Sergeants Three

We played a Gunga Din scenario at Das Krieg Haus last week. I haven't seen the film since university, but it was the GM, Devon's, favorite, and he even had miniatures of the stars for us to play. It's been a long while since I've gotten in a game of The Sword and the Flame. The blocky but attractive setting:

Some of the simpler building were made by Devon's grandfather,
a nice keepsake!

One of the objectives - fallen telegraph poles which I had to raise
to request reinforcements.

In the film, starring Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks and Victor McLaglen, Kipling's "Sergeants Three" find themselves holding off a swarm of Thuggee cultists. (I asked if there was a miniature of Indiana Jones about, and there was!) I got McLaglen, AKA Sergeant McChesney. Each sergeant had ten Indian troops, Guides I think, and a bhisti. The bhistis allowed a roll against a D8 for wounded troops. 1-3 dead, 4-6 no result, 7-8 recovered. I'm sad to say nearly all our attempts got the wounded men inadvertently killed, to the point that at moments of crisis we were actively hoping for it so that we wouldn't have to carry them out of reach of the enemy! (In TSATF, Colonial troops take morale checks when wounded men are killed by natives, but two men assisting one wounded man aren't available for the firing line.)

The combat result table was simplified; in particular, British
shooting is better. Normally the best is 7 or less on a D20.

A typical result. Devon uses squares of red felt to denote the 
resting places of casualties - a handy way to make it look more
like a battlefield without cluttering the table with figures.

That's Ballantine's squad above, patrolling the town while mine fixes the telegraph lines and Cutter secures a supply building. Thuggee appeared in random buildings to pester us. The theory was that this would be like a zombie film, with enemies increasing in number as ours sank, but in practice we were lucky enough to not have more than we could handle for most of the game.

My squad were attractively painted with fur trim on the coats.

They succeeded, with random rolls, at raising the
telegraph poles and calling for reinforcement.

Despite the bad guys raining fire on me and eventually killing
both McChesney and my bhisti.

My survivors went off to help Ballantine, but ended up having to 
hide in cover until our relief under Higginbotham turned up.

Some of the opposition.

I love this figure and its enormous sword!

Cutter beseiged on the Residency roof.

While casualty-burdened good guys limp down the street.

Did I mention I was surrounded?

Higginbotham arrives, and my leaderless squad hastens to
join him.

Cutter, meanwhile, assisted by dynamite, has done enormous damage.

Ballentine and Cutter escape the board ahead of hordes of unhappy cultists.

End game - (most of) the Indian Army chaps have escaped,
leaving a lot of frustrated or dead Thuggee.

This was basically like the smaller-skirmish version The Sword in Africa - with only four players (one for each squad) and a GM trying to kill us. I was surprised that it went so well on such a small scale, but Devon removed all unnecessary mechanisms and ran the game at a fair clip. We all enjoyed ourselves, and there were, appropriately, plenty of cinematic moments. I don't think any of the bhistis survived, though, nor were they much help! A fine and atmospheric game.