Her Majesty’s Government has a new lead on the whereabouts of the notorious Baron Maxim Volkov. Local spies in Cameroon have identified the notorious arms smuggler’s escape route into the deep jungle, after his bold escape from capture in the recently unsuccessful raid into that country. As luck would have it, the information is timely, as he was seen only two days ago by tribal hunters. New warrants have been issued and independent contracts in the dark arts have been brought into confidence. Adventurers and soldiers of fortune are now all on his trail. Whomever brings this dastardly Russian to justice will be handsomely rewarded. The game is afoot!
Time for another In Her Majesties Name Pulp game. I decided it was time for some jungle action, so I kept most of my buildings at home! This scenario would pit the players against the board and to a lesser extent each other. The scenario design was everyone for themselves. The mission was to locate the escape route taken by Baron Volkov and exit the board at that location to hunt him down. The player that exited location with the most models first would gain 20 points. In addition to the primary objective, each force rolled up their own secondary objectives (five players in all).
There were 16 markers on the table. Three of these were clues to point to the correct exit point on the board edge. The remainder were traps. The markers would be activated when a figure moved into contact. The clue would be determined randomly on a D10 roll for effect. On a roll of 1, a clue would be found. On a 2-4 swamp gas marker would be released, after its initial positioning, it would move randomly each turn, with each figure in contact taking a Pluck -2 to get knocked down. On a 5-7 they would find they stepped into quick sand and would have to take a Pluck test -2 to not be stuck (an additional -1 per turn their after). The model would have to be helped by another model to be able to take the pluck test. On a result of 8-10 they step into an ant pile of army ants and would have to take a pluck test to survive. If the three clues would not be rolled up, they would appear automatically at the last markers.
Once all three markers had been found, they would form a triangle, with the short edge being the base and the tip pointing to the exit point on the board.The attack would come until they moved from the spot. Starting on turn six, heavy storm clouds would appear, reducing maximum visibility to 24″, on turn seven the rain would start giving -1 cover to hit for all shooting attacks, on turn eight, the max visibility range would be reduced to nine inches and -2 visibility would apply. Starting on turn nine and until the game was over, D3 random lighting strikes would hit characters (randomly hitting any standing character).
The game started comely with each player ignoring one another and uncovering clues. The first clue was found quite early, with a number of models getting gassed, stuck or bitten along the way. However, the reserve could not hold and open combat started between the groups before all the clues could be uncovered, with the German Schutztruppe taking the brunt of the attention…
As each group tried to position themselves to get the upper hand on each other, the remaining clues were slowly uncovered as the rains first started. As luck would have it, the final to clues did not appear until the last two clues were uncovered!
With the direction now found, it became a mad dash for each player to exit their force intact. However, they slow withdrawal was interrupted by multiple lightning strikes! As US Marines and Colonel Smith’s rolled around in the mud and inch away from exiting, a timely lighting strike resolved the situation allowing Colonel Smith’s and his merry band to escape!
- Manteuffel