Junior Generals at the Library, take one

 I've been talking and thinking about it for ages, but I finally got there: two days ago I ran a tabletop wargame at work.

Not that I haven't before, but that was years before I started this blog. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

I was lucky to have, on the one hand, a captive audience of interns who needed something to do that could be argued to be relevant to library programming, and on the other, a couple adult staff with particular expertise in teen programming - mostly the technical sort, but non-electronic activities fall under their purview too, so this was a useful experiment.

I had a choice between running a simple role-playing game (which I mentioned during a recent teen advisory board as a summer-program possibility) and a wargame. I ran the wargame after one of the interns expressed interest in the plastic soldiers I'd brought - a handful of the Black Powder frames I've been assembling.

Here we see one advantage of painting -  if I'd done it
the sides would be easier to tell apart despite the bad photo.

Again, I used Sawmill Village as the inspiration - for the units at any rate. Each side has three regiments, two guns and two generals - the contents of two frames apiece. The rules were a subset of Junior General's horse-and-musket scenarios. I counted each infantry base as two, so that each regiment of three or four bases counted as six or eight for the purposes of combat, with Paperboys casualties used to indicate loss of odd hitpoints. This created confusion, and in hindsight two regiments of five bases each would have worked.

Infantry move 6" in line, 12" in column. Guns may move 12", but may not fire in the same turn. Commanders move 12". Guns have a max range of 24", musketry 12". Above, the Union open their advance on the open brown plain of Tabletop.

Another issue was that there were two players a side (and a fifth turned up midway thru the game - he appointed himself strategic overseer of the Union). With an odd number of units each side, play had to be cooperative, and when rolling dice in particular the players each rolled half (this was their own idea). Two regiments, one to each player, would have been preferable. Fewer units also would have helped us get thru the game faster, as we only had an hour to work with.

Anyway, above you see turn one, in which we simply spread the units around 24 inches apart. The Union are moving forward.

Here the Union column has charged a Confederate line.
The Union artillery are classically deployed in the center.

After a charge, before end of the combat.
The paper casualty markers indicate half-a-base worth
of casualties. The rebel general has also been eliminated.

A wider view; the Union column lost the action and retreated.
Union guns fire thru the gap to hit the right-hand rebels.

From the rebel side of the table this time. I think
the rebels are trying to flank a Union unit here.
A casualty box is visible.

In what became the last turn, a Union regiment (center)
lost combat to a rebel regiment (right) and has retreated
backwards into a second rebel unit (left). The Rebs aren't aligned
to hit the Yankees in the back, but I'd still say the Union's in trouble.

We stopped here due to closing, but the kids (and staff) were enthusiastic enough to declare the game a success, with tentative honors going to the bad guys in grey. There was still confusion over the rules so I had to gamemaster, and with more time I'd have gone over them beforehand with the players rather than taking them on as they came up. I also don't think I'd do this on a regular basis, but with more planning it would work for "special events" like Fourth of July, etc. Overall it worked as the playtest I intended; at least I know what not to do next time!

Speaking of which, I hope next week to run Hampton Roads (with a different Junior General ruleset) on its 160th anniversary. This will enable us to talk up the 3D printer, too. Wish us luck...