In Her Majestys Name

Bought these rules shortly after trying Empire of the Dead and not really getting on with them.  For the price I felt that they were worth a look.  On reading them through them I got very excited and sent off for a couple of North Star box sets, Lord Currs Company and The Servants of Ra.  Played a couple of games with long time gaming pal Philip recently.  He had sneakily played a game or two already and even bought a set of North Star figures for himself.  

For the first game Philip was using the Black Dragon Tong and I was using Lord Currs Company.  We were using the boxed sets from North Star that we had had painted by Matt Slade of Glenbrook Games.  We kept this simple and set up an Objective scenario on a countryside layout, with a central ruined castle feature.

View from Lord Currs end of the table, mid-game

It was a steep learning curve for me.  Most of Lord Currs men are shooters and not much good in hand to hand.  I moved them up to the centre of the table very quickly, met the Tong and got soundly thrashed by the sword wielding fanatics.  We did forget a few factors here and there and penalised characters for firing in combat as well as into combat.  We also found out that some form of markers are required to record who has activated, moved, run etc as it is impossible to remember what over twenty characters have done.  We used MDF bases, suitably marked.  All in all it took about 3 hours to play through but we were finding our way with a new set of rules.  We had a lot of fun and the rules really allow a story to be told.  Very much a character led game.  The rules are simple enough not to get in the way and when there is any doubt as to how they should be played common sense steps in.  

     Lady Felicity bites off rather too much (L) and all thats left of Lord Currs company (R)

For our second game I used my recent purchase of Scotland Yard (again painted by Matt Slade) and Philip used his new vampire hunters (crossbows, guns and big knives plus two huge dogs).  No photos of this game unfortunately.  This time the battle as fought around an English village, with the Marked for Death scenario.  Both leaders spent a lot of time at the rear while the minions fought it out in the centre but eventually the Vampire Hunters got the upper hand and Sherlock (acting as Leader for Scotland Yard) was defeated.  My shooting was largely ineffective due to combination of movement and cover factors but the bobbies electric truncheons proved useful.  So far its looking like hand to hand fighting is the way to success.

Philip has been busy buying more companies to thrash me with and I am reading the first IHMN supplement, "Heroes, Villains and Fiends".  Full of inspiration for new companies.  More on this later.