Another Venture into Jimland (Part Two)

From the Diary of Sir Charles Biddlestone

    Route for Day 2

Day 2
"Awoke to find that we had lost two bearers in yesterday's fracas - oh well, neither were carrying food in any event!
I have also made the decision to allow the Askaris to return to Jimland in order to conserve food and allow the expedition to continue.
We set off South-eastwards, at a jaunty pace finding more swamp, we'll again have to rely on Henry, our Scout to find  a way out of this infernal swamp."





 From the Diary of Henry Warton:

Nine rifle armed slavers

Day 2 (Evening)
"Upon entering the swamp there were no mishaps but we soon encountered a group of what I determined to be Arab slavers, intent on doing us harm; generally these fellows are well armed with rifles and unfortunately for us they were also numerous.
Whilst I hadn't detected them earlier were did have good cover immediately on hand.
Sir Charles ordered us into the cover of the jungle to set up a firing line, whilst the bearers huddled behind us."

The stalwart partys' firing line

"Reverend Tosson didn't even attempt to convert this group of slavers saying something about them not being convertible as they were "Spawn of the Devil"; he took up a central position.
So, on our right was Sir Henry, then myself, the Reverend, Frederick and finally Dave on our left flank.
We opened fire as soon as we were able"

" Our opening shots were of mixed effect, with Frederick bringing down one of the cowardly slavers hiding in the trees opposite our position.
 Our firing also seemed to have attracted a large ape that emerged from the jungle and  proceeded to attack Sir Charles.
 Even whilst this was happening a general fire-fight broke out as the slavers returned our fire."

Ape attacking Sir Charles

Lion attracted by the Slavers' gunfire (note the Slaver casualty marker)

"Sir Henry wounded the great ape but then faltered and took a mortal blow from the creature, I immediately dispatched the creature.
The Slavers' gunfire also seemed to attract wild-life as a large lion seemed to take and interest in them too."
 "Through all the gunfire I could only just make out Dave cursing that they had shot a hole through his lucky flask "

The lion stalking the slavers

Slavers seemingly unaware of the lion

The Lion get s closer to the slavers

At least our abysmal shooting had generated a critter! (Dave's casualty counter on the right

"The next I heard from Dave was a gurgled cry of pain;  I found out later he had taken a bullet through his chest"
"Dave's body crashing to the floor must have startled a  large spider which thankfully scuttled off in the direction of the slavers"

The spider attacks the slavers - hurrah, there may be hope yet.

The Reverend's fatal charge into the slavers

"The remainder of the action, strangely, went very swiftly. The slavers easily squashed the spider, I was struck by bullet from one of the slavers but returned fire killing him. The Reverend Tosson for an inexplicable reason charged from the protection of our treeline to attack one of the slavers; both he and his target were locked in a struggle to the death that neither survived. 
 Both Fred and I continued to shoot at the slavers, each of us potting one which seemed to each curb their enthusiasm for continuing the fight.
They withdrew into depths of the jungle and thus the fight ended."

"After supper Frederick and I summed up the day's event and its consequences. We were now a mere two explorers, we had 19 days of food rations and more than sufficient bearers on hand (seven). We would make our decision what to do after a good nights sleep!" 

From my point of view it was a very exciting action, which originally I though the party would win easily, but the ape taking out my best shooter (Sir Charles) from my own duff shot set us back a lot. Losing Dave the prospector didn't help either for by that time we'd only managed to down two of the opposition and I needed five of them to drop before they'd skedaddle. It was about this time that I realised the Reverend couldn't hit a damn thing with his shooting skill of '2' and the modifier of  '-2' for the defenders' cover, so I decided he would charge them. He had a good save roll and a hand to hand skill of '10' whilst the slavers had no save roll and a meagre hand to hand skill of '4' and we desperately needed to start killing them! I did think the lion would have aided us, but he wandered off.
Next week will see the conclusion to this expedition's 2nd adventure

In other news
I'm back from my week-long holiday and slowly recovering; I haven't managed much painting, save the 300+ spear-heads and swords on my Sudanese, though I doubt you're bothered that I didn't take a photograph of this feeble progress. I've also made inroads into repairing my shattered terrain board, which should be finished in a week or so as I allow long periods of drying time.

That's it then for this week, I hope you've found something here of interest and as always your comments are welcomed and appreciated.

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.

Explorers and Oryx

     "Oryx"

I had intended to post a write-up of my second venture into 'Jimland' but the techy side of real-life once more thwarted my endeavours. To put it simply I've had issues with my, now six year old,  camera eventually sorted my my more techy daughter.

