Today Björn and me were playing a game of Triumph and Tragedy and I thought I'd give you a short report with a bunch of pics to go along.
The setting: The infamous slavelord Abdul Harim al Shakal and his gang of murderous slavers had just burnt down a village deep in Africa, killing all grown up men and old people. Now they tried to bring the valueable young slaves across the river and out of the tribe's territory. All they had to do was reach the banks and they'd be save and rich...
Of course villagers from nearby settlements rushed to rescue their friends and relatives. A deperate retreat action was on hand. Here we see the slavers and their packtrain of slaves leaving the burning village.
Yet even as they started their marsch towards the river movement in the trees to the right and to the left told Abdul Harim that this would be no picnic.
A group of natives armed with rather outdated muskets opened fire without any serious danger for the Arabs. The smoke of the firing line can be seen in the background just as the slave caravan descended into the jungle...
One rifleteam of the arabs opened fire on the approaching "savages" on the left, while Abdul Harim lead the second rifleteam into a charge against the musket wielding natives on the right.
Actually the secon picture shows the end of a second bloody melee fought on the right flank as a unit of spear-wielding natives charged the slave lords firing team after the latter had dispatched the inexperienced musketeers. However, things still looked grim, as another group of natives managed to dispatch the rifleteam on the left flank in what must be the most pathetic melee ever fought: the Arabs were vanquished after suffering only a single surpression marker and failing their morale check. They just seemed to have thrown their rifgles down and let themselves be cut to pieces.
By this time Abdul Harim was in dire straits: of his 39 men only he himelf, 4 riflemen and 5 guards of the pack train remained standing. Even though his team had more surpression markers than Venice Beach has sand, Abdul Harim bravely put himself into the line of charge of the bloodied yet victorious spearmen. He managed to deflect the assault and fell back to the river bank.
In the end he escaped and even brought the slaves with him - though in the last turn native bowmen cut down 4 of the 5 train guards. But one whip was enough to get the slaves to "safety" and misery. And, looking back, the profit now only needs to be split by 4 rather than 39 men. Not bad for a hard days work...
All in all it was a very enjoyable game and hard fought to the last turn. I realized that it's really worth being a little stricter on the measurement, as we had various occasions when half an inch were preventing the assaulting team to get everybody in for the first round. Thus the Arabs were lucky a few times not having to fight against superior numbers in every round.
I was for the most part really lucky with my moral checks (with the one notable exception mentioned above).
Oh, and Björn surprised me with a little vodoo on the side - as these two photos prove....
Well, that's it, I hope you enjoy the photos and the little story. I certainly di enjoy playing this wonderful scenario.