Winning by a Tray!
We’ve been taking a break from all things Ninja for a while, well gaming wise anyway. Construction on the Samurai village goes on at a pace with numerous new buildings completed, the walls for the Samurai compound constructed and work started on the Samurai castle. I’ve a load of peasants and thugs to paint up yet for the demo but we have a little time.
So what could be more different than Ninjas? Victorian Steampunk of course! Taking advantage of the pre-release copy of In Her Majesty’s Name, we thought we’d give the game a test. A full report will be in a future issue, probably WSS 67 after we’ve had a boxing match to determine which reviewer is going to review it!
Before this clash of the reviewing titans will occur, I thought I’d sneak out our review copy and give it a go down my local club. A couple of players had their games cancelled so instead of the two players we had planned we had five (Dan, John, Si and Pat) including myself! Thankfully ‘In Her Majesty’s Name’ has provision for this; there is no reason why you can’t fight a five way battle.
We set up the table with a pyramid in the middle, the lost tomb of Nefertiti, now surrounded by lush tropical jungle, hungry lions and angry natives. Each of the players took 100 points of characters from the lists. Three went for Explorers and John wanted to play Moriarty and his henchmen, so we used the Brick Lane Anarchists for them.
The game started easily enough with each side cooperating to shoot down the natives and lions. I controlled the natives and gave them reinforcements depending on how bad the puns were on the table. The worse the African themed puns, the more reinforcements the natives received! One of lions charged a female anarchist only to be knocked out in melee! Despite picking off several natives, they still kept coming (obviously enraged by the bad puns!).
The players soon realized that only one group would go off the table with the treasure, and therefore started making alliances and taking potshots at each other. Two groups hung back and started sniping at everything while the other two engaged in a swirling melee for the tomb entrance, allowing the natives to catch up. One of Moriarty’s men snuck into the tomb only to find a very angry Nefertiti Mummy who wasn’t at all pleased at being disturbed!
With the Mummy dispatched and most of the natives defeated, only two players remained, Moriarty and his anarchists having been defeated by a combination of back shooting and natives. One big-game hunter with his trusty rifleman (played by Dan) and another big game hunter with his manservant (played by Patrick), who had done a sterling job of defeating three natives single-handedly with only his serving tray!
The final showdown saw Dan’s team legging it with the treasure to the table edge while Pat’s team sniped at them. Dan became entangled in a melee with the last few natives, which allowed Pat’s team to close and join in the fight. In the last moments of the game, Dan’s big-game hunter went down to native spears while Pat’s manservant beat the last of Dan’s opposition with his tray. A win for Pat!
Overall we found ‘In Her Majesty’s Name’ a very enjoyable game. There will be a full report in our next issue - if we can resolve who’s going to have the review copy that is!
