A couple of ladies...

"I say! Girl!  Goodness, where are your clothes?" gasped Agnes O'Brien as she rounded the strangely sinister statue in Sir Lawrence Swann's garden in the Meon Valley.  The poor girl was practically naked except for a few barbaric trinkets and a very immodest loin cloth.  The girl looked back at her evenly, seemingly unashamed by her state of nakedness.  "Do you speak English?  Where is Sir Lawrence?"  The girl must be some sort of primitive savage who Swann had brought back from Egypt.  "Are you one of Sir Lawrence's dusky acolytes from Darkest Africa?  Are you, perhaps, a Hottentot?"  It was bad enough having to address a woman with no clothes on but one who just stood there and stared at you, as if you were the one prancing about in your natural state, was even worse.

"Nah, love.  I'm from Rovver'ive.  You ain't got a ciggie ave ya?" said the girl.

"What impertinence!" said Agnes, swatting the girl's rear with her parasol.  

"Ooh!  Do vat again!" grinned the girl.

Agnes retreated towards the house in some haste, wondering what else she was going to discover in Sir Lawrence's house.

*****

Mark Copplestone sculpted Foundry Darkest Africa lady and Egyptian Slave girl from new firm Dark Fable Miniatures completed last weekend.  The slave girl will serve double duty back in the Bronze Age.  The Sphinx was an unexpected present from the Old Bat who saw it in the aquarium section of the local garden centre.

In Her Majesty's Name - my first game: The Servants of Ra vs Scotland Yard

Somewhere in Hampshire: my forces lurk in the hamlet while innocent bystanders mill about unconcernedly

Alastair at Guildford Wargames Club very kindly offered me my first game of In Her Majesty's Name, which we played at the club night yesterday.  Now, I have very many sets of rules, most of which I have never played, so it is particularly satisfying to christen a new set.  Fortunately, Alastair is well aware that as a wargamer I am very much a painter and was very patient with me as I stumbled through these rules for the first time.  

Brontosaurus (1897) by Charles R Knight (1874-1953) One of my favourite dinosaur pictures when I was a child and nothing to do with IHMN - yet!

Firstly, I had to assemble my force and work out their mystical powers which I did while simultaneously watching the addictive Revenge of the Egghead on TV.  I am shocked at the low level of general knowledge that most people display on this.  Why enter a quiz show if you have no general knowledge?  If they'd all read Look & Learn when they were young, as I did, they would know a lot more stuff.  Of course, it does mean that my scientific knowledge, for example, doesn't really cover anything that has happened since 1974.  That's why they are still brontosauri in my mind.  

Anyway, we had agreed 250 points, which meant I could take most of the North Star company with the exception of the mummified priest.  Instead I took my newly painted (the kiss of death) Nubian as a Nubian guard for 25 points and a good investment he turned out to be.  I was a bit worried about this company because of the seemingly fragile nature of the cultists, of which I had seven, so I wanted the Nubian guard with his shotgun to give a ranged attack.  I had to quickly choose some mystical powers for Akhenaton, Sir Lawrence Swann and Zairah Al-Ghais.  Not knowing how they worked in practice I chose largely defensive powers such as clouding men's minds to try to ward off the long range weapons of the Scotland Yard men.  This was, indeed, effective and forced them into having to close into hand to hand combat; perhaps more than they would have liked.

Alastair's civilians mill around some crates of produce.  Probably rhubarb, rhubarb

We had an English rural set-up with a lot of well dressed civilians wandering around, thanks to Alastair's random direction dice, and generally getting in the way.  I deployed in the hamlet while Alastair's Scotland Yard men advanced through the fields, in two groups, with military precision. 

Pig alert!  Scotland yard advance in the distance as Akhenaton prepares to take cover.

Akhenaton took some of his cultists (all members of the Worshipful Company of Bankers -so no one cares if they die) over to protect his flank by the barn.  Alastair, who provided all the scenery and civilians had placed some livestock on the board too.  There was some discussion as to whether this should have been a steam powered pig.

Sir Lawrence urges Shabaka on behind the barn which would become the epicentre of the battle

After several turns of movement, where I sent more men to boost the right flank, Scotland Yard's redoubtable sergeant and Shabaka the Nubian faced off and exchanged the first fire of the game.  Alastair has played a few games of this and I had only had a quick read through the rules but it was very easy to pick up the basics.  The only thing we couldn't find (and I am sure it is in there somewhere) was what effect difficult terrain has on movement.  It is stated that there is a movement penalty for each of the three types of difficult terrain in the rules but while the shooting penalty is clear the movement penalty wasn't.

The inspector leads his men into the high street

On my left flank the Scotland Yard chaps soon shot most of my cultists and volley fire by the Special Branch put paid to one in the centre.  Akhenaton was safe because of his clouding men's minds power, which meant he could only be shot if in base to base contact, but he decided to retreat to the back of the barn anyway.  Shabaka successfully downed the sergeant but Dr Watson was on hand to use his medic's talent to revive him on the next move, annoyingly.  Things were not going well for the Servants of Ra.  I had lost four out of my eleven figures in two turns!

Brains vs brawn: Sherlock and Shabaka face off

Then I had a surprise!  One of the random civilian ladies turned out to be the consulting detective in disguise!  And he was right in the middle of my force which I had consolidated around the back of the barn.  He attacked Shabaka from the rear which was a bigger shock than holding off the assault from the constabulary with their electro-truncheons.  At this point I was down to just five figures while Alastair had eight still in action.  An enormous hand to hand brawl ensued with multiple attacks, shooting from melee and all sorts of other shenanigans.  This was where I discovered the almost invincible strength of Akhenaton.  He started to cleave through the opposition with his mighty Khopesh while the lovely Zairah did for Dr Watson.  Sir Lawrence, as all good cult leaders should, ran away and hid for most of this. 

Gradually, the tables turned and Scotland Yard started to lose more and more men as Zairah sliced through them like a Whirling Dervish and Akhenaton fended off the constables.  Holmes and Shabaka got involved in a massive slugfest which went on for turns while two Special Branch men went after the cowardly Sir Lawrence.  Outnumbered two to one he unexpectedly put one of his attackers down with a very unpainterly roundhouse punch.

Sir Lawrence goes on the attack 

Surprised by the eminent painter's aggressiveness the Special Branch man disengaged, only to have Sir Lawrence pursue him.  Meanwhile Akhenaton and Zairah attacked Holmes.  After a fight Holmes succumbed, as did Sir Lawrence.  The cowardly (sensible) Special Branch man fled the field leaving the hamlet to Akhenaton and Zairah.  A very rare wargames win for the Legatus!

Zairah rushes over to the fallen artist.  Can she revive him?  Will he ever paint a naked Egyptian slave girl again?  We'll have to see in the next game!

There is a reason that In Her Majesty's Name is selling like hot cakes and that is because it is an excellent, well thought-out game that even an idiot like me can pick up very quickly!  Although I thought the Servants of Ra would have no hope against Scotland Yard their key characters are tremendously strong and the game was very close.  A lot of thought has gone into the composition of the companies and all credit to Messrs Cartmell and Murton for this.  During the game, Alastair and I were thinking of all sorts of other scenarios and periods we could play with these rules and he is currently working on some African cannibals against which I could try to devise a Belgian Force Publique company.  So it could be IHMN in Africa next!  I have the new supplement Heroes, Villains and Fiends but haven't read it yet; something I will remedy shortly!

There is an interesting, recent YouTube video of Mr Cartmell discussing some possible directions the game might take, which is well worth a look.  Pulp and swashbucklers, possibly.  I'd be in for both of those!

Now I am enthused to get on and paint my next company.  I have started Scotland Yard so that will be next I think!  I don't think, from what he said during his video interview, that Mr Cartmell will be too pleased with the figures for an unofficial company I am working on.  Too many corsets and goggles!  

Thanks to Alastair for putting this game on and providing all the scenery.  It was actually a game that didn't get me stressed!  He is a very calming and convivial opponent!

Excellent fun and a highly recommended set of rules!

The Servants of Ra: Zairah

Here is Zairah from the Servants of Ra company.  This is a lovely, animated figure but her slim ankle is a weak point and she needs careful handling.

She was discovered by Sir Lawrence Swann during his two year stay in Cairo,  He introduces her, in London, as his draughtswoman and explains that she is someone who would copy Egyptian inscriptions, sculptures and paintings as source material for his magnum opus The Pharaoh Akhenaten and his court inspect candidates for the role of temple dancing girls purchased from an Akkadian slave trader.  A painting he is producing for the Worshipful Company of Bankers livery hall in Threadneedle Street.

"Just make sure there are lots of naked slave girls in it. And heaps of gold!" demanded Sir Paul Fudgge ("that's two gs, old man"), one of the richest but most unpopular aldermen in the City of London, who had commissioned the painting.

Although she is, indeed, a talented artist, Swann actually discovered Zairah dancing virtually naked in a brothel just a few streets behind his hotel, Shepheard's, in Cairo.  Sir Lawrence was surprised at the number of such establishments so close to Shepheard's and the recently renovated Grand Hotel.  He supposed the proximity of the Greek Consulate had something to do with it.  He needed a dancer who could be the centrepiece of his painting.  In  truth, he was looking for a Circassian dancing girl, as he supposed that they might be more likely to happily dispense with their clothes than the local lovelies.  When he saw Zairah, however, he knew he had found his model.  She had the most beautiful back he had ever seen and, indeed, her entire rear aspect was one of the great sights of Egypt. Or so he told himself as Zairah went through a series of artistic contortions for him in his room at Shepheard's, while he tried to capture her sinuous form on paper.  

He discovered both her extraordinary gymnastic ability and her skill with a blade when a trio of unsavoury locals tried to relieve him of his Breguet pocket watch in the narrow alleys behind the Khan el-Khalili souk.  Zairah, in a sudden flash of movement, disarmed one robber with a swift blow to his wrist and flicked the knife into the air with her foot before it hit the ground. She caught it, deftly, in her dainty hand and supporting herself on the shoulder of the astounded knifeman ran up the side of a wall to land a solid kick on the head of the thief behind.  A quick slash of the next man's cheek, with her recently acquired blade, sent the low life scum scuttling back into the shadows. 

Shortly afterwards, recovering over a strong Turkish coffee in Fishawi's coffee house, Sir Lawrence offered to employ Zairah full time as draughtswoman, model and bodyguard.  He took a room for her adjoining his, for the sake of propriety, although it had an interconnecting door which was never locked. 

One afternoon, as she stood on the small balcony overlooking the delightful garden at the rear of the hotel, she began to speak of a lost tomb discovered by a Turkish archaeologist.  An intact, possibly royal, tomb containing an extraordinary device covered in hieroglyphs linking it to Akhenaten himself. 

Having become fascinated by the pharaoh in the research for his painting, Swann was intrigued but sceptical.

"I would bet ten thousand pounds that there are no intact royal tombs in the whole of Egypt.  No one will ever find one. They have all been plundered by filthy Egyptians; either in antiquity or more recently, since Egyptology has become so fashionable!" he declared. "No offence about the "filthy Egyptian" comment, of course, young Zairah!"

"No offence taken.  The sponge bath you gave me this morning saw to that, anyway!" she giggled.

"How do you know this Turkish chap?" asked Swann.  Zairah raised one elegant eyebrow and looked at the floor.

"I see.  Best not to ask.  Perhaps I should meet the fellow!"

"Perhaps you should.   I will arrange it!"

The Servants of Ra: Rumblings in Hampshire

A gentleman with the hideously foreign name of Laurens van Zwaan would never have been completely acceptable in the more rarefied strata of English society. As Sir Lawrence Swann, however, the famous painter was welcome at every society occasion, with the embarrassing exception of Court, where her Majesty the Queen lately refused to receive him because of an increasingly dubious reputation.  She had knighted him only last year, on his return from two years painting in Egypt.  Now, however, the Queen Empress believed that an unmarried man such as Sir Lawrence should not be seen to be consorting with quite so many young, unaccompanied women at his Egyptian-decorated home in Hampshire.  Arguments that a famous painter of scenes of Ancient Egypt would need a multiplicity of young female models, to help him replicate the court of the pharaohs for the vast painting commissioned by one of the City livery companies, fell on haughtily deaf royal ears.  The word harem had been mentioned on more than one occasion.   Sir Lawrence's recent affectation of wearing a tarboosh, since his return from Cairo, did little to allay the Queen's suspicions of what might be termed "Ottoman" tendencies.

In the smoking room of the United Services Club in Pall Mall, Lt. Colonel "Eggy" Newman, who lived not far from Sir Lawrence in the Meon Valley, was telling of strange comings and goings, odd lights in the middle of the night and unearthly shrieks at the painter's house.  "The general feeling locally is that odd rites are taking place there. Arcane rites.  Heathen rites.  All to do with the chap's fascination with the Pharaohs.  Half naked slave girls and what have you."  He took an appreciative sip of his Taylor's 1868, from a vintage before the phylloxera blight ravaged the Douro a few years later.

"I say!" said Captain Jonty Smalme.  "How do you know all this?  Met the fellow in the Castle at Cowes this summer.  Seemed a perfectly decent chap for a foreigner, apart from not liking Stilton.  Thought the Dutch ate cheese all the time, what? Although I never quite know with the Dutch whether they are our friends or enemies.  Not like the French, of course.  Know where you are with the French. Fire on the uproll eh, Admiral?"  He glanced across at Admiral Troutbridge who was puffing on a large cigar and gazing into the middle distance. "But the Dutch?" Smalme continued.  "I know they gave us a king and what have you but didn't they give your chaps a good pasting a couple of hundred years ago?"  Smalme, who was very much the junior officer sat around the table and not eligible to be a member of the club, looked at Admiral Troutbridge realising that he might have just gone too far.  Too much port. Again.

