Close Wars!

Got a nice surprise a couple weeks ago, when my delayed order of a Cigar Box Battles "Germantown" mat turned up. This is a nice foresty-looking cloth with paths, streams, brush and even a couple areas that could be slopes.

Since before my move I received a few boxes of Armies in Plastic Rogers' Rangers and Eastern Indians, I thought I'd try an old classic.

I dressed up the table with my Bold Frontiers card trees. Sadly, I hadn't opened some of them since purchase, and these fell victim to moisture, or possibly mold. A hasty drop down the trash chute for those! I don't quite have enough trees left to cover the entire table, but this can be addressed by making it 4x4, or counting the brushy areas as difficult ground.

My plan is to try and run this at work at least once in the next couple months, probably during Chess club. While I'm using rangers and natives here, maybe inappropriate for kids, I will use red and blue AWI soldiers in public. For now, let's just see how Featherstone's rules hold up, 64 years on.

Table from the native side.

Everyone was set up in concealment (the "forest" painted onto the mat), except for four Rangers who started on a trail. I am counting everyone as Natives for purposes of movement, as the Rangers are using Native techniques.

By Turn Three, despite taking half moves (4.5") thru the brush then three inches to cross the stream...

Rangers had reached the table center and were beginning to exchange fire with the Natives.

I counted the dark crescent as a "slope," with the trail along its crest, so troops on opposite sides of the trail do not have line of sight to each other.

In Turns 4 and 5, the battle really got going, and (mostly because the Rangers were going first) the Natives got the worst of it. The Rangers got atop the hill first, fired with eight dice both up- and downslope and took out three of the Natives.

Deeper into the woods the Rangers swarmed through the trees, getting sniped but mostly surviving as they got close enough to assault. And as in 40K, close combat is deadlier than shooting.

Only in one fight did a Native get the better of his adversaries; three of them rolled ones and twos. Even though they had impetus, the +1 could not beat his roll of four, so he defeated all of them.

He was the last Native, of sixteen, left on the board. The Rangers had been hurt in return, with only seven of their sixteen left by the end of Turn Six. Since the "scenario" is either to wipe out the opponent or put half your force on their baseline, well, the Rangers were closest to winning here. 

Good test of the rules. One easy thing to forget is the restrictions on shooting - you always hit on a six unless you are in cover. Also, targets need to be in the open. 

I just realized I also forgot to throw saves for the casualties, which are typically 4+, 3+ in cover. Oops. That explains the deadliness of the game. Ah, well. It was fun anyway, though I broke it into two sessions separated overnight and the board had been set up for about a week beforehand! (Seven days straight of working, two of them starting at 5:30am and one of them an accidental split shift, suffering from a cold all the while, is not a happy time. I'm better now.)