Two Games of The Men Who Would Be Kings on the NWF

I am still on leave and James has Thursdays free, so we decided to have a game. I suggested OGAM but James fancied taking The Men Who Would Be Kings for a spin as he's looking at using the rules for his Tlingit project this year.

I rolled up the "Awfully Quiet" scenario, set up the terrain and worked out a pair of forces using my collection. The British was easy, two units of Regulars and my most recently painted unit of Lancers (Regular Cavalry). As the newly painted unit I expected them to die horribly. For the Pathans I took four units of irregular infantry to represent the hill tribesmen armed with guns, a unit of Tribal infantry and then a unit of Ghazis. I gave the Ghazis the suggested theatre specific upgrade of having to Move or Attack instead of Stand To and I also made them Fierce. Chum Andy Hawes has a list of theatre specific alterations he uses for TMWWBK on the NWF and at some point I'll give those a whirl, but as this was the first play though in a long time I decided to keep things relatively vanilla.

James decided to play as the Pathans and we rolled up the various leader traits. Turned out the English Infantry officer was a drinker and would have a variable Leadership - whereas the chap commanding the Sikh unit was a fan of fair play and would therefore not shoot at pinned units. Most of the Pathan units suffered with leadership rolls of 8+.

Paperwork dealt with we got going.

The field of battle

With dawn breaking Captain Bartholomew orders the column to break camp. It's very quiet out here...almost too quiet...

The Sagaar Kancers lead the way. It's their first time out on patrol which makes Bartholomew a little nervous.

The 99th Humberside Regiment are in the centre of the column.

With the Royal Dilshad Rifles bringing up the rear. 

The silence is broken only by the bleating of the goats.

But are there hostile eyes on the column..?

Suddenly hill tribesmen break cover and begin to close on the rear.

The Humbersiders fall out of line.

More Pathans appear, anxious to protect their livestock.

And still more crest the nearby slopes as fire begins to rain down.

Two lancers tumble from their saddles as jezzails bark forth.

The Dilshads open up on the native riflemen.

Ghazis appear from the hills and bear down on the Lancers.

Wisely the horsemen gallop off to confront the rifles.

Despite the slope in their favour the tribesmen are driven off.

Their dander up the cavalry turn on more Pathan gunmen.

Sword armed infantry pour down on the Humberside regiment, but their charge comes up short and they are met with devastating fire.

Soon after this the last of the native troops were driven from the field and Bartholomew heaved a sigh of relief!

That was over quite quickly. James was very unlucky with activation and Courage tests, which meant I found it quite easy to drive off his troops piecemeal.

With no immediate plans and lunch still some time off we decided to reset, swap sides and play again.

No change to the leader traits - just the exact same set up.

Having seemingly learned nothing from the previous game I made an early rush across open ground with the Tribal infantry...

While the Ghazis again crested the hill.

Not exactly what the cavalry wanted to see.

At one end of the valley my rifles pushed up in to range.

And began to pepper the Dilshads - causing casualties and pinning them.

The Lancers waited until the Humbersiders had pinned the Tribesemen before charging them in the face.

The tribesmen were soon routed and the horsemen once more rampaged about the table picking on isolated riflemen.

Before eventually catching the Ghazis in the open.

Nasty.

However the nearby riflemen were able to take advantage of the demise of the Ghazis to blow away the Lancers.

The Dilshads retreated in a much reduced and disorderly fashion down the valley and so the Pathans looted their camp.

Over by the goat pens the native rifles finally inflicted some casualties on the 99th and forced them to back off as well.

And with that the game drew to a close. An all together closer game - remembering things like Go To Ground and the importance of trying to pin the British made a difference. I was also luckier with the dice than James was!

A few brain frying moments as we've been playing a lot of Dragon and Xenos Rampant recently, so trying not to get your special rules mixed up between systems needed some book thumbing - but we got there. 

I'm quite inspired to do some work on this collection - especially the scenery and try and get some more TMWWBK games in.