Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 19 August 2019

Max's Second Expedition (part two)

This week I'm continuing the story of Max's second adventure into Jimland, so once more:
From the Journal of Fredrick Cartington:
"Having survived two of the Pygmy darts,  Max was feeling emboldened, and the column, though our numbers were slightly weaker was still in good spirits as we faced yet another Native attack, in one of their unwelcoming villages. Max had foresaw their frontal attack would occur as we were crossing one of the many streams found in Jimland."
The opposition, four with firearms and five with melee weapons
The native riflemen head for cover
Preparations made to receive the charge...
...and start the firefight with a couple of successes
The natives meantime were in position to charge...
...which Max pre-empted with one of his own.
 "The appearance of a Hippo joining the fray was a little disconcerting, but once our soldiers were clear of the creature Max, the Doc and myself made short shrift of it as a threat and it would also help our dwindling rations.
No less worrisome was a lioness appearing in our rear"
The natives would be easier to melee with than shoot, but the Hippo ?
"Everyone runaway !"
Melee over, natives fled, form a firing line (as usual)







"Our bearers panicked at the sight of the lioness, some being stick in the small stream, but we formed a secure firing line, that would deal with this last threat.
With little incentive from ourselves the creature slinked away from our formidable force.
We were elated by our success at driving the natives away, losing only a single soldier in the melee, whom Doc could not save one of the two wounded, despite using medicines upon the fellow.
We feasted on the Hippopotamus that night  (tasted like chicken) and wondered what the morning would bring."

[As a side note: I've added the ability of an expedition to eat any prey they encounter and kill in their fights with the natives (provided they win of course). This seemed logical to me and is a very easy rule to implement and isn't a 'game-changer' in my opinion.]


"The next few days went without any incident of note though I did lose sight of the column at one point, being at the rear, but by nightfall I had found them once more.
We came across several groups of natives, but Horatio's continually improving language skills deflected any interest they may have had with us
Eventually following the coast we encountered the mouth of a river.  Max was delighted to have made such a valuable discovery and the objective of our expedition.
We made plans to follow the river as far as our supplies would allow and set of once more - very happy."
We followed the river for several days, though we had a slight halt as our bearers, on day. refused to move in the direction we desired "Bad Juju" they said.
I believe they were intent on not disappointing Max as when we eventually got gong once more we encountered a lake, thus ending any further river discovery.

Nearly three weeks into the expedition and on the return leg, through the never-ending grasslands failure in communications and no doubt Max's tiredness,, we failed to spot a a large group of Natives emerging from the long grasses."
Eight melee and rifle--armed natives (note the wounded soldier being carried)
Both sides rush one another, firing proving ineffective. (Noe the pesky spider!)

Casualties mount on both sides, the explorers, safely in the rear (bottom left)
Spider killed and  mounting casualties
Final native, needed to break their morale, dies.




"After a long drawn-out fight, the bayonet eventually proved its  superiority over a pointy stick, though one poor fellow succumbed to the spider.
With thinning numbers and supplies we determined to take the most direct route homeward arriving there safely despite meeting other disinterested natives and with no food supplies."
Max of course declared the expedition a huge success and immediately started making plans for the next!"


In gaming terms, the expedition had also been a great success, the Expedition had gleaned $449, a massive by my standards and enough to give every explorer a +1 in one of their skills or abilities.
From a person viewpoint, I enjoyed playing the game and quickly played another soon after; my rule changes had little effect of the overall feel of the game and my event cards came into play both aiding and hindering the party. Although it's permitted to leave wounded soldiers and askaris behind, I feel this is not in the spirit of the era and have always carried the ineffective "revived" figures and may write rules to reflect this.
With the rule changes and amendments it was obvious I needed a new playsheet and turn record, both of which have been done and were used in Max's third expedition - and may have to be amended again.
I'm still unsure how to write-these things up - I've tried a few different ways, but the adventure are all very 'samey' and very repetitive.

The expedition didn't cover a lot of new territory, but here's the map:
Route of Max's second adventure
 In other news:

I did some  serious slapping paint on miniatures this last week, and if (hopefully) finished by next week, I'll be posting the results. I've enjoyed the three adventures I played  (strangely enough) but editing the 100+ photographs into something worth seeing and compiling the aar is very time consuming as most of you will know! 
I also bought some new figures (shock, horror!), but just the six, second hand and with varying degrees  of  'usability' (it's a word, right ?). All my 60p pocket-money went into them all. I'll  photograph and show the next week too !

That's it then, thanks for taking the time to visit and if you've found anything of interest, it's a bonus and as always, your comments, queries and brickbats are always welcomed and truly appreciated.




22 comments:

  1. A thoroughly enjoyable read, Joe, and having just gulped three of your excellent postings down in one go, I wouldn't worry about them being samey as I enjoyed all three and love the way you write them up. As one BatRep poster to another, thank you very much for your time and effort to get these posted, and long it continue :-)

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    1. Thansk Blaxx for all the kind comments, with hich we bloggers would never know how we're doing !
      Aars to me are an intergral part of my gaming - have all my western games from the 70's still in faded pencil - it was worth it then as it is now.

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  2. More Jimland excellence Joe - does Hippo really taste like chicken?
    Did the game come with event cards or did you have to make them?

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    1. Thanks MJT, they say Hippo does taste like chickn - so it must be true !
      The game does indeed come with 100 event cards though not all are different. I have recently made some of my own (another 60)to help and hinder expeditions- and to fit in with my new rules and ideas. The cards came in pdf form so required printing and cutting out (I laminated mine and rounded the square corners too).

