Go wild in the country...

I managed to drag Legatus along to Guildford this week for a game... it must be around a year since we last managed this!

This time we’d planned a game of In Her Majesty’s Name as he has been painting the Servants of Ra set and these match nicely against my Scotland Yard Squad.
 

I haven’t played this for some time and all my previous games had been set in an East End type setting using some warehouses and townhouses I’d built using the printable buildings from Stoelzels Structures [link].  When I got the box out of the loft earlier in the week I realised that these were actually crap!!  Not the fault of the printed material I hasten toadd, they’re really nicely done, but solely down to a bit of wear and tear and mainly my very poor construction skills!  When I mentioned this to my son he tactfully commented   “Yeah.. I’d always thought they were rubbish but didn’t like to say!!”... Cheers son!
 

A bit of head scratching ensued before I came up with scenario B... a trip to the country for the boys in blue.  The scenario presumed that the evil Egyptian cultists were hiding out in a remote country inn, using it as their headquarters for some kind of nefarious plan, and a police raid was in about to be launched on the unsuspecting Servants of Ra.

 

IHMN games are usually based on a 3’x3’ table so nice and compact: a few woods and hedgerows around the edge and a barn, pigsty and the Inn made up the terrain.  The cultists were skulking around the Inn amongst an assortment of boxes and barrels when the police arrived at the table edge, whistles blowing and shouting “You’re nicked sunshine, etc!”.  

It's alright...we'll be perfectly safe behind these crates....

There were also an assortment of Victorian townsfolk, taking in the country air and a refreshing pint and seeming oblivious to the strange men in robes and hoods milling about.   They moved randomly throughout the game although a few of the Gentlemen seemed strangely drawn to the scantily clad assassin!

 

The police split into 2 groups with one group heading for the Inn and taking cover in the woods, while the Sergeant led a squad round the back of the barn.  The Cultists formed a firing line with their handful of armed figures [most of them only have clubs] behind some crates while their leader, Akhenaton headed off to tackle the Sergeants squad.  The Chief Inspector coordinated the police firing which quickly took down most of the minor Servants of Ra and all was looking promising for the police.  

Special Branch take up position in the woods

 

At this point the other squad ran into Legatus’ secret weapon... a giant sword and shotgun wielding Nubian, who quickly dispatched the Sergeant with a blast from the gun!  Luckily Dr Watson was on hand to run over and apply some bandages and smelling salts and he was back on his feet next turn.... no sign of Sherlock though....

Baaaa.....

 

The revived Sergeant led a charge at the Nubian which descended into a mass brawl with police Constables and Cultists being drawn into the fray.  This carried on for several turns with no one gaining the upper hand until Akhenaton armed with an assortment of magical dooh dahs waded in... he’s very much the heavyweight of the Cultists with a magical sword, armour and a range of mind-bending spells that make him very hard to deal with.  He was also joined by the scantily clad assassin Zairah who is also pretty fearsome, very fast and armed with poisoned daggers.  Between them they began slicing their way through the police ranks.

Excuse me sir...do you have a licence for that sword...

 

That'll be a 'no' then...

 

At this point one of the townsfolk... a mild mannered little old lady... threw off her disguise to reveal herself to be none other that Sherlock Holmes himself, and threw her/himself  into the melee!

The game ended with a properly cinematic finish with all the bit part characters having been dispatched [and sadly Dr Watson] and a final duel between the Akhenaton and Zairah versus Holmes and the Chief Inspector.  Unfortunately the only real way to defeat the cultist leader is to gang up on him and by this point I’d lost all my PCs so didn’t really have much hope, and sure enough both of my remaining figures fell to the Servants of Ra.  I had one remaining Special Branch officer who survived by running off into the woods!
 

All in all a great game... the magical powers of the Chief Cultist mean he’s really hard to take down with mobbing him with figures and I couldn’t get enough people in place at the right time to do it.  Holmes is also tough but could only hold out for so long against the attacks before succumbing.

I used a couple of rules that are contained in the Heroes, Villains and Fiends supplement that came out at the end of last year.  If you’re a fan of IHMN this is a useful addition to the rules.  As well as a few additional Talents and abilities, there are a load of suggested stats for animals etc as well a wide range of new factions.  These include groups from Europe, the Americas [broadening out the scope for more Wild West based games], and Africa: the latter has a lot of potential to include wild Cannibals and brave Explorers and Jungle Lords of course.
 

A further supplement is due out later this year dealing with the Far East and Pacific.

 Many thanks to Stephen for an excellent game, even if the forces of Law and Order were vanquished!

On a completely unrelated note, last year my painting schedule was severely interrupted by the acquisition of a dog, Trigger.  Well... we’ve gone and done it again!  Meet Lizzie...

 

Jungle update

I mentioned before that I'd found some Darkest Africa figures buried in the lead pile in the loft and was planning to use these for IHMN.

It seems these are from the Foundry Miniatures range and there are more than I thought!  In the box were an assortment of Askaris and a lot of Victorian Explorers all of which will be ideal for the IHMN game.

Dr Livingstone I presume....

