ritual; Spanish rodeleros trained to kill efficiently in tight formation. Zulu impis used a perfected system of envelopment refined across generations of warfare against other Nguni peoples; British line infantry used the Martini-Henry rifle and the volley, weapons their opponents could not answer at range but could potentially overwhelm at close quarters. Lakota and Cheyenne horse warriors, among the finest cavalry the world has ever seen, could concentrate, strike and dissolve across hundreds of miles of plains; the US Army had telegraph, logistics and weight of numbers, but rarely knew where the enemy was until it was too late.
What makes asymmetric warfare so fascinating on the tabletop is that both sides have a genuine path to victory, which is rarer than it sounds. In most historical wargaming, superior technology and drill tend to win. Here, the question is not simply "who fires faster" but "does the disciplined side have time to bring its firepower to bear, or does the terrain, the pace of the attack, or a failed flank allow the irregular side to close the gap and turn the battle into a mêlée the formed troops cannot survive?"
These are not games about attrition. They are games about positioning, tempo, and the exploitation of the other side's tactical assumptions. The European commander must maintain cohesion, protect his flanks, and prevent the irregular force from dictating the terms of engagement. The irregular commander must choose his ground, strike at the moment of maximum disorder, and never let the enemy concentrate. Neither role is simple. Neither role is guaranteed.
WoFun Games has built seven collections that together span four centuries of this kind of warfare, from the causeways of Tenochtitlán in 1521 to the mountain passes of the North-West Frontier in the 1870s. Each collection captures a distinct theatre, a distinct set of combatants, and a distinct asymmetric puzzle. This article takes you through all seven.
Conquest and Contact: Spanish-Aztec War + The New World (1519–1600s)
The fall of the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521 is one of history's most extreme asymmetric encounters. Hernán Cortés arrived on the Mexican coast with roughly 600 men, 16 horses and a handful of small cannon. Against him stood an empire of millions, with a warrior aristocracy that had dominated Mesoamerica for two centuries. The outcome seems inevitable with hindsight. At the time it was anything but.
The Aztec military system was formidable and sophisticated. Elite warrior societies, the Eagle Warriors (Cuauhpilli) and Jaguar Warriors (Ocelopipiltin), earned their status through battlefield capture. Aztec warfare had evolved around the concept of the xochiyaoyotl, the flower war, in which taking high-value prisoners for ritual sacrifice was the measure of individual and institutional prestige. This shaped everything: the macuahuitl obsidian sword was designed to wound and disable rather than kill outright. It was a system optimised for war against other Mesoamerican peoples who shared its assumptions.
The Spanish did not share them. Steel armour resisted obsidian. Horses were unknown and initially terrifying. The harquebus, though slow to reload, fired at ranges no Aztec weapon could answer. And the smallpox that arrived with the Spanish killed at a scale no weapon could match. Cortés also proved a shrewd political operator, bringing tens of thousands of Tlaxcalan allies, enemies of the Aztec, into his coalition. The siege of Tenochtitlán fell not to Spanish firepower alone but to the total political collapse of the Triple Alliance.
Two collections for two scales of this encounter:
The Spanish-Aztec War (JP) collection, illustrated by Alicante artist José María Pujalte, is a tactical wargaming collection at 18mm and 28mm scale. The 28mm Full Pack contains 911 figures across 23 sprues covering the full spectrum of both armies: Aztec Eagle Warriors 1, Elite Troops, Jaguar Warriors (Ocelopipiltin), Lower-Class Warriors, Shaved Warriors (Quanchicqueh), Shooters 1 (armed with Tlahuitolli bow, Tematlatl sling and Atlatl spear-thrower), as well as Spanish Harquebusiers, Rodeleros, Cavalry and Commanders.
For a broader perspective on the entire contact era in the Americas, the New World (VB) collection, illustrated by Vyacheslav Batalov in his distinctive individual-figure skirmish style, encompasses Spanish Conquistadors, Aztec warriors, Mayan fighters, Inca troops and North American Native tribes, the full sweep of 16th-century New World conflict on a single shelf. Available as an 18mm Full Pack and a 28mm Full Pack.
