Another Venture into 'Jimland'

The new expedition (with the Rev in the top hat at the front).

My second adventure into 'Jimland' Saw Sir Charles put together a slightly larger expedition with the force increase by another Askari and the inclusion of the Reverent Richard Tosson (a 'free' addition).
For this game I'm trying out the idea of keeping track of individual rations rather than 'loads', so the nine bearers carrying 90 rations in 9 loads will provide 10 days' food for the nine explorers and Askaris rather than nine (one load of food per day!).

The plan

Sir Charles' plan was to carry on along the coast for as long as the food would last and keeping close to the trail for a quicker return to Jim's Landing. With the plan in place I take up the story with the party in their start position, the evening before the expedition.







From the Diary of Sir Charles, the Evening before Day one of the Expedition:
"I can't help but think that The Reverent Richard Tosson will become a liability with his extreme missionary views towards the locals. He's already driving everyone to despair with his incessant praying, singing of hymns and his infernal harmonica on which he only seems to be able to play a vaguely passable version of "Onwards Christian Soldiers".
It also turns out that he dislikes being called "Dick", unfortunately for him as the Askaris have taken to calling him it constantly.
I'm tending to the view that they're right."

Day one

5 Natives at the top in cover and 4 at the bottom

" An easy start to the day as we follow the track to our jump of point into Terra Incognito, but as the day wears on we discover that 6 loads of food are inedible and have had to be discarded. Worse still Henry, our Scout has spotted nine bow-armed Natives (which Reverent Tosson had upset with his rantings about "saving them") attempting to ambush us".

The Natives seem to try to pick on our bearers, further reducing our  ability too proceed deeper into Jimland. 

I split our force into two, taking advantage of the available cover, intending to enter a fire-fight which my opinion we would easily win.

The four "Southern"natives' view

The five "Northern Natives"

The party and Natives taking cover

Initial manoeuvring

Outnumbering the Natives in the small patch of dense jungle

Natives leaving cover to shoot at the bearers

Natives trying to shoot at the bearers - just as well they're pretty poor shots!

Not so bad shots after all as they shoot at Sir Charles

"One of the Natives had the audacity to shoot an arrow at me that passed through my shirt, completely ruining my ensemble. I decided he would pay for this affront to fashion"

The water-buffalo charging out the forest , immediately killing a bearer

"With all our firing and trampling through their habit , we disturbed a water buffalo that immediately charged into our huddled mass of bearers, goring one to death, luckily though he had no load.
At about the same time a lion appeared, but his curiosity was short-lived as he soon wandered off in the direction he came from"

The curious lion

 "All the while our shooting was beginning to take a toll on the poor natives, even the Reverend eventually joined in with a pistol - though he was a very ineffective shot."

Two Natives bite the dust on the Southern front

Another three natives bite the dust in th North

 "The loss of another Native seemed to have broke their morale and the remaining four fled as we turned our attention to the water buffalo trying to gore another of our bearers whilst the others fled to relative safety.
The water buffalo was quickly dispatched and the lion, having fed his curiosity left the area."

"Our position was thus at the end of the day, even though we'd only lost  a single bearer after dinner we were down to only 21 rations, enough to feed the whole party for two more days, which would only allow for a single day's exploration before we had to rejoin the trail to Jimland. If I dismiss the Askaris in the morning then we would have enough food\for four days, I'll make the decision in the morning."
 

Position at the end of day one

This was a hectic game that lasted far more turns than the four normally allowed in the Jimland rules which I find very artificial. All the decisions for the Natives were made by either a dice roll or my own weird logic.
The loss of 6 loads of food was on the turn of an event card "Lose 1d6 food" and of course I threw a six!
The Reverend was purposely included by me as he was a 'free' character that would almost certainly cause the natives to be hostile and thus give us more points at the end of the expedition for Natives defeated. He has a save roll of  11, shooting skill` of 2, but a melee skill of 10; his "Missionary skill starts at 1 - giving only a 1 in 20 chance of converting the locals, failure of course turning them hostile.
Just in case you were wondering where the surnames of my Characters  came from, they're all street names close to where I live!

The holiday accommodation was not what I envisaged

In other news - I'm now in the wilds of NW England, having carelessly left my notes for this adventure  at home and, after having had my previous camera trouble,  I don't know if I have any photographs of the rest of this adventure as they're not on my current SD card or on my computer.

I did manage to get some painting done in the last week on my Sudanese - hair, spear-shafts and the base colour of the few horse I have. I've also based up a few more figures for the Sudan as well as three figures for Jimland.

Current state of play on my paint tray.

That's it then for this week, hopefully I'll have something other than just a narrative for the rest of this adventure next week!

Thanks for taking the time to visit, I hope you've found something of interest and as always you comments are always welcomed and appreciated.