The Men Who Would Be Kings is a set of rules designed for fighting
historical or Hollywood colonial battles in the mid- to late-Nineteenth
Century, from the Indian Mutiny to the Boxer Rebellion. Large scale
colonial clashes tended to be one-sided affairs, but there are countless
reports of brief, frantic skirmishes in every colonial war--where either
side could be victorious--and these are the battles that The Men Who
Would Be Kings seeks to recreate. Although focusing on the British
colonial wars against the Zulus, Maoris, and others, these rules will
also permit players to explore the empires of France, Germany, and other
nations, as well as allowing for battles between rival native factions.
Gameplay is very simple, and is driven by the quality of the officers
leading your units, in the true spirit of Victorian derring-do and
adventure, where larger than life characters such as the (real) Fred
Burnaby and the (fictional) Harry Flashman led their troops to glory and
medals, or to a horrible end at the point of a spear tip.