Unit Spotlight: Jaguar Warriors (Ocelopipiltin): 48 figures at 28mm scale (96 at 18mm), rendered in their distinctive spotted jaguar suits and predator-head helmets. These elite warriors specialised in ambush and close-quarters combat, their armour and weapons designed to intimidate and disable, not kill. Deploying them correctly against formed Spanish infantry, choosing the moment when the harquebusiers are reloading or the cavalry is pinned, is the central asymmetric challenge the collection poses.
The Forest Wars: French and Indian War (1754–1763)
The North American theatre of the Seven Years' War offers something unique among the collections in this article: a conflict where both sides eventually went irregular. The French allied extensively with Native American nations from the beginning, adopting woodland tactics, dispersed movement, ambush from cover, raiding supply lines, that their regular European doctrine never anticipated. The British learned the lesson brutally when General Braddock marched his column in European formation through the Pennsylvania forest in 1755 and was ambushed by a Franco-Native force less than a quarter of his strength. Braddock died. Two-thirds of his force became casualties.
The British response was to adapt. Rogers' Rangers and colonial light infantry units began to fight as their enemies fought, moving through forest, using cover, ambushing rather than facing. This tactical evolution, European regulars absorbing irregular fighting methods, makes the French and Indian War the most complex of the asymmetric collections in terms of the choices it presents to both players. The question is not simply "European vs. indigenous" but "which commanders on which side have mastered the terrain, and which are still fighting by the old rules?"
The French and Indian War (VB) collection, illustrated by Vyacheslav Batalov in his individual skirmish style, covers British regulars, French colonial forces, and the Native American nations allied with both sides. The 18mm Full Pack contains 214 figurines across 6 sprues, with individual round bases (25mm diameter at 28mm scale, 15mm at 18mm) that reflect the collection's skirmish character.
Unit Spotlight: Great Plains Tribes Cavalry: Mounted Native warriors whose speed, horsemanship and ability to strike and withdraw define the asymmetric advantage of the indigenous side. These figures embody the tactical principle that runs through every collection in this article: the irregular force wins by choosing when and where the engagement happens, never by accepting the terms the European commander wants to impose.
The Plains Wars: American Indian Wars (1860s–1890s)
The Indian Wars of the American West are the asymmetric conflict that most clearly pits European tactical doctrine against its structural limits. The US Army of the 1860s–1890s was built to fight conventional war, fixed formations, artillery support, logistical trains. It was deployed against the nations of the Great Plains and the Southwest: the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Apache, peoples whose horse-warrior traditions had produced some of the most mobile and tactically sophisticated cavalry forces in the world.
The fundamental problem for the US Army was fixing a force that refused to be fixed. A Lakota or Cheyenne band could concentrate from hundreds of miles away, strike a column in overwhelming numbers, and be dispersed again before a relieving force arrived. The disaster at Little Bighorn in 1876, where Custer's 7th Cavalry was destroyed by a combined force of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho numbering several thousand warriors, was the most spectacular demonstration of what happened when a European-doctrine commander underestimated the speed and coordination of Plains warfare.
The US Army's advantages were cumulative rather than immediately decisive: more men, repeating rifles, telegraph communications, and the ability to campaign through winter, destroying the camps and food supplies the nations needed to survive. The wars ended through exhaustion, not battlefield destruction.
The American Indian Wars (PD) collection, illustrated by Peter Denis, contains both the Native American nations and the US Army, including an artillery regiment that represents the technological asymmetry the US side could bring to bear when terrain allowed. The 18mm Full Pack and 28mm Full Pack each contain 372 figures across 13 sprues, with 40×30mm bases at 28mm scale (30×20mm at 18mm), covering Native American infantry, cavalry, leaders and casualty markers alongside US cavalry, infantry and artillery.
Unit Spotlight: Native Americans Infantry 1: The core warriors of the Plains nations, the side that defines the collection's asymmetric logic. Their tactical dispersal, rapid movement and ability to concentrate and strike before an answer can be organised is the central problem the US Army player must solve. Getting this right, as a player on either side, is what the collection teaches.