A rather cool chap with a cup of tea...ideal  for the jungle

Victorian cricketer/mad explorer... I can see him despatching the natives with his 'Clicky-Ba'

2 rather evangelical preachers: although the woman could equally be a Suffragette

I've also ordered some Cannibals and a 'Lord of the Jungle' from Northstar Miniatures range... more detail when they arrive.

A double helping of IHMN....

I've had a few weeks break from gaming apart from the new Star Wars RPG and a game of Kingmaker  which took place over several nights on holiday (and about which the less said the better!) but we've made up for that with 2 games of In Her Majesty's Name in 2 days!

Game # 1 

This took place at Guildford and pitted my opponent Anthony's British rifle company against Professor Moriarty and his steam powered automatons (automata?) backed up with my shiny new steam tank from Ironclad Miniatures.

The very thin red line
 

 

One of the illegal Prussian Automatons

 

The British company was pretty much straight from the rules.  Moriarty was beefed up with martial arts and mesmerism and was 'inspirational'.  He was accompanied by 2 fanatical humans [one equipped with a couple of hand grenades... presumably with 'bomb' written on them] and the steam automatons.

The British gallantly lined up in the street, hoping their skilled rifle fire would provide enough cover for a couple of them to make off with the objectives... a tactic which came unstuck under heavy machine gunfire from the robots.  The redcoats were quickly mown down by the tank and the robots...Moriarty skulked around in the shadows until he emerged and tried to use his Mesmerism on the last soldier...sadly this wasn't a success so we had to resort to shooting him instead!

Messrs May, Clarkson and Hammond inspect the
latest Armoured Steam Carriage

I have to confess here that I'd made an error and my machine gun toting robots should have cost more points than I'd calculated... I should have paid extra for them to be "strong" which would have allowed them to carry the MGs in 2 hands, or perhaps downgraded the lethality of the guns. Anthony could therefore claim the moral victory despite his Redcoats running away like a bunch of girls!


Game #2

Having unloaded the scenery and figures from the car today, my son and I decided to have a game this evening (a last hurrah before school resumes tomorrow for him!).  He hadn't played before but that was no guarantee of an easy ride!  This time I took the Servants of Ra while he fielded the Scotland Yard squad backed up with Holmes and Watson.

The carbine toting Special Branch officers sensibly took up a position behind a wall and some barrels as the Cultists charged down the street at them, led by their Mummy.  The cult leader Akhenaton and Professor Abir hid behind the leading wave.  Sairah, the mystical assassin daughter of the Professor used her magical talents to appear on the warehouse rooftop (using the Path of Shadows ability) and then mystically "blinked" again, appearing by the Chief Inspector!  A flash of her daggers hit him but he managed to pass his Pluck roll (despite the poisoned blades) and he promptly came back with a stiff upper cut, laying her out cold!  I should have taken this as a sign of things to come...

Special Branch and Holmes take cover behind the wall

The cultists continued to fall to some smart shooting from the police before everyone managed to get close enough for a massive bundle.  The magical professor tried to hypnotise one of the police but only succeeded in giving himself a migraine and falling over.  He managed to clamber to his feet next turn only to be picked off by one of the crack shots behind the wall. 

 

The two sides advance

 

The game then descended into a mass brawl with everyone proving surprisingly rubbish at actually finishing off their opponents, even when the Police tried mobbing the Egyptians and trying to swamp them with superior numbers.


 

Police brutality!!!

The final brawl

.  The very tough Akhenaton and the equally hard Holmes looked to be set to slug it out all evening but I suspect the Police numbers would eventually have told and won the day had we not run out of time and drawn a veil over the ending.

In Her Majesty's Name - first game

In Her Majesty's Name seems to have created a real buzz over the last few months with the Nickstarter launch generating [presumably] a lot of people with a sudden accumulation of figures to paint and scenarios to devise.  I've always liked the whole Steampunk/VSF thing in fiction... anything by Mark Hodder, KW Jeter, Kim Newman etc.  Incidentally is there a difference between Steampunk and VSF??

Having beem surprisingly devoted to getting the figures painted and terrain built, I finally got round to playing a game last week at Guildford.   The table consisted of 3' x 3' boards using floor tiles from Wilkinsons range [it takes a lot to tempt me into Wilkos but these did it!].  The cobblestone effect is a bit oversized but looks surprisingly effective.  Added to these were 2 warehouses and 3 town houses from the Stoezels Structures range of card models.  My modelling skills aren't great and there has been a lot of cutting, gluing and swearing going on the dining room over the last few weeks as I experimented with different ways of putting the models together.  In the end I decided not to make the roofs detachable and planned to replace the model with a floor plan if anyone decided to enter a building. 

The tabletop with the Servants of Ra carting off
their mystical artifact at the bottom of the picture

The scenario pitched the Scotland Yard squad [Anthony] against the Servants of Ra [Keith] who were moving a rare artifact stolen from the British Museum, to an East End warehouse before doubtless using it for some unspeakable purpose. I umpired with the option to interfere with a 3rd home brewed faction if I got bored!  As it was there was plenty going on that meant there really wasn't a need for anymore confusion on the tabletop.

