Cartington takes Charge.

   The explorers - L to R, Fred, Henry, Doc, Al and Bertie.

After the turmoil of having the plumbing done and engineers fixing the central heating my wargaming endeavours have just about returned to what passes as normality.
It was of course time to return to another adventure in Jimland.
After the very successful previous Warton-Cartington expedition, the party was able to afford to outfit the largest expedition to date.

The 'large' starting expedition

Warton and Cartington were both able to expend a point each on one of their 'stats; I chose to bring up each of their save rolls to '15'.
The expedition would have five explorers, five Askari and ten bearers, all of the latter carrying food,
Joining  the expedition were three new Explorers, each with identical stats, a '10' in their respective field; a save roll of '12'; a shoot of '6' and a fight skill of '5'.
 New explorers cost a base $23 (giving 23 points to be spent on the three skills above), plus the cost of their respective field (normally $25), so losing an explorer is an expensive business.

Setting up the terrain for the first acton

One of the 'joys' (read drudgery) of gaming is setting up the game,  terrain figures, etc. in the first place, as I'd had the recent disruption to my gaming activities,this would take longer than I'd normally like - almost as long as the game itself !
So, onto the game itself:

From the journal of Frederick Carrington:

"After a brief sojourn at Jim's Landing I opted to lead our second expedition into Jimland noting that the abbreviation C/W expedition was far more pleasing than the W/C expedition!"

Adding the expedition and terrain

"We were joined by Jonathon Stannington MD, (a medical chap) Professor Alyosius Addycombe (a botanist of note) and  Bertand Balmoral , a Fellow at the Royal Institue of Biology.
My plan was to follow the trail SW to the coast, then follow it along until our food supplies forced us to return by a similar, parallel, slightly  more Northerly route".

"We reached the end of the trail on day one and were set upon by some rather rude Natives that tried ambushing us, but Henry had scouted their position well and we were ready for them!"

The column, rearranged to recieve the the Natives

" Of course we soon aw them off, having formed a firing line on the far bank We did lose an Askari, foolish chap, caught stuck in the mud and unable to free himself."
One of our bearers though also stuck even manged to kill one of our assailants."
"Our firing line took toll on the natives and they ran off. 
The furore of the Melee disturbed one of those large vicious arachnids that seem so prevalent in Jimland, but he took little interest in us and soon scuttled off."

The on-rushing natives (bottom right in case you hadn't noticed)

 "There was a village in the area,  , that the natives had emerged from and Al, even found time to find some new boring plant."

Natives still on-rushing but losing a man

Quite a first day!"









"The next day we discovered that the, by now, usual "Drums in the Night" still managed to scare one of our Askari off - superstitious whatnots."

The melee - Natives lose one man and an Askari falls victim to a club whilst a large spider makes an appearance

Losing another two men to rifle fire, the Natives runaway (top right)

"By day four one of our bearers was found to have been struck down by a fever.  It was decided not to touch any of the ten rations he carried"

And the spider runs off too.

"The next few days, saw Al, being particularly boring, finding another new plant species and Doc Stannington finding a Native snare, much to his chagrin, as he died from the strangulatory effects.
We shall have to see if we can find another Doc."

"There was evidence of an attempt at pilfering one night, but they were probably looking for trade good, of which we had none. The very next day a brush fire erupted in camp, with yet another Askari loses his life
. What is wrong with these chaps ?"

"With food supplies (and Askari) being very diminished, I decided to head for Jim's Landing arriving there 11 days after we had left."

The C-W expedition route.

Playing the game (bar the prep) only took about an hour as there was only the single engagement and overall the expedition achieved abut the same as the previous one, point-wise. (275 point this one; 297 the previous one). The loss of the Doc was a blow, but the other two newbie survivours won't have to be 'paid' for again, so overall a profit was made!
I've  also tried a new format for the write-up - input always welcome.
I still enjoyed the game, but look forward to the time when I have another party (player) for my native forces to pick on!

That's it then for this week, the painting of my Dervish forces goes on unabated and at the rate I'm going, all the 'fuzzies' should be just about finished by next week.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.