Every so often Chuck Kennedy comes up with a wild idea. This time, realizing that a hard-core group of organizers and early vendors normally show up on Thursday night before conventions, he decided to put us to the test. Why not have a Thursday Night Invitational? Several of us were double dared to participate in a game of “Devil’s Wind”-the Indian Mutiny Game favored by Chuck and our Treasurer Rickey Grice. And a challenge it was. After receiving a quick briefing from Chuck and Rickey I turned to Larry Brom and said “You’ve been outdone-these rules are even weirder than your!” Rickey Grice looks on as Rick Thomas, Larry Brom and Jon Laughlin plan their moves Of course one man’s “weird” is another man’s “Great!” Forty some years ago I got used to chance in wargames. After all, history is chancy. So is the universe (quantum physics and all that.) But I never got used to units running amok on “initiative” factors while everyone else on the board assumed the classic “thumb up butt” drill position. Rhett Scott makes an early move-he did better at last year’s RTT. Devon Thomas looks on. On the plus side the factors involved in determining how many “elements” a unit can execute made sense. And there are built in checks on extreme results. For example, no matter how many elements you get, and how high you roll, cavalry can only go 2’, infantry 1’ max. And no more than two elements per turn can be devoted to shooting. I opted for a command among the Worthy Oriental Gentlemen (WOGs). For decades, when playing rules I don’t trust, I’ve opted for the side I don’t really want to win. Not that I have anything against WOGS, but I figured that getting rid of the Raj 90 years early would kill their chances in the software industry. It did seem to me that we had lots of combatants along the trail the Brits were taking. With that in mind I adopted what I thought was a great strategy. My three bands of footmen and 6pdr gun took cover behind a substantial ridge and waited for the Queen’s troops to force their way down the pass. My boys hide behind a hill and try not to die gloriously With luck nobody important (e.g. my troops) would get hurt. I could collect a few rupees from the village headmen for saving their men. But no such luck. After Larry Brom got a troop of loyal Sowars wiped out and one of our flanking parties engaged the enemy artillery train the British advance stopped. Then my colleagues reacted by closing forward. A donnybrook resulted. That was what separated the men from the boys. By 1pm all the Brits and most of the WOGs had given up and gone to bed. And that’s when the going got tough! Abandoned by the British players, Rickey took over. Apparently he is the king of the Devil’s Wind Sharps. He rallied the tattered remnants. Larry Brom's Loyal Sowars prepare to die gloriously. Having lost the 62pdr elephant gun to the flanking party, he wiped out the last of that force and tore into the massed mutineers in the pass. It took us until 3:30 Friday morning to wear him down, and my payments from the village headmen were sharply curtailed. What a start for the new tradition! Back to Rebel Yell No. 26 Table of Contents Back to Rebel Yell List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by HMGS South This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com