Chris has a fantastic collection of French Indian Wars troops, mainly aimed at Sharpe Practice, but with enough for larger games we decided to see what we could make of a larger brigade/divisional level game.
Chris had the Indians. Steve the French and I had the British and Colonial Americans.For the purposes of the game units were formed into ad-hoc brigades, For the British this meant 4 battalions each with supporting skirmishers representing 4 brigades. The French two battalions with skirmishers as two brigades, two large warbands of Indians another Brigade and French militia with Coureurs du Bois skirmishers a 4th brigade.
The rules are designed for multiple battalions and small numbers of skirmishers so it would be interesting to see how they played in this setting, especially as we had yet to play a game with Natives.
I push the British troops forward all along the line, my initial plan to focus heavily on the village whilst using the rest of troops to keep the French busy.
I decide my main focus will be to get my largest unit of British with their skirmishers into the village and fire it, the rest of my troops will mainly be tasked with keeping the French busy.
To my right the Light Bobs get a good head start and the Grenadiers march stoicly forward.
My line closes with the village and the horde of Indians start to form up to repel the redcoats.
Of all my units its the Highlanders who take longest to get going, barely getting involved at all for the first couple of moves and leaving the Native allies in front of them a tad exposed.
The Candian skirmishers fire into the flank of the Rangers, triple one, clearly their powder is wet.
My veterans form line on the flank of the Grenadiers and light Bobs to give them cover whilst they engage the French regulars.
My lights face the Courers De Boius and should have a a slight edge but both units have awful dice with two rounds of rubber bullets as both sides fire at nothing.
The best shots on table, light infantry skirmishers with a good shots bonus at short range, yes thats a triple one from me as well. Useless!
The Canadian Militia charge my rangers and, in a hard fought melee destroy them. Whilst it leaves virtually no Militia left it does mean I have no more support from skirmishers for my exposed line.
My British veteran battalion forms line and keeps the French Militia at long distance with effective volleys. This long range firing essentially keeps the French Militia from impacting the game.
Finally my main unit of line on the left have manouvred to form a line facing the natives but only have enough actions to move not fire. Its now down to who's activation comes first next time.
The British Grenadier battalion is finally catching up to the light infantry, but the French regulars are waiting.
Chris decides to risk it all with a charge on the British regulars with his mass of natives, he doesn't quite get the movements and stops just short where a devastating mass volley sees the Natives effectively destroyed and removed from the table.
My own natives dont do much more than give the French irregulars something to fire at, still they are kept busy whilst the regulars try to deal with the Indian village.
With the natives seen off and the French held we could fire the village at leisure having a achieved out objectives.
The rules need some tweaks to work in this combat but not a great deal. The Indians in particular didnt feel like native troops so this probably needs some looking at.
That said a very fun game and no doubt the rules can be tweaked to give more of a forest feel.
Thanks for stopping by.