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  3. Great stuff Joe! Who makes your hippo model?
    Believe me, I hear you on feeling like your posts are "samey" I'm the exact same - and I'm right there with you on how difficult and what a pain it is to even get a post organized for publishing lol!

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    1. Thanks Ivor, The Hippo came from a cheap tub of animals I bought from B&M (Iirc),. There are three different tubs,; Dinosaurs, Safari Animals and farm Animals.
      There were four of each animal, tiger, lion hippo, rhino etc in the tub I bought, though not all were of a suitable size, They're also in larger sizes too and none are in a compatible scale. The farm animals' set will give you suitable cows for 28mm, but beware the giant chickens, which even with 54mm figures are big!
      Blogging is a pain sometimes when a photgraph doesn't go where I want it to and I spend a lot of time 'fixing' it.
      I probably spend too much time, re-reading, correcting grammar aand spelling than is noticed and probably unappreciated too.

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  4. Fantastic reading and looking again! ;)

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    1. Thansk you Michal, I do wonder how much enjoyment folk get from reading my reports compared to other ones.

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  5. Very nice, Zab. You are bringing out the 'little boy" in us all. BTW, perhaps when encountering rivers, lakes, and such, you could incorporate some fog, rain, etc. into your safaris. This might give you some extra random event(s) to work thru on the jungle journeys.

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    1. Thanks Jay, the simplicity of the game is what reminds me of 'boyish' games of long ago.
      There are many weather event cards, most of which I have encountered on one or another expedition; torrential rain (stopping movement); hailstones (potential loss of lives); fog (making the party lost); flooding (loss of supllies iirc); forest (jungle?) fires that I can;t recollect encountering and probably many others!

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    2. Excellent. Sounds exciting.

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    3. Exciting? - Maybe from an observer's viewpoint, but exsperating for the player's expedition !

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  6. Great report and looks fab. Hippo steaks for all!

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    1. Thanks Brummie, I'm quite pleased with the simple scenery,it does the job and yes I'm sure Hippo 'bush tucker' steaks would be a welcome change from the normal rations the expedition has.

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  7. Another nice game report and an enjoyable read. I suppose the essence of an exploring game is that you go exploring and so all games are similar but also different.

    I've been playing Wings of War games once a month for a solo campaign on the aerodrome site. So effectivly about 8 of us play the same scenario, with similar planes available at the time. We then write an AAR and so all the games are similar but also quite different.

    I think you've found a good framework to generate games and it sounds like you're enjoying it, so whats not to like.

    I agree about the difficulties of formatting in blogger, I find it a nightmare if something goes wrong, I can never correct it.

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    1. Thanks Vagabond, the main object of "Adventures in Jimland" is indeed exploration and the table-top skirmishes are really a bolt-on to what is essentially a board game imo - alike to the Avalon Hill game "Source of the Nile" where all 'fights' are done by dice and tables.
      I have been looking at more scenarios for 'fights', such as camp attacks and the Expedition taking the offensive - e.g. attacking a village.
      I do like WoW and played it a lot with #1 son (who now has all my models, rules etc. secreted away with his own collection -somewhere, and I can well imagine it's another very difficult game to write-up (except possibly in a campaign format).
      It's getting the photogrpahs to sit where I want them to, that I find particularly annoying, especially adding one that 'jumps' up the page ! I've been known to copy all the text, delete the entire content and start again with blogger !

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    2. It sounds like you write your post in blogger, I've always done it in microsoft word on the laptop and then copy and paste it into blogger. The formatting goes to hell in a handcart, but there is a process that removes all formatting then I amend the format and finally place the pictures. It's when I get the last bit wrong and can't correct it that causes the most pain, as you said I've also deleted the complete post and started again.
      It really shouldn't be that difficult, but then again what would we have to be grumpy about if it worked smoothly, although at our age we need to get on with the more important things in life, rather than buggering arround with dysfunctional software.

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    3. When I started blogging (seven years ago ...gulp!) I too used Microsoft word, using about the same amount of time as using blogger now and had the format problem too, especially with photograph. I've become used to bloggers idiosyncracies and can now cope fairly well with them. I've also stopped positioning photographs until all text is done, keeping the photographs justified to the left and small, then poition them where I want and normally as 'large pics.
      Blogger is a pain at times, but like you, we find ways around and put up with it.

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  8. First off Joe let me say how delighted I'm that you back into the swing of the hobby,as for the adventure & the AAR we all have our own style on how we do these thing, yours is very direct & to the point & works very well & I really enjoy them.

    Its great to see your rule changes working & I look forward to reading about the next adventure, seen the stuff you painted & what you spent all of your pocket money on :)

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    1. Thanks Frank, it's commendable imo that we do indeed all have different style of writing up aaar - it makes them all so more enjoyable.
      Using the adventures to introduce a single rule change or two at a time has worked well, allowing for a bitof a 'tweak' in betwen adventures.
      Max's next adventure (his third) will be written up soon and I;m already planning the adventure after that to incorporate some more rule changes.
      I think I've finihsed my current painting and have started some more, but they will take a lot longer.

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  9. Cracking read Joe, love those casualty markers, so simple and effective!

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    1. Thanks AL, I wish I could take credit fo rthe markers, but alas, I've cpied them from Colgar6's blog!

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