The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare: The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare has recently launched the Second Edition of its very popular Victorian Science Fiction/Steampunk rules - In Her Majesty's Name (IHMN).
Originally published by Osprey way back in 2013, it was the most popular of their wargames’ rules range until the arrival of Frostgrave. It was also the first to spawn two supplements. Well, time moves on and since then we at The Ministry have released a series of games based around the same core engine - Daishō (samurai), Blood Eagle (Viking / dark ages), Gothic (horror supplement for IHMN), and Thud & Blunder (high fantasy). With each iteration we have been improving the core rules engine based on playing the game ourselves, thousands of posts on various fora and direct feedback from hundreds of players.
For those unfamiliar with In Her Majesty's Name, it is a narrative skirmish game set in an alternative version of the late Victorian period which has undergone a second industrial revolution. ‘Modern engineering’ has produced high speed locomotives, armoured vehicles, airships and dirigibles, clockwork and electrically powered automata, mechanised walkers and much more.
The players field themed companies of five to twenty figures to carry out covert missions for the Great Powers or other, more shadowy, organisations. They engage in espionage, subterfuge, sabotage, robbery, and outright murder. Some are popular heroes, apparently noble and good. Others have embraced more villainous or darker paths. The companies have access to an immense armoury of weapons, armour, advanced equipment, weird science, strange beasts, specialised talents for individual figures, vehicles, automata, and mechanised walkers. A few can call upon mystical powers, based on those that our Victorian forebears believed might work.
When Osprey kindly released the publishing rights back to us, we decided to return to In Her Majesty's Name and apply all the experience we had gathered. As well as updating the core engine, we have included much new and improved material on vehicles, mechanised walkers, figure equipment, figure abilities and the like. The result is a 196-page, full colour hardback with accompanying digital edition.
Twenty-four example companies are included in the book, along with rules for creating your own themed company. Unlike some similar games, the costing system for all the above is completely open, allowing players to create and field their own companies with all their favourite VSF and Steampunk troops and equipment. The game is figure, scale, and base size agnostic and the only die you will need is a single ten-sider. Although our friends at North Star Military Figures have created a range of excellent VSF figures specifically for IHMN, players are not bound to them. The game also has a unique scenario system that combines scenarios, scenario complications and landscapes together to produce over nine thousand possible combinations. A fully detailed campaign system is included as well. The rules of play are easy to pick up and only cover eighteen pages of the book. In the participation games we run at shows, we can have players from eight years old to a hundred up and playing in under ten minutes.
One aspect that sets it aside from many others is that we believe that each player should be fully engaged in the game at all times. Thus, we do not follow to common IGO-UGO method. Instead, players roll for initiative. In each of a turn's three phases - Movement, Shooting and Fighting - the players alternate (in initiative order) in activating a single figure. So, every action counts. This mechanic removes the tedium of IGO-UGO and eliminates the need for complex reaction systems. Also, there is no roll required for figure activation, which often leaves less able troops doing nothing for turn after turn. In Her Majesty’s Name, and its sister books, give you the ability to field small companies of figures across compact table-sized battlefields, for battles that can easily be completed in an evening at a club.
The Ministry’s games are fully supported by its website (here), a dedicated board on Lead Adventure Forums (here) with thousands of individual threads, and its own very active Facebook page (here) The hardback book is now available directly from North Star Military Figures (here) and the digital edition from SnM Stuff (here).
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