There was a smattering of innocent bystanders to get
 in the way of the police and cultists alike

 

 

 

 

Anthony's coppers used the tried and test tactic of shooting anyone that looked a little bit foreign or beating them with their electric truncheons.  Keith's rank and file cultists weren't much opposition but the rampaging Mummy and scantily clad Hashashin carved their way through the police ranks. The Egyptian leader (a reincarnated pharaoh of course....there's no cliche left unturned in this game!!) sliced up Holmes and Watson, leading to a showdown at the end between the seemingly indestructible Egyptian and the strangely Ripper Street-like Chief Inspector and Sergeant. It looked as though the forces of law and order had won the day until we realised we'd mis-read a rule and victory swung the other way!

The Inspector is surrounded but managed to fend them off

The rules had the great advantage of being easily pick-up-able... always a good thing when you have limited time in a club evening, but have enough depth to force a lot of thinking and planning between turns.  There were definitely tactics that would be changed now that we've played the game through.

The rules use alternate activation so Player A moves a figure, then Player B until all figures have moved.  This is then repeated with shooting etc.  This does force a degree of tactical thinking [who should I move when, which figure should shoot or fight next etc] but I did worry that it could have slowed down too much if we had a 3rd faction on the table.  We'll have to try this out next time to see how much it impacts on the speed of the turns.  I have a cobbled together faction comprising of Professor Moriarty and his henchmen, assisted by his latest invention... steam powered automatons! [well... why not!]

Overall though the rules were excellent and have huge scope and potential.  They'd be easily usable 'straight' too, for 19th or early 20th Century skirmishes.  I could certainly see these being suitable for my Russian Civil War/Back of Beyond figures as well as the VSF adventures they're designed for.  I'm finding I really enjoy this level of game, both in terms of the physical scale of the number of figure etc, but also in the size of the project.... getting 2 forces painted and some terrain built at this level makes for a fun but achievable project.  I think this says more about my attention span than anything else but it does mean that I'm more likely to stick with it and see a project through. 

I've just spotted Osprey's next rule set... Ronin, a Samurai skirmish game with similar sized forces also available from Northstar... damn... here we go again!!!

Verdict on IHMN.....Highly recommended!!

In Her Majesty's Name - Warehouse Mk2

My first attempt at the derelict commercial building from Stoelzels Structures was pretty poor so I've had another go.

This time I decided not to bother with the separate floors or the interior detail.  It would be nice to be able to use the interior but I'm not convinced it's essential, so solid walls it is!  The roof was going to be detachable but thanks to some slightly wonky cutting on my part it was easier to glue it on.

I'm a lot happier with the results...my plan is to have a couple of these along with some town houses.  They also produce a larger warehouse which would go nicely but is a bit more ambitious!  It's still a bit ropy in places and the roof needs a bit of attention...I may try building up a small wall around the edge.

The models can be found here and the commercial building is free!  Handy if it takes you several attempts to get it right like me.

Scotland Yard and the mystery of the finished project

Breaking all my normal habits I've actually finished painting something I bought at Salute!!!

Normally I assemble some of the figures, paint a few and then leave them to languish in a box as one of my many half finished projects [or in some cases leave them in the Salute bag and put them in the loft, never to be seen again!]

But, having painted up the Servants of Ra for In Her Majesty's Name, I wanted to keep going and I've now completed the Scotland Yard set as well!  It's a really nice set with a plain clothes section led by an Inspector and Sergeant who seem very inspired by Ripper Street (a good thing!  I've just picked up the boxed set as I missed the last couple of episodes and my son was pretty addicted).  There are also 4 uniformed coppers armed with truncheons, but being VSF these are "electro-truncheons":  I decided not to add the cables connecting them to the power packs...partly because it was a bit fiddly and very fragile, but also because I didn't like the aesthetic look of them.  Finally the squad includes a nice Detective and Doctor: I also painted the Moriarty figure that I got as part of the pre-order... A nicely elegant villain hiding a pistol behind his back.

The Detective

Definitely shades of Ripper Street...

Professor Moriarty



The buildings in the background are from the really very nice range from Stoelzel's Structures.  I've built a few card buildings in the past but this is the first time I've attempted something more than just building a box and the first time I've built around a foamcore interior.  The building shown is a free downloadable Warehouse which has various options for the interior.  I decided to try building it as a series of 3 layers and to be honest it's a bit scrappy in places.  I've certainly discovered that I lack the ability to cut in a straight line!!  As you can see the floors don't line up very well and the white foamcore shows through in places... nothing to do with the model and entirely down to my crap modelling skills!!!

I've decided to have another go [which is the advantage of downloads] and will probably ignore the separate floors and just build it as a solid building,or perhaps just have the roof detachable, and use black foam as a base so the edges should be less obvious.  I'll post the results when they're done [unless they're too embarrassing!!]

The range of buildings available is really impressive and I've also downloaded a couple more including the Old Town buildings which may have been a bit over ambitious having seen the huge number of pages of walls that were in the PDF... the kit comes with each building in a range of shades to reflect daylight, dusk and night time!!  The kits can be found here... Stoelzel's Structures and are well worth a look.