Africa and the Redcoat: Colonial Wars (1879)
On 22 January 1879, within twelve hours of each other, the British Army suffered the worst defeat of its colonial era and one of its most celebrated small-unit victories, both in the same campaign, in the same part of Zululand.
At Isandlwana that morning, a Zulu impi of approximately 20,000 warriors enveloped a British column of around 1,800 men. The Zulu tactical system, impondo zankomo, the horns of the buffalo, was not improvised. It was a formalised doctrine of envelopment: a chest to engage and pin the enemy, two horns extending to encircle, a loins reserve to exploit any gap. Executed by experienced amabutho who had drilled this formation for years, it overwhelmed a British force whose defensive perimeter was too extended to maintain mutual fire support. Over 1,300 British and allied soldiers were killed.
That same afternoon at Rorke's Drift, 150 defenders of the 24th Regiment and the Army Hospital Corps held a fortified mission station against 3,000–4,000 warriors through the night. The Martini-Henry rifle, firing from behind mealie-bag barricades with interlocking fields of fire, proved devastating. The horns could not envelop a position with no open flanks. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded, the most ever for a single action in British military history.
These two battles, hours apart, illustrate the complete range of asymmetric outcomes: catastrophic European defeat and desperate European survival, determined entirely by ground, formation, and whether the defensive conditions favoured the volley line.
The Colonial Wars (PD) collection, illustrated by Peter Denis, recreates the Anglo-Zulu War at two scales. The 18mm Anglo-Zulu War Full Pack contains 1,148 figures across 18 sprues, including British Artillery, the 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards, 17th Lancers, Regular Mounted Infantry, Police 24 Frontier, Light Horse European Irregulars, and multiple Zulu amabutho distinguished by their historically accurate shield colours. The 28mm Anglo-Zulu War Full Pack provides the same 1,148 figures across 35 sprues at the larger scale, with 40×30mm bases. For players who want to extend their campaign beyond Zululand, the Dark Continent 18mm Pack covers the broader colonial warfare of the period.
Unit Spotlight: Zulu Warriors (Large Shields Black): The senior amabutho of the Zulu army, identifiable by their black large shields, historically a mark of older, more experienced regiments. These are the men who formed the chest of the buffalo at Isandlwana, the force that held the British line in place while the horns closed. Shield colour in the WoFun collection is not decorative: it identifies regiment, seniority, and the tactical role each unit played within the impondo zankomo formation.
India's Frontiers: Great Game + Maratha (1800s–1880s)
Two Indian collections, two very different expressions of asymmetric warfare.
The Maratha Wars (early 1800s) were Arthur Wellesley's crucible, the campaigns in India that shaped the general who would later face Napoleon at Waterloo. The Maratha Confederation was not an irregular force in any simple sense. It fielded trained regular infantry drilled by European officers, effective artillery, and capable cavalry. The asymmetry was structural and political rather than technological: a confederation of semi-independent chiefs whose ability to concentrate force against a unified British command was always compromised by the fractures between them. Wellesley exploited those fractures as much as he exploited firepower.
The Maratha (KC) collection, illustrated by historian and artist Darius Buraczewski as a private commission covering the Wellington in India period, contains 563 figures across 16 sprues in the 28mm Full Pack, covering both Maratha and British East India Company forces in the detail and scale the period deserves.
The Great Game (1865–1880) presents the North-West Frontier, the most intractable asymmetric problem British India ever faced. Afghan and Pashtun tribesmen combined superior local knowledge with long-range marksmanship that routinely outranged standard British infantry rifles, fighting in terrain where column formations were death traps and supply lines could be cut at will. No force could be brought to a decisive battle; no ground taken could be permanently held. Every mountain pass required its own campaign.
The iconic British response was the Highland regiments, troops whose own origins in broken upland terrain gave them an instinct for broken-ground fighting that the standard line battalion lacked. The Great Game (VB) collection, illustrated by Vyacheslav Batalov, is available as an 18mm Full Pack and a 28mm Full Pack, covering British regulars, mountain gun detachments, and Afghan irregular forces across the NW Frontier campaigns.
