In Her Majesty's Name II

Yesterday I posted on In Her Majesty's Name.  I was lamenting the fact that the US Marine adventuring company appeared to have been removed.  My plan was to source minis on my own and use the build your own rules to build the company I wanted.  Happily, one of the authors commented and, very gently, let me know that I was wrong in my assumptions and that the Marines are still in.

Naturally this made me even more excited for the release.

Society of Thule from North Star Military Figures.

I haven't seen the miniatures for the USMC, but I like the styling of all of the companies revealed so far.  The tidbits given by Craig sound very interesting as well.

The USMC are one of the most advanced companies technologically with access to such wonders as mechanical walkers, rocket packs and the Edison Beam Translator.

This is, of course, pretty far from our actual history.  We've always been the government's step children.  We do more with less.  I'm looking forward to having a company that has these elite elements, but we'll have to see how that is achieved.  I may end up building my own company if the one in the book doesn't match my vision.

The Black Dragon Tong from North Star Military Figures.

Regardless, the quote above sounds freaking awesome.  I'm really looking forward to these models.  I can't wait to see how they play.  The blog, In Her Majesty's Name has a couple of battle reports that give a good feeling for how they play.  The first is from the perspective of the Black Dragon Tong while the second is from the vantage of the Society of Thule (pictured above).

People will be able to pick up their pre-orders at Salute this weekend.  For those of us on the left side of the Atlantic that means that, while we miss out on the chance to peruse the book ourselves, we should see reviews and battle reports popping up soon on blogs.

For those who can't make Salute, but don't want to wait until mid May, North Star has one more day of their  "Nickstarter".  I'll be honest here; I didn't back this.  None of the companies that are available right now appeal to me all that much.  This ends on the 18th, so not much time.  If you want the book and like any of the current companies than this is the way to go.

The game design appeals to me.  The Victorian era is really very interesting.  An age of exploration, exploitation and adventure.  Here is the design brief:

The rules themselves were based on the philosophies that:

1. They had to be simple enough to learn in an evening, but have sufficient tactical depth to keep us playing for a long time. Not quite KISS, but damned close.
2. The rules must reflect the spirit of the period. For example; Colonialism was seen as a civilising influence and there was considerable dismay at home when those being colonised chose to not cooperate.
3. We wanted to stick close to the science and engineering of the period. Yes, we would have some unusual technology, but it would be logical extensions of that being experimented with in that time.
4. We would include some of those mysterious powers so popular in the penny dreadfulls and dime novels of the period. However, no power would be allowed to dominate a game.
5. It had to be a game we would enjoy playing ourselves. With these in mind we began drafting the game.

IHMN is a game of covert action between small Adventuring Companies. Sometimes these groups are motivated by patriotism, sometimes by baser ambitions. They are often used as a deniable tool of foreign policy.

This sounds pretty good to me.