Muskets and Tomahawks: First Impressions

last Friday I was invited to Muskets and Tomahawks at a friends house.  So I packed up my Indians and rules and headed out.

initial setup of the board

We arrived just ahead of the crowd(there ended up being 8 of us), and Craig (the host) had set up a wonderful looking table.  He included a log cabin settlement at one end of the table, and a  Indian village(which you may recognize) at the other end.  Taking both the settlement and the Indian village were the french Main objectives.  the British had to keep them.

British regulars and grenadiers defending the settlement

No one had played the game yet, but several of us had the rules handy.  Dan and I had read them thoroughly. Fortunately the mechanics are fairly simple.

Jordan's Regulars and grenadiers stare down 2 units of
my Indians

Before we deployed our troops, we all rolled a side plot in secret. by pure coincidence, 2 of the french chose Dan's provincials as the target/source of their side plot.  then Dan deployed right in the middle of the table. as a result the game sort of revolved around Dan's provincials.

Mike's Regulars and My Indians Take potshots Dan's Provincials

 I had gleaned early on that my Indians had no chance crossing open ground against Jordan's grenadiers to get to my objective beyond, so I helped kill Dan faster so I could then get Mike's line units to help me. 

Dan's Provincial Line watches as him provincial lights get
wiped out by Canadian Militia.

However in a rather ironic turn of events, my Indians Charged and killed Dan's officer(Colonel Washington figure), not knowing that  doing so kept the other 2 players from completing their side plots.  which is fine because by the time we finished going after the provincials, neither of the remaining regular french infantry at hand  had enough strength left to oppose the British regulars in town.  so i didn't get my objective either.

My Indians Prepare to charge Dan's Provincials

 In the end 2 French players were wiped out along with 2 British players.  the remaining french converged on the Indian village and took it after some fierce fighting by the defenders. we called it a tie since both sides occupied one objective.


Overall the system was fun.  I did find that musket fire is ridiculously deadly. Especially when coming from a firing line. Two suggestions made were to drop the lethality of muskets, carbines and pistols to 4+ instead of 3+. Not a huge change, but potentially enough.  It would also have the side effect of making artillery slightly more potent. which might not be a bad thing because the general consensus from the net is that artillery looks pretty but is kind of useless most of the time.  We were also thinking, that for our games, we might remove the rolling for additional casualties on a recoil. For irregulars and Indians this would keep them from evaporating after a single volley most of the time.

Dan and I are going to try this set of rules out with our imaginations. So we'll see how that goes.

A Spanish Treat

this past Sunday  our gaming group got together and enjoyed some Carlist wars using Field of Battle(unmodified).

I Scratch build all the terrain over the last few years, and Dave Hoyt supplied the marvelous Miniatures. Perry and Blaze Away miniatures are the manufacturers.

Dave ran the Carlist forces solo, while Jon and I ran the Isabelinos.   Jon had the 2nd and 4rd(cavalry) brigades on the right flank, and I had the 1st and 4th(international) brigade on the left flank, in the town.

the international brigade(British expedition plus french foreign legion) reinforced by a battalion of the  1st brigade secured the bulk of the town early.  one of the British battalions hastily rushed down the main street into an artillery  barrage and was routed, but quickly recovered.  they cleared the way to the British rifles to pin down the artillery and ultimately were responsible for its demise.

Meanwhile the right flank started out good for the Isabelinos, but quickly started to spiral out of control.  the other half of my 1st brigade was badly mauled. and Jon lost 2 of the 3 battalions in his infantry brigade, with only the guard remaining.  only the cavalry held their own.

fortunately while that happened, the international brigade finally broke through in the town, flanking the crack Carlist brigade and routing them. although it took rather more flank engagements then I was expecting to do so. one of Dave's crack battalions took 3 flank attacks before routing.

All in all a good game was had by all.  the game wrapped up in about 2.5-3 hours.

I also had my Warbases delivered  as well as an extension of  the current commission i'm working on.  expect to see some Fife and drum militia on the blog in the not so distant future.

