Exhausted, but I accomplished my mission!

And so Cpt. Agesilao Fantoni did, after several hours of tense action in the valley of Wekiro!

The game played out exceptionally well. I took several pictures that I will include in the final AAR. As a teaser, I will liberally sprinkle a few in the present notes, just to whet your appetite!

Photo-op: Fantoni's Force poses for a picture before leaving Monkullo.

Many solutions I experimented for the first time contributed to a fantastic experience.

1. The integration of "Mythic Game Master Emulator" with "The Sword And The Flame" works smoothly, and added a lot of color and narrative threads to the "vanilla" game based on TSATF. Of course, there is room for improvement: the Random Event outcomes by MGME have a "fantasy" flavor that, with some work, can be corrected, so that the experience will feel more directly "colonial"; that said, it took very little effort to fold the random outcomes into a colonial narrative, thus, little complain here.


2. The terrain looked good. Really good. And so did the miniatures. Probably my best looking game ever. Heck, having a blog, and a digital camera, and attentive readers, really forces you into doing your homework!

   The valley west of Wekiro: "a narrow valley with steep mountains on both sides, and a dried creek bed at the bottom".



3. The story was solid, and, as I was hoping for, it opened several threads that might become the basis for a campaign, and future games.



Fantoni's force advancing toward the village.




4. It was a great idea to keep my computer on, and to jot down notes as the game developed. I have now several pages of a narrative that would make the AAR, hopefully, quite entertaining -- and not a chore as it is when I need to write everything from scratch one day or two after the fact.

Hostile presence in the village.

There were also a few, minor issues I was not completely satisfied with. As mentioned above, some of the tables in MGME may be improved, to provide outcomes whose interpretation is more straightforward in a colonial setting.

Abyssinian warriors holding the village.

Second, I didn't realize how rusty my TSATF memory was. I haven't played the game in quite some times, and I forgot some minor elements in the rules. Also, there were a couple of circumstances where I doubted how the situation should be handle, especially as far as point blank fire, and shaken and routing units are concerned. I need to brush up my TSATF for sure! Re-reading the rules tonight, after the action, will definitely help for the next game. Also, I'd like to make some personal notes -- flow diagrams to help my memory in dealing with a few cases.
Last but not least: as the game got going, I realized I was missing my d20 dice! They must have got lost in our recent move, as there was no way to find them anywhere. I'll tell you: playing TSATF 20th Anniversary Edition with one and one only d20 was a real pain! Likewise, one card was misplaced, but fortunately there was an easy fix and that problem did not have major consequence for the game.
A little regret for the missed opportunity to playtest "Colonial Adventures", which I did not have a chance to do today. Next time, I want to give these rules a try, definitely!

Abyssinian warriors meeting their fate charging the Italian infantry.

Next, I will work on an After-Action-Report. I may actually break it down in two parts, the first relative to the force entering the valley (in which RPG aspects will prevail), and the second about the fight with the Abyssinian bands (here it will mostly be a TSATF fight along the traditional standards.) And I need to sort through the several pictures of the game, to highlight the narrative. Busy days ahead!

Abyssinians charging the askaris.

[Apparently DestoFante Jr. is not due before next weekend, and all we have to do is sit down, relax, and wait... writing a detailed AAR may actually be very therapeutic!]

Cpt. Agesilao Fantoni enters the village followed by his troops.