Wednesday 15 October 2014

Find the Letters - a Song of Drums scenario

Spain, 1812

The mysterious double agent known only as El Jengibre has intercepted some sensitive private correspondence between General Hulot and his mistress, the fabled courtesan Mademoiselle Valerie de Pamplemousse (known to the grognards as Sale Val). In return for a large payment he has arranged a drop in the no-man's-land between the French and British lines. 
Unfortunately one of El Jengibre's men is in the pay of the French and as the British send out a small party commanded by the earnest Captain Wiseman, ably assisted by Sergeant Bartholomew, the experienced French Captain l'Aurel and his loyal Sergeant Ardie are rapidly advancing on the same spot, determined to protect l'honeur of their commanding officer. 
However the wily Spanish spy has not been entirely clear about the exact location of the letters, so the two patrols will need to search for them whilst fending off the attention of their rivals...

One player sets up the table and places three small tokens (each in a terrain feature). Tokens may not be closer than long distance to each other or any table edge.
The other player then picks which side of the board to enter from, with his opponent entering opposite. Dice to see who deploys first, alternating models until both forces are set up. Models must deploy within short range of their table edge.
Then dice to see who takes the first turn.
Whenever a model moves into contact with one of the counters roll a D6. On a 5+ the letters are discovered and all the tokens are removed. When a model contacts the second token, the letters are discovered on a 4+. If the first two are not the cache, then the final token is automatically the letters.
It takes two actions to pick up the letters.
As there is a reward on offer, soldiers will not voluntarily hand the letters over to anyone else until they're safely back in camp.
If the letter bearer is killed the letters are dropped.
If the bearer fails a morale check he drops them at the start of his flee move, hurling them aside in his panic (or in an attempt to distract pursuers).

Victory points.
1 point for each 25 points of opponent dead or fled.
5 points for getting the letters off the "home" base edge.

This is a scenario for my first game of Song of Drums and Shakos tomorrow night.
It's adapted from one in the SBH rulebook.
Some of the feedback on TMP was that scenarios add to the flavour of Ganesha games, so I've taken that on board.
Quite excited to see how it plays out.

2 comments:

  1. Your entertaining AAR lead me this for the scenario details.
    Did you use the standard table size for 28mm figures suggested in the rules (3' x 3') and how many points per side did you use?
    THANX!

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  2. Oooh crikey - we played this about two years ago and I've had a sleep or two since then!
    Pretty sure the table we used was 4x4, because the Ilko Gaming Hut uses 2x2 terrain boards and we're too lazy to try and half them or anything. :)
    The report says we used 400 point forces, so I guess that's what it was.
    Looks like I had Sergeant, 3 Veterans, 4 regular infantrymen a drummer and a Captain - is that about 400? I've called them riflemen in the report, but they were all actually redcoated musketmen.
    The French also had a captain, sergeant and drummer and then a mix of conscripts and regular musket men (four and six respectively, possibly).

    Hope that helps.
    Tom

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