Our Intro to COC: an AAR

last night my friend Dan and I got together. we began the evening by doing a tiny bit of painting, and then we migrated to the dining room for a small introductory game of Chain of Command.

 Dan played French, and I played German, using Rich's 1940 army lists.  we both had a platoon of 2 squads, with approximately 10 levels of support(effectively 3 support teams and a tank). We went about the patrol phase, got our jump off points set u and then begun the game.

Most of the first few phases were simply used to get the majority of out troops on the table.  one notable action was me charging a full German squad around the corner into a full squad of sand.  the Frenchies beat me 6 kills to 5 and my squad fell back. at the beginning of the next turn, Dan would charge back around the building at my squad, and kill it. my 38(t) then came on hte table and broke the remainder of the charging french.

On the other side of the table, Dan deployed his troops directly into the building, and surrounding courtyard, while his hotchkiss MMG deployed to the hedge directly across the street.. i deployed my 2nd squad into hte feild, along with  my 50mm mortar team.  across teh raod behind teh hedge i deployed my 75mm infantry gun and my tripoded MG34. teh next few turns ended up with a haevy exchange of fire between the 2 forces.  eventually i broke his MG team(which his paltoon LT was attached to) and used a chain if command dice to end the turn, sending his LT routing off table. I'm mean.

a few phases later, I managed to wear kill the 2 remnants of the french close combat squad, and soon after that I broke one team of Dan's 2nd squad in the house, and the game ended.

this was our first game, and although Dan and I are familiar with too fat Lardies rules, it did take quite a while. we looked everything up.  it also didn't help that although both Dan and i could hit, we could not have any effect to save our lives. this seemed to draw out the game artificially. in the advanced rules they have a suggestion to make tanks more bloody, basically add a +1 to penetrate for all tanks for all tank. after a few more games, if the trend follows, i may do the same thing with the effect for infantry combat.

I'm also not thrilled with the differentiation in tanks speeds. on open ground/road, going "flat out" is about 1 inches per d6 per speed class.  if that's all, why bother having speed classes?  I'm considering making these a little more differentiated. doubling the increase would mean that fast tanks are only going 12" faster than infantry at full out. which is not exactly speedy. but it still gives the feel of fast tanks going actually fast.


still, I have to give it a few more tries before making a decisions about changes and the like. I like a lot of the mechanisms though.

Sunday's ACW game and the culmination of last week's terrain Blitz.

closeup of tree bases made for martin. there were 7 in total.

this past Sunday we played a game of 28mm ACW at my friend Martin's house.  some of the buildings, fences, roads, and woods and a field were a good portion of what I spent the previous week making. it was played on an 9x6 table, with foam terrain tiles made by Myself and Dave Hoyt (unfortunately not present).

shot of most of the table.

Berdan's sharpshooters in some spiffy woods

Dan's zouaves wade through a pond for an
advantageous position on Martin's line.

Dan's brigade closes with Martin's Confederate line.

Tthe figures were painted  from several sources, Martin painted some, I painted 3 units of zouaves for martin, and he bought some already painted.

zouaves are egged on by a union commander,
painted by Martin

the rules used were Foundry's From bull run to Gettysburg. these were odd rules, which really trivialize morale, cover, and artillery.  it was fun rolling dice and shifting figures around with friends, but we all thought maybe next time a different rules set is in order.  unfortunately i can't really do a battle report because the confused nature of the rules keep me occupied enough that i forgot to make mental notes. not that I usually remember to do that anyway...

The church and confederate supplies

on the left, the 3rd Union brigade closes on the flank
of the farm under covering fire from the guns.

Martin and I, along with our friends Dan and Jon try to get together every 2 weeks for a game. The next game however will be in 3 weeks, as Dan and I have a rev war reenacting Drill  weekend on scheduled weekend.

My main brigade assaults the confederate
defended farm commanded by Jon.

This week appears to be the week of the polish. already painted 24, painted another 12 today plus a polish general. i hope to finished the 2nd 12 by the end of the weekend, so I'll post them then.