Oryx's bums (for those that like that sort if thing)

The consequences of which is that I've taken photographs today of the figures I've been slowly painting over the last week or so to post about today!
I finally got around to finishing the basing on the recent additions to my Jimland menagerie (the ORYX [for Roy]) and managed to also finish and base the five pulp explorers I recently bought at Battleground along with finishing off two others and those damn porters that have been awaiting completion for what seems like a life-time.

Two of my 'older' explorers that have featured previously,

Ans their rear view

Two of the Newbies, from Pulp Figures

(The Chap as already been named as Otto Sackville.)

Two more 'four eyes' from Pulp Figures

The Butterfly 'Hunter'' has butterflies on him!

Final Pulp Figure

I'm sure he's based on some fictional chap

The almost obligatory group shot

(Obligatory blurry picture)

Just when I though I'd seen the back of my explorers I found whilst sorting through my Sudan collection figures, suitable as explorers.
The chap on the left is rather large and is possible a Foundry figure or  a Redoubt figure.
The chap on the right is almost certainly a Boer and is definitely from Old Glory. The latter came with a group lot of colonials bought from Evil-bay (along with some Brits, Ansar, a Boer gun crew and two Egyptians!). To complete what I want for my Sudan collection I still have three bags of OG Egyptian Infantry, 1 bag Egyptian Cavalry, some more guns and gunners more Dervish Cavalry and Camelry, the list just goes on!

Based and undercoated (undercoat courtesy of Wilko's)

I have been busy with my Sudanese though, the aforementioned purchase bringing the numbers up to just over 300 all based up and undercoated on Tuesday through Wednesday of last week,
Top left is a unit of 'arab' rifles; top right five Fuzzy sword armed units; below them a unit of cavalry and mounted Emirs; Bottom left 5 Units of  'Arabs', 3 sword and two spear; Bottom centre "Fuzzy rifles"; bottom right 4 units of 'Fuzzy' spears. There are also a few 'randoms, civilians and foot Leaders without units.

By Sunday, all the flesh had been added to all 300+

The new three-piece terrain board

   In other news, during the final stage of my Jimland game I had one of those disasters everyone fears - I stumbled onto one of my very lightweight terrain boards snapping into three piece. ( I blame age, drink, drugs and incompetence...)

Cocktail splints in a very strangely coloured photo (I blame the cameraman)

Some cocktail sticks and liberal amounts of PVA, left to dry for three days (as PVA takes an age to dry 'internally' - so to speak)

Almost like new.. I may have to add two small hills to strength the board

That's it then for this week's post. I'll be writing up the latest Jimland adventure whilst holidaying  in the sunny North West (yes I know) as of Friday, but I am assured they have the Interweb even in the sticks. IN the meantime, the terrain board above needs fixing all the fuzzy wuzzies have to have their hair painted, everyone needs weapons painted and the list goes on...

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

Sale Bargains

   The '3' tag refers to the age of users - I should be OK then

I've done very little in the way hobby related things other than some basing for my Sudanese figures. I finally gave them a spray undercoat having had to wait for a day that was wind, snow and rain free whilst it was light enough to see!
The rest of the time my Oryx, Explorers and various other bits haven't seen a  paintbrush in over two weeks, despite being 95% finished.  I have however been taking advantage of the January sales (when the going gets tough the tough go shopping) and came away with two great buys imo.

The first,  shown left and above, is an Elephant (bit obvious really) that I bought from Wilkos (nee Wilkinson's) for the princely sum of £1,25 which is an absolute bargain imo considering how much a wargame model of a similar size can cost anywhere upwards of £12! (though the cheapest I seen advertised was about £8 iirc from Irregular). It is of course perfect for Safari-ing in Jimland even though not one of the animal encounters listed ! 

I'm sure I'll find a use for this!

The second bargain I picked up was this 'toy' 3D printer my daughter spotted before Xmas for a whopping £49,99 now reduced to a mere £14.99.
It's a far cry from the current 3D machines that can cost hundreds of pounds for even a suitable entry-level machine.
This one has re-usable compound to make the mould and a 'ink' that solidifies as the material injects into the mould.
The size of what can be moulded is about the size of a 2 inch cube so perfect for small wargame related items!
When I eventually get around to using it I will of course write a post about it!

I may not have been very busy on the painting/modelling front but I did have my first game of 2018 - another adventure into Jimland, which I'll be posting about next time!
In the meantime enjoy the cartoon on the left that I filched from the Interweb.






























That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit, apologies for the briefness and of course, as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated!