“Midnight at the Oasis,Send your zombie camel to bed!”

Date- Wednesday 20th June.

Place -Back in Sunny Garvald.

     Welcome back to the show that never ends.

     Our hiatus from gaming came to an end with a foray into the world of The Silver Bayonet,a set of rules that El Presidente had laid his hands on an was eager to try out.An initial run had been tested the week before with Oor Andrew as the guinea pig and I’m led to believe went down well. I had seen them loitering about and thought this was good as any a time to indulge not expecting anything to develop.Wrong!-before we even had our pizza break I had ordered the rules. I must admit though the game does have a resemblance to In Her Majesty’s Name but set in Napoleonic times which did intrigue me a bit.

Three Tourist Postcards 

              I had seen that El Presidente had been painting Canadian figures for the game and therefore expected myself to be battling in the frozen north of Canada but alas no,the game was set in Egypt with of all people the French getting down and dirty with local inhabitants.

Skulking Abound.

Le Galant Francaise!”

    As I said the game was a tester for us to get used to the rules so when we kicked off we tried to use aspects of the game to understand the gameplay from shooting,hand to hand and the random event activations.Therefore the game kicked off in the usual manner with both sides heading for the cards that had been placed around the table,shooting at each other whilst we made our merry way.

Can’t see the card for the smoke.

Sheik Mahand shakes it loose.

           My French company(unusual choice for myself)consisted of an officer backed up buy a civy monster Hunter of sorts,a sapper and various infantryman.El Presidente’s company consisted of Sheik Mahand and various nefarious characters.

Honest,the sapper is there somewhere.

Avenging the fallen comrade.

    One of the vagaries of the rules is that the player with the initiative can only move half his company then the other player moves all of his company before the first player gets to move the rest of his company.Unusual but it does make for a more thinking game.So my French Lieutenant and no it wasn’t Jeremy Irons,headed for the first card to find it gave me an extra dice with which could produce extra monsters.Talking of monsters because we had just started out on this adventure we neglected to add in the random monsters to start therefore the initial stages of the game saw us just heading for treasure cards and shooting

Hiding in the well.

Still no sign of the sapper.

      Casualties were being incurred on both side with two of my minions biting the desert dust quickly taking two of the enemy with them though.The gameplay was looking easy until we remembered about the random monsters.As soon as we instigated this event we were confronted by a giant scorpion which came in the form of a funny looking big cat as El Presidente didn’t have any scorpions.Another thing to be added to next week’s shopping list.This immediately headed for Sheik Mahand’s right hand man who had ensconced himself in a well as you do.This gave my officer a chance to peruse some cards.My sapper had broken from the pack and headed for another card but started taken fire from a blunderbuss armed bad guy and taking a few hits into the bargain.My grenadier rush to his aid but really didn’t dissuade the blunderbuss much as very soon my sapper uttered “Sacre Bleau” and bit the desert dust.

There he is!Mort!

Quelle Surprise!A feline scorpion.

        My relic hunter unearthed another card but nothing of note.He then started taking fire from a half hidden blagard intent on doing away with the hunter. The Hunter tried to return fire but was out of range so he hid behind a palm tree instead.

“Out of my way!”

Thirty seconds earlier.

Meanwhile after a fair chase the big cat done away with Mahand’s man.I did whoop for joy but I think the cat must have heard me because immediately he began to chase my lieutenant.

A”zombie”camel attacks.

Time to vamoose.

      Now we added the monster roll and lo and behold monsters arrived-Zombie camels!Whit!(came the reply)do we have any?”Nope”came the reply “these’ll have to do.”So we had the sight of fully laden camels doubling as zombie camels attacking El Presidente’s minions.Game over I’m afraid.

Keeping a safe distance.

      Not a bad game which I would imagine will be better this week with more comprehension of the rules but alas no zombie camels.All figs,scenery and scenario provided by El Presidente.

      See you all when I see you.