Today our game of ‘The Men WhomWould be Kings’ took place between Joe and I. We went for 24 points as per normal and then after dicing for officers rolled on the scenario table. I was tasked by Wholsey to take the Fort at Khufurah which was sadly surrounded by lots and lots (it seemed) of enemy combatants.

Luckily for me the points of the defender dropped to eighteen causing Joe to lose his two cavalry units.

Left to right, are the guards, denoted by their red tunics( yes I know they didn’t wear then, but it let’s me see who is who). Next is a 9lb artillery piece, followed by a unit of Egyptians and finally the Durham’s. The officer in the guards was a brave chap, the Durham’s was as bald as a coot and sadly for the Egyptians their officer was rather useless. I had reduced the Egyptian points to 4 to allow the Guards to gain sharpshooter, hitting on 4+. The Egyptians ended up being poor shots as well as unenthusiastic meaning I needed to roll a 9 on 2D6 to get them to move at all.

The Guards headed off onto the left flank whist the Durham’s went right. The gun and Egyptians decided it was still breakfast and sat still.

A unit of Hadendowah bounded forwards and received volley fire as well as a clobbering by the gun. They made it no further and were destroyed to a man. The Ansar gun maneuvered to try and get a shot at the Guards but they moved out of sight, before the gun got a chance to fire.

The Egyptians eventually decided to move and were supported by the gun (who had had their cup of tea and jam on toast) and had already moved to support the right flank. The Ansar gun failed to fire and unfortunately was in range of the the Royal Artillery who made short work of it.

With the centre free of a threat, the Guards came right and the Egyptians bolstered by the presence of an elite unit bounded forward turn after turn, only to be halted by some sneaky chaps hiding in a mosque. Sadly they got no further as although Joe’s dice rolls were poor, they did enough casualties to cause them to turn tail and run for home. Sadly this meant the guards now got shot at too

On the right flank the Durham’s and gun made short work of the troops hiding in the trees

These two units then swung around the buildings to their front to support the Guards and threw everything they had at the Troops in the mosque… as I said, Joe’s dice were bad, mine in the other hand were not…

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The Mosque did not last long, neither did the troops inside. With a last gasp the troops in the fortification sortied out and made straight for the Durham’s. The brave Northern lads managed to wheel and meet the foe, bayonet to sword and spear. They took four casualties but Miraculously they held and actually pushed the enemy back, leaving the field open to volley fire and a clobbering by the gun.

All in all a good little game. First one in about 2 years.