Game Report: Mountbattens Notebook

[Andy in Germany]

Finally, after many years of making stuff and months of organising, all the ingredients for a game were in the same place at the same time. Despite having many months to get everything ready I still hadn't finished my "main" league so we ended up with two others I'd painted as "practice", some buildings made some time ago, and a fair bit of improvisation. The story had to be made up based on the leagues available...

It's about 1938 in somewhat different world to our own. The First World War ended in 1916 after intervention by Woodrow Wilson. Germany only unified in 1871 dissolved into its former states. One of these, Hohenzollern is a tiny slip of mountains just north of Switzerland, which has made an export industry in supplying well trained mercenary soldiers to anyone willing to pay.

Meanwhile King Edward VIII has refused to abdicate after marrying Wallace Simpson and after the cabinet resigned offered sir Oswald Moseley the opportunity to form a government. This Moseley did with disastrous results. One of his "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, a close friend of the king, and answers to no-one.

Mountbatten was recently on the Island of Ascension, which has become something of an Atlantic  transport hub in recent years, and left behind a notebook containing details of some of his more nefarious activities, and 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. I was playing with Eldest Son; for both of us this was our first PA game ever so we were working it out as we went along helped out by the rule book and several YouTube videos. Elder Son was playing the Hohenzollern Guard (L) and I was playing the "Auxiliary Police" (R) Plot points are marked with orange markers, with the primary point hidden in the "Control Tower"



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 board Lieutenant Gunning  is making a more professional approach.



Overview of the game at the end of turn 1: Hohenzollern team advancing at left.



Both sides trying to get the high ground. It looked good for the Auxiliaries until the Hohenzollern Sniper took out their man on the water tower. the remaining Auxiliaries decided they were not getting paid enough to rush the control tower and lurked by the steam monowheel, aiming for the secondary plot point.



Meanwhile the Sargent of the Hohenzollern team was advancing on the control tower, taking a secondary plot point as they did so, Gunning took another plot point and a loud and remarkably ineffectual firefight ensued.



Suddenly Pvt. Danner, the Hohenzollern sniper was injured. Captain Von Witzleben shouted at him to get to a medic. Colonel Oliver apparently decided that with no sniper any danger was largely past and his opportunity for promotion had come. He ran across the open ground and hid behind the noisome privy, passing a perilous area challenge to do so. The Hohenzollern Lieutenant, despite having the embarrassing name of Louis Alfred Oscar Muldner von Mulnheim  had just very competently passed a perilous challenge to smash a window and climb in but Oliver didn't realise this; otherwise he'd have sent an Auxiliary.



Suddenly everyone was converging on the Control Tower; the Auxiliaries ran across on their side, and Sargent Lühring came to back up the Lieutenant, while Captain Von Witzleben, seeing Oliver approach the door, leapt onto the bonnet of the van and fired at the Colonel. Remarkably Oliver survived but it alerted the Lieutenant to the danger...



Oliver, coward as ever, tried to play the "Disarmed" card, but Lieutenant von Mulnheim had his "Free Pass" ready, and delivered a Haymaker blow causing the Colonel to fall clear off the veranda, after which Oliver decided that promotion or no promotion he would make a tactical retreat and left the scene.

Now that he had the journal, Lieutenant Mulnheim was ordered to get out of the area, while Private Danner and Sgt. Lühring came to support Capt. von Witzleben.



He hesitated but then the Sargent shouted something in German through the window and he legged it; no-one is sure what the sergeant said but he looked more scared of her than anything the auxiliaries could manage.



With their object achieved the mopping up began. One Auxiliary ran into the control tower expecting to meet a young Lieutenant and instead was confronted by pvt. Hoepner, as nasty a surprise as could be imagined. Meanwhile Lieutenant Gunning fount himself between Sgt. Lühring and Capt. Von Witzleben.



At this point anyone sensible would have retreated but Gunning decided this was the time o settle old scores and took a wild swing at Lühring, who blocked it and landed a few blows in return.

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Meanwhile Hoepner punched Whitehead so hard he not only fell out of the door but off the balcony.

Lühring and von Witzleben expected Gunning to retreat, but enraged he kept fighting back was he trying to re-enact Jutland, or just angry at being hit by a female Sargent? Unable to disengage they had to keep going and hope to knock him down but he kept soaking up the punishment.



In the end, just as Whitehead returned to the fray, Lühring and von Witzleben managed to subdue Gunning, and retreated with Hoepner, leaving Whitehead to remove his Lieutenant from the area.

The end result was that Mountbatten's Journal was captured and the secrets contained therein will hopefully be transported to the Hague for analysis of the contents, while Colonel Oliver worked on a highly imaginative report to blame his subordinates for the failure of his mission...

Elder Son hand I had a great time: he told me later he'd been a bit concerned that he wouldn't enjoy the game but had found himself getting more and more into it until the end. We missed a lot of things, and forgot to use some fortune cards and skills on the character cards, but had a great time, so another game will probably appear soon.

