1st Adventure in Jimland (Part One)

"Off we jolly well go!"

So I managed to finish off my first venture into the wilds of "Jimland" (where anything can happen as their by-line goes). The preparation was not unduly arduous, but definitely needed, a turn sheet (showing the events and results of each turn; an expedition party sheet, showing the expeditions content, members, rations and so on. I also wanted to convert the native encounter cards into an A3 chart and I'll be doing the same for animal encounters too.

Homemade Native encounter chart

The main characters

The first item of business is selecting members of the expedition from an initial budget of $300, with various values for all the personnel, food etc. that you may need.
To make things easier I more or less copied the expedition from the sample game (that can be found here: Sample_Game.pdf

 The European explorers are the mainstay of the group, but cost cash (initially at least) and still need a supporting cast of thousands (or 12 in my case).
In the above photograph from left to right we have Sir Charles Biddlestone (the leader), Henry Wharton (Scout), Frederick Carrington (Hunter) and Joe Bolinbroke (Prospector). In addition there were four Askari guards and 9 bearers with food enough for 9 days (top photo).

The initial map

As I am want to do I've been amending the game's rules to suit my own purposes, the first of which was to get rid of the squares that are used in map movement and replace them with a hex map - easily done. The Expedition's are based at Jim's Landing (a coastal hex - there are no coastlines in the original) . In my first game I wanted to test my rules for coastlines and would follow the coastline east of Jim's landing (and why not?) 
I also amended the terrain table to include an initial terrain type in addition to the four used.
 So the terrain types are Jungle, Mountain, Grassland and Desert, to which I added Swamp. Rivers can be a feature of any of the above and are encountered in-game.
The expedition starts in the hex NW of Jim's Landing
In the words of Sir Charles:
Day One 
Very hot and humid, compasses seem to be filling with water regularly, Henry says he think he's noticed the same Native village three times and Jim's landing at least twice! 
 We make camp a short distance from a Native village (they appear friendly enough) .

Great Start

First event card drawn, great start to the adventure- not.
The presence of a Native village or not is the next item in the turn sequence and of course I threw a six meaning there was one; the natives were Tribals with a 50% chance of being hostile. In addition they had the maximum number of them being 5 Hand to hand Weapons (HW) and 5 with bows (B). Natives can be Friendly, Neutral or Hostile, with Tribals more apt to be Hostile. 1 food down, 8 left and we've gone nowhere!

The Native Village.

Getting to the start

Day One

 Day Two
Everything quite, we head SW trying to keep an eye on the coastline. The six Natives we encounter are friendly enough and we ignore them.

Suited me at the time !

Three with Hand Weapons and three with rifles -gulp!

"Whoo-hoo we moved" - map end of turn 2

I diced for the continuation of the coastline, on a d6, 1,2 or 3 gives 1 hex side of coast, 45, two sides and a 6 would give three sides. (The coastline was extended by one side.)

I threw a '1' !

Day Three
The incessant drums through the night were  disturbing and we awoke to find one of our Askari missing, strange. We decided to head head South, once more attempting to follow the coastline, encountering no-one, but ending in a very unwelcoming swamp.

The diminished group trudges on through the swamp.

 

End of Turn 3 (and also does four turn 4 too)

Day Four

There goes another Askari

Rather than risk being lost in the swamp I decided to back-track and head North from whence we came! 
The day did not get off well as we lost yet another Askari to an animal snare in the swamp. We arrived at another village (strangely we hadn't notice it before) who seemed to not want anything to do with us (I think they were the ones who had set the snare and were probably feeling guilty). 

Day Five:

And a bearer !

A ferocious  wind caused great anxiety as we headed SW circumnavigating the swamp one of our bearers seemed to have been swept away by it too, luckily he wasn't carrying anything . Frederick and myself were also battered about a bit, but being made of stouter stuff we survived with minor bruising only.
Henry noticed some suspicious looking fellows trying to ambush us and we prepared for an assault.
We saw them off without any loss of life on our part.

Two explorers and an Empty bearer were  the targets of the '3' I threw , Frederick and Sir Charles both made their saving rolls whilst the unfortunate bearer did not.
There were six spear armed (HW) hostile natives who were successfully scouted out giving the Europeans a slight advantage. 
The initial part of any encounter is the Native and Expedition player placing terrain pieces alternatively on pre-designated areas. As the Expedition player I would want clear fields of fire, whereas as the Native player I wanted to be able to use the terrain blocking line of sight to enable me to get closer to the expedition (talk about split personalities!).

I'm very sorry to say that that's where I'll be leaving it for this week' having almost recovered (99%) from the aches and pains I was suffering with, I'm now stricken with a heavy dose of man-flu and once more almost bed-ridden! (You were probably getting bored too I'm guessing). Rather than gunk up my lap-top with the various excretions I am currently emitting I'm resting up.  I may well post part 2 before Monday next, dependent upon how quickly I recover.

Normal services will be resumed asap

Thanks for visiting and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.