Larry Brom wrote TSATF in 1979, and 30 years later it’s still going strong with very little changes! Having played TTG’s Soldiers of the Queen* [SotQ] fairly extensively since it was published in 1987 (in my earlier wargaming years) until a long hiatus from all colonial gaming in the early 1990s, I was only introduced to TSATF in recent years for the first time…
* Not to be confused with the Victorian Military Society’s Journal “Soldiers of the Queen“!
Having found it refreshingly simple, fun, and exciting, yet also sufficiently historical and with that “right feel for the period” I have embraced TSATF as my current rules of choice for the period.
Walk wide o’ the Widow at Windsor,
For ’alf o’ Creation she owns:
We ’ave bought ’er the same with the sword an’ the flame,
An’ we’ve salted it down with our bones.
(Poor beggars!—it’s blue with our bones!)
Hands off o’ the sons o’ the Widow,
Hands off o’ the goods in ’er shop,
For the Kings must come down an’ the Emperors frown
When the Widow at Windsor says “Stop”!
(Poor beggars!—we’re sent to say “Stop”!)
Then ’ere’s to the Lodge o’ the Widow,
From the Pole to the Tropics it runs—
To the Lodge that we tile with the rank an’ the file,
An’ open in form with the guns.
(Poor beggars!—it’s always they guns!)
Pulp Gaming
This is a new interest related to Colonial gaming that I have planned – hopefully I’ll get into it in the near future. I have a few suitable monsters (like Mummies and such), and several personality figures (such as Holmes & Watson, Moriarty, & Sebastian Moran) compatible with my Colonial Victorian & early 20th Century troops for some ‘early pulp’ action (using TSATF)… And something like this could always be a laugh too!