Thanks to those on here who provided suggestions and encouragement until we finally got together to play the game, it was well worth the wait...

[commissarmoody]

Seems like a fun game. And I enjoyed the background for the setting.

[FramFramson]

Seems like great fun. The not-Blackshorts getting repeatedly walloped off the balcony was all very cinematic, which is PA at its finest, really.

[marianas_gamer]

Sounds great fun! Quite a number of cinematic moments 

[Andy in Germany]

Seems like a fun game. And I enjoyed the background for the setting.

I'm glad you liked it. We've developed quite an extensive backstory for Ascension: in our imagination it's become a real international crossroads and a haven for sailors, traders, spies, gangs, adventurers, cons, opportunists,  anarchists, and possibly the more insane kind of physicists. I need to work on some new buildings and paint a few more figures too...

Seems like great fun. The not-Blackshorts getting repeatedly walloped off the balcony was all very cinematic, which is PA at its finest, really.

Sounds great fun! Quite a number of cinematic moments 

Thanks: we were pleasantly surprised how the game resembled the old Pulp videos that we've been binge watching the last few weeks; the punchups at the end were getting ridiculously intense.

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Looks like a wonderful game. Great back-story too!   

[CapnJim]

Great game and report!  Sounds like the kind of game I would have enjoyed. 
I'm sure Col. Oliver will paint a pretty picture of himself...

[aircav]

Cracking game, fantastic background too 

[Andy in Germany]

Thanks for the comments. We had a couple more games on the same general theme. The First was the "Secret Monowheel"



This was "Smash and Grab" again, this time with the main plot point being a MacGuffin on the Monowheel, defined as "Pressure hoses" through die rolls.



Once again Elder Son took the "Hohenzollern Guard" and I had Colonel Lawrence's "Auxiliaries" He's the strategist and I'm the storyteller so this works well.

Things were going well for the auxiliaries and they somehow got control of the main plot point without being clobbered, possibly because I'd spread the followers around a bit more with the leader and sidekick.

Then the Auxiliary who had the plot point decided to escape with the van; because we wanted to see how the "vehicle" rules worked. After a brief mix-up then we remembered that on a British vehicle is of course accessed on the left of the vehicle (Look, I lived here 20 years and learned to drive here too, gimme a break), and we set off.



Unfortunately I then realised my cunning plan wasn't going to work, because you can't drive through a "perilous area", so the van would have to pass the monowheel, while being shot at by several of the Hohenzollerns. At this point, all the Auxiliaries had got in or on a vehicle; some were in the van and Col. Lawrence had decided that with the main plot point taken he would escape on a motorcycle parked behind the "Kitchens".



Meanwhile Pvt. Danner, apparently he recovered from the last skirmish, was on the water tower. This time however, he had become the terminator and as refusing to take any injury despite everything the Auxiliaries were throwing at him. At the same time he was passing out merry hell on a democratic basis.

At this point everyone was shooting at the truck, and Sgt. Lühring damaged it and it spun out of control in a random direction...



...then it crashed.



Lühring jumped down, took out the driver and gained control of the MacGuffin and another plot point, much to the consternation of the other auxiliaries (except Col. Oliver who was busy running away, again.).



As this was the end of move 6 they was nothing they could do, so the Hohenzollern Guard won the day once more...

We had another game later, and we're going to work to make a few changes:

The Auxiliaries have too many 'followers' (3), and only one 'ally'. This because they're supposed to be "thugs in uniform" but it makes them too weak to be effective, which makes the game predictable. I also get some of the followers confused occasionally. I'm going to change the League so they are more diverse (oh, the irony) and include army and female figures, to represent a group drawn from thugs rather than a naval unit. It may also change to a "mastermind" league but that's for later as I frankly have enough trouble with five characters.

The remaining navy figures will become a smaller league of "Royal Navy Air Service Police"; Ascension was officially a "Stone Frigate under the navy classification and as such the Navy would have had responsibility for the police force. With the civil war in Britain this hasn't changed so the tiny police force is now responsible for policing a rapidly increasing and stratified population. I've a few ideas for other leagues who will keep them very busy...

Also, the best game was still the first one which included a lot more fisticuffs and characters traversing through doors and windows at speed. I'm going to start building the "warehouse district" as soon as the Christmas shenanigans are over so we have a greater variety of buildings, with lots of interior details of the kind that thieves, spies and other characters will be interested in, which will hopefully result in a lot of characters having to abandon their firearms and give (or take) a good thumping...

[DivisMal]

Your games look pretty nice and especially the first had an awesome narrative! Lobe to read more.

[Vagabond]

This all looks pretty good to me, hope to see some more of the shinanigins on Ascension Island. The back story is great, leaving lots of room for new scenarios.

[CapnJim]

Another lovely report.  Well, the report itself, I mean.  Not the outcome, necessarily.