Unit Spotlight: Highlanders: 252 figures (43×43mm or 43×21mm bases) representing the regiments most associated with the North-West Frontier, soldiers whose fighting culture, bred in highland terrain not entirely unlike Afghanistan's, gave them a tactical edge in the close terrain of mountain warfare. On the tabletop, they represent the European force best suited to close the gap between regular doctrine and the reality of mountain asymmetric combat.
Playing Asymmetry: Four Principles at the Table
Across four centuries and seven collections, certain tactical truths recur regardless of the specific conflict.
Terrain determines the game before a figure is placed. Every asymmetric battle in this article was decided in large part by the ground on which it was fought. Isandlwana was an open plateau that allowed envelopment; Rorke's Drift was a fortified enclosure that prevented it. Braddock's Defeat happened in forest; a battle in the open field might have ended differently. Scenario setup, the placement of cover, the choice of objectives, the direction of approach, is as much a tactical decision as unit deployment.
Firepower has a range problem and a reload problem. The volley line is catastrophic at range and in the open. It is far less decisive in the moments between volleys, or when an irregular force has closed to the range where firearms can no longer be brought to bear before contact. The asymmetric battle always turns on whether the irregular side can survive the initial fire and reach the range advantage the disciplined side cannot counter.
Concentration versus dispersal. The European force must concentrate to deliver effective fire; the irregular force thrives dispersed, where it cannot be targeted effectively. These are fundamentally opposed tactical principles, and the game between them, can the European side force concentration on the irregular, can the irregular side prevent the European from concentrating, is the core of every collection here.
Asymmetric objectives produce asymmetric games. Irregular forces rarely win by destroying the enemy army. They win by making the campaign unsustainable, by denying objectives, protecting their own people, and imposing costs the European side cannot continue to absorb. Scenarios built around mission objectives rather than simple kill counts will produce far more historically authentic games across all seven collections than straight attrition play.
Choosing Your Conflict
Each of these seven collections offers a distinct experience at the table, and the right entry point depends on the kind of game you are looking for.
Spanish-Aztec War (JP) is the choice for players drawn to extreme cultural and tactical contrast, two completely different ways of making war, colliding at close quarters. The 28mm scale is ideal for players who want the full visual impact of the era.
New World (VB) suits players who want the broader sweep of New World contact-era conflict across multiple factions, Aztec, Mayan, Inca, Native American, in a skirmish format that rewards individual unit decision-making.
French and Indian War (VB) is the most tactically nuanced of the seven collections, offering the rare scenario where both sides can go irregular. Forest terrain scenarios, with ambush and counter-ambush mechanics, are where this collection finds its character.
American Indian Wars (PD) is best for players interested in mobile, wide-open terrain warfare, the pursuit and concentration problem that defined the Plains Wars, with cavalry on both sides and a dramatic speed differential between them.
Colonial Wars, Anglo-Zulu War (PD) is the largest collection in the group and the most scenario-rich. Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift are different tactical problems requiring different approaches from both sides, and the two-scale availability (18mm and 28mm) means you can match the collection to your preferred gaming footprint.
Great Game (VB) is the collection for players who want mountain skirmish warfare and the North-West Frontier atmosphere, small, intense engagements in broken terrain, with the logistical difficulty of sustaining operations as part of the strategic picture.
Maratha (KC) suits players who want the Indian subcontinent and the Wellington-era campaigns, with a higher degree of symmetry on the Maratha side than most collections here, a semi-regular opponent that requires a different kind of tactical response.
Four Centuries, Seven Theatres
From the lake-causeways of Tenochtitlán to the mountain passes of the Khyber, the collections covered here trace the full geographic and chronological range of asymmetric colonial warfare. The specific weapons change, obsidian, musket, rifle, Gatling gun, but the underlying dynamic does not. One side has discipline, formation and firepower. The other has terrain, speed and the ability to choose the terms of engagement. On the tabletop, as in history, the outcome is never certain. That is what makes these battles worth fighting.