TMWWBK - Some Trial Games

I've had 'The Men Who Would Be Kings' rules for many a year, but have never actually played a game with them. To be honest I can't remember why I bought them, but most likely it was just to have them in the 'Rampant' stable, for possible use in the future. Colonial games have never really piqued my interest, so they have sat on the bookshelf more or less neglected since purchase.

But with the aim to get more games in this year, now that I have the dedicated games room, I dug them out along with 'Xenos Rampant' and 'Rebels & Patriots' to see which one I wanted to use for some quick games to get back into the swing of things. R&P I was heavily involved in the playtesting of and XP could wait until my 'Aliens' were ready, so TMWWBK it was.

After a few quick read throughs and some rough forces knocked up, I set up a really simple table for a vanilla 'Encounter' type scenario, just to really get a handle on the mechanics, troops types etc. I wanted to use my mid-19thC ImagiNations forces, so all of the aforementioned was largely governed by this.

I didn't take any notes of the action and only a few photos, with my thoughts on the game etc to follow: 

The table with a nominal objective in the centre. The 'Germans' are on the left, the 'Italians' on the right.

Standard Line Infantry on the 'German' side.

Old ruins and a supply train make up the nominal objective.

Irregular Cavalry and Mounted Infantry (Dragoons) on the Italian left.

Irregular Infantry on the 'Italian' right.

Boths sides advance in skirmish order.

The 'Germans' close in on the ruins.

"We're not retreating, we're advancing in another direction". The 'Italian' Line Infantry take devastating fire and break having suffered massive losses.

The 'Germans' whose volleys saw the demise of the 'Italian' Line Infantry.

Depleted Irregular Cavalry charge the 'German' Line Infantry and are repulsed with losses, leaving them hors de combat.

A poor Rallying roll of a double 1 leads to the loss of another 'Italian' Line Infantry unit.

The rules used and considered.

Post Game Thoughts

Even though I had never played TMWWBK before, I'd say 90% of the mechanics seemed very intuitive as they share a lot with R&P and others from the 'Rampant' table, which made the game pretty easy to play. This certainly makes chopping and changing between the periods covered by Dan Mersey's rules very easy to do, which is a big bonus for sure. Anyway, some more detailed observations as follows:

• Previously I've played these sort of games on a 2' x 2' table and with half measurements but, having read the rules, Dan mentions that 15mm looks good on the standard sized table. So I thought I'd try a 3' x 3' one and it worked a treat. Moving forward I'm sure I will try this with the other rules too and possible on a 4' x 4' one as well.
• Both games were very quick and brutal, due to some excellent dice rolling to hit, some rubbish Rallying rolls and the odd minor mistake with the rules. I found that once a side had got fire ascendency and had opponents units pinned, then it was very hard for them to recover from that, which made it a bit one sided.
• Each game lasted about 30 minutes as it was all about the mechanics, but normally I'd reckon an hours play would see any scenario being played wrapped up, certianly when playing solo.
• Whilst the rules are OK for a simple battle like this, they really need a good scenario to make them work as, as can be seen from the above. So for my next games I will look for a scenario that I fancy playing to see how things go.
• For this game I kept the Leadership values at 6+ ( agood commander), but even then in the first game the 'Germans' just didn't get moving and got shot to bits as a result! Neither did I really explore the options for weapons and skills, but did note that the modern rifles as the default ones for Infantry were rather devastating due to their range. Obselete rifles might have been more in keeping with the period feel I'm after.
• Cavalry doesn't have much use it would seem, certainly when facing good Line Infantry, but against hordes of Tribal troops, they could be useful I'm sure.
• I think for Colonial games TMWWBK certainly fits the bill as one would expect, but I'm not sure they are giving me the feel I'm after. So next up I'm going to run some games on the same table with R&P that I'm much more at home with and spend some time of on force selection and scenario choice.

Thanks for reading and commenting too, as it's always greatly appreciated!

TTFN.