"Dashed good chaps in a sea fight," replied the Admiral. "Strapping milk-fed gels.  Good at dykes.  Overrated cheese. Talk too loudly!"  He looked at Smalme pointedly.

"I think," said Newman, "that someone should come down to Hampshire and investigate his house.  Do a bit of a recce.  After all, Holland is right next door to Germany and he could be up to things a lot more sinister than having a few half naked bints running about."

"Perhaps some of the bints need rescuing..." ventured Smalme.

"Well done, Smalme.  I'll leave it to you to put a small force together. Strictly informal. I'm sure the Admiral can supply a couple of chaps from the Senior Service."

"You can count on it!" confirmed Troutbridge. "I'll get some fellows up from Pompey!"

"What?" said Smalme, realising he had been outmanoeuvred.  What had he let himself in for?

First two figures for In Her Majesty's Name

I sat down and painted these two yesterday.  The "Consulting Detective" from the Scotland Yard company and a cultist follower of Akhenaton from the Servants of Ra company.  Yesterday evening I also cleaned up and based the rest of the figures from these companies plus the Lord Curr's Company as well. Still two more companies to go though!

A number of issues have presented themselves, however.  The first relates to the quality of the figures.  Not the quality of the sculpting, I should add, which is characterful and excellent. There are two issues here.  Firstly, several of the figures have been slightly misaligned in the mould which necessitated more than a bit of filing and some actual carving with a knife to get the two surfaces aligned. Nothing fatal, but time consuming. Several figures were also pitted and all had quite prominent mould lines. The second issue is that the metal they are made from is quite soft (usefully given the above) but, as a result I am concerned for the durability of some of them.

Lord Curr himself brandishes a long and exotic gun but the top portion of this is very susceptible to bending to the extent that I expect it to fall off shortly. Likewise he dancer, Sairah, is connected to the base solely by one slender ankle.  She is also looking fragile.  The upshot here is that compared to the Perry and Aventine figures I am working on at present, they have used quite a low quality metal.

The final two issues relate to aesthetics.  A large part of my interest in these figures was because of Kevin Dallimore's splendid paint jobs on them.  Unlike historical military figures, however, you can paint them any way you like and, yet, Mr Dallimore's artistic choices are so spot on that you are tempted just to follow his colour scheme.  If you did, however, you would just end up with an inferior copy of his figures.  This became an issue with my very first cultist figure.  Everyone knows that Pulp cultists wear red but I didn't want to go down that route for the reason given above.  Red would be appropriate for these figures too because of  ancient representations of the Eye of Ra (depicted on the mummified priest figure).  Instead I have painted mine a sand colour (Humbrol 121) as they look appropriately Egyptian.  This is the colour I use for my Sudan bases as it is very close, coincidentally, to the colour of the sand in Egypt and the Sudan, as you can see from my profile picture further down on the left.  The turquoise-blue shade is going to be used throughout this company to reflect the lapis lazuli used in a lot of ancient Egyptian jewellery.  I have decided not to attempt to paint the Eye of Ra symbol on their tunics as this would be beyond me.  I am amused to see that Mr Dallimore has used the Stargate version of this ancient symbol rather than anything more archaeological.

This wasn't such an issue with the Sherlock Holmes figure as a grey coat and deerstalker are common.  Jeremy Brett wore something very similar in a number of his Sherlock Holmes episodes.  I thought that the figure looked enough like the late Mr Brett to give him black gloves which he wore so often in the superb ITV series.  The other civilians, also, will be easier to de-Dallimore and I am currently researching late nineteenth century gentlemen's clothing which is rather more colourful than formal wear today.

The second aesthetic issue is more fundamental.  How do you depict the figures' bases when they may be deployed in both urban and rural settings?  Earth and grass would look odd inside a building (I am having grandiose thoughts about attempting to construct a museum interior).  Equally, a paved surface would be strange in the country.  So I have left the bases as a compromise bare earth.  I'm still not sure on this one.  My daughter says that obviously I need differently based figures for the different environments!  Given it took  me around seven hours to paint these first two I don't think that that is likely.

So, I have some more time today so try to get some more prepared.  All in all they are very enjoyable to paint but take a lot of time as I am using four or five shades rather than my usual three.  Watson is under way so maybe one of the young ladies next!