In the last weeks before Christmas Elder Son and I finally organised a tabletop game using all these bits and pieces I’ve been building up for months. I’d been preparing for a game based on the old ‘Pulp’ serials of the mid 20th century which appealed because it is more about storytelling than tactics. Equally important, it’s very over the top to the point of silliness which suits my sense of humour.
I’ve been painting several groups of swashbuckling heroes and dastardly villains but ironically I’d procrastinated painting my ‘main’ team for this story and they were still not finished. We ended up with two others I’d painted as ‘practice’, the buildings I’d finally finished last month, and a fair bit of improvisation. The story had to be made up based on the teams available…
It’s about 1938 in a somewhat different world to our own. The First World War ended in 1916 after intervention by Woodrow Wilson. Germany, unified for a mere 49 years, dissolved after the war, returning to a patchwork of small states. One of these, Hohenzollern, is a tiny slip of mountains just north of Switzerland. Technically part of Prussia but far from the rest of the country it has declared independence and in the decades following 1916 it made an export industry in supplying well trained mercenary soldiers to anyone willing to pay.
Meanwhile, in the UK, King Edward VIII has refused to abdicate after marrying Wallace Simpson, causing the British Government to resign. Edward promptly asked his friend sir Oswald Moseley to form a government. One of Moseley’s ‘initiatives’ was the Auxiliary Police, a paramilitary organisation drawn from current and former servicemen to act as political enforcers. This mysterious force appears to be under the direct control of Lord Mountbatten, another close friend of the king, and answers to no-one.
Far away from these events, the tiny mid Atlantic island of Ascension, formerly a backwater of the empire, has become a major transport hub for the new-fangled airships. Mountbatten recently passed through the island on one of his many tours of the Empire, and left behind a notebook containing details of some of his more nefarious activities. He has sent a group of “Auxiliary police” to recover it quickly.
However, the League of Nations, keen to have evidence on Mountbatten’s wrongdoings, sent a small squad of the Hohenzollern Guard to recover the evidence. The two teams meet in the Royal Navy Aerodrome at Wideawake on Ascension island…
Game setup. Elder Son was playing the Hohenzollern Guard (L) and I was playing the “Auxiliary Police” (R) The orange squares are the objectives for each team, five in all. The players have to move a figure to an objective then pass a random challenge to win it. The main objective, “Mountbattens Notebook” was in the “Control Tower” and worth double the amount of points. The team with this point after six moves was the winner. The action on the table was, as expected, accompanied by a lot of theatricals from the players.
The Auxiliaries edge their way onto the scene with their (in game) leader, the arch coward Colonel Lawrence Oliver. As usual he’s insisted on bringing a couple of men with him, and as usual he is using them as a shield.
Meanwhile on the other side of the aerodrome Lieutenant Gunning is making a more professional approach.
End of round one. Hohenzollern moving in from left, Auxiliaries lurking top right.
As well as die rolls, we can play cards to try and make life more difficult for each other. In this case I attempted to slow Sgt Lühring so she couldn’t reach the first goal, but she easily passed the ‘Finesse’ test with a die roll and carried on.
On the other side of the board the Auxiliaries were doing well with a sniper on the water tower, until Pvt. Danner of the Hohenzollerns hit him with a lucky shot.
The remaining Auxiliaries, now without covering fire, lurked in the shadow of the monowheel. Col. Lawrence was shouting at them to stop being cowards, although his voice was muffled as he was hiding behind the water tower at the time.
Meanwhile Sg. Lühring and the Hohenzollern Lieutenant, who had the unfortunate name of Louis Alfred Oscar Muldner von Mulnheim, were advancing on the control tower, picking up a secondary objective as they did so.
Lieutenant Gunning took another secondary objective for the Auxiliaries and a loud and remarkably ineffectual firefight ensued.
Suddenly Pvt. Danner, the Hohenzollern sniper was injured. At the same time, Lieutenant von Mulnheim had just smashed a window and climbed into the control tower itself.
With no sniper any danger was largely past and Colonel Oliver decided that his opportunity for promotion had come. The Colonel ran across the open ground and hid behind the control tower privy, ready to run into the tower and claim Mountbatten’s notebook for himself. von Mulnheim, unaware of the danger, was about to reach out and retrieve that very notebook…
Who will get the notebook first? Will the rest of the Hohenzollern Guard reach their comrade in time, or will he be overcome by the Auxiliaries converging on the tower? Come to that, will Colonel Oliver be overcome by the smell of the Privy? Find out in the next thrilling instalment of “Mountbatten’s Notebook.”