Muskets&Tomahawks Second Game – AAR

We had our second game of Muskets&Tomahawks on Monday. Once again it was my French against Dalauppror's Mohawks and we used the same forces as last time. The Indians got the Raid mission while the French had another go at Scouting.

This time we added in side plots to maybe even out the game a bit, as our last game was fairly one-sided. Dalauppror rolled "I'll prove my worth" – his Sachem had to charge an enemy unit of at least 3 models, and survive the melee. I got "Usurpation", which meant none of my units could move within 4 inches of my Officer. Tricky stuff indeed.

The board seen from the French side.

Just like last time we both started with all of our units on blinds, which led to some tentative first activations. The Mohawks moved with the majority of their units on their left flank, towards the buildings, and a small detachment was sent to stop the coming French advance on their right flank.

Meanwhile the French more or less mirrored the Mohawks by splitting their forces between both flanks.

The Mohawks set up a couple of units in the deep wood to try to halt the French coming their way, while two units moved out of the woods towards the settlement. The French didn't want to risk anything by revealing themselves before they had a good opportunity to shoot and so stayed in the woods. This meant the Indians arrived unopposed at the settlement and could set fire to the first building.

The Mohawks set fire to the first building ...

... while the Canadian militia opens fire on them.

With the Indians now in the open, the Canadian militia swept round the settlement and traded shots with the Mohawks who had set fire to the building. However, the shooting proved ineffective for both sides.

The compagnie franches de la marine advancing cautiously,
spying some Mohawks (or is it?) up ahead.

Meanwhile the compagnie franches de la marine advanced cautiously on the left flank – they had seen something in the woods up ahead that made them wary to get too close. Finally they decided to move up only to find it had been a bird or an animal (eg it was a dummy blind). Instead they fired off a few shots at the Mohawks near the second building, across the field, but as usual the French shooting was ineffective.

The compagnie franches de la marine true to form – no hits this time either.

The Mohawks now set fire to the second building, which spurred the compagnie franches de la marine to speed up their advance against the fourth and final sector to scout. However, they were keen to stay in cover and so choose the longer way, going around the deep woods.

Back on the other flank the French officer together with the Huron Indians (fashionably late to the party) moved back and forth, scouting the third sector while trying to get a good shot at the Mohawk forces camped in the woods. Some uncoordinated movement while retreating saw the Indians getting too close to the officer, which unfortunately meant the French side plot was spoilt. After some more, largely ineffective shooting by the French, the Mohawks saw their chance and charged their enemies, cutting down most of them.

I now had made a series of mistakes which would cost me the game. Up until now I had had the victory, not within grasp, but certainly within sight. My mistake was not being aggressive enough with my compagnie franches de la marine, while being too aggressive with my other forces. Had I advanced faster up the left flank (although I couldn't know the blind was a dummy, I had superiority in numbers and morale and probably could have stood up well in a fight) and then taken the shorter route in the open it was very likely I would have reached the final quarter of the board to scout. Meanwhile, the Indians and the Officer should have stayed in the safety of the woods and then begun to retreat, together with the militia, to the edge of the board were they could exit when the compagnie franches de la marine had done their scouting work.

It probably wouldn't have been that easy, of course the Mohawks would put up a hard fight and chase my retreating forces, but maybe I could have pulled it off!

Look out boys, the Indians are coming!

Well, it was too late now and instead the Mohawks could hunt the retreating French unopposed – cutting down both the French officer and the last Huron, before closing in on the militia – and also move up to block the advance of the Compagnie Franches de la marine. We had to end the game earlier as the time was up, but it was clear the Mohawks were the winners and the French once again had failed.

The goal in sight!
But those pesky Mohawks will soon thwart the French plans.

This game was much more uncertain than the first, and as such much more fun. Still, there certainly are some things to mull over ... After the game we discussed my force composition. We both felt the Mohawks, who had 2 more units than the French, were a more flexible force. It's possible I could take better advantage of the large 10 man squad of the compagnie franches de la marine, but I'm now looking at alternative forces which would give me more but smaller units. I haven't cracked that one yet though ...

We will take a break from Muskets&Tomahawks for a while now – our next scheduled game will be another playtest of Lion Rampant. Dan has done some significant revisions of the rules, and I'm looking forward to see how they change the game.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers Dave B and Rodger. I hope you'll like my blog!

Muskets&Tomahawks First Game – AAR and Some Thoughts

So I played my first game of Muskets&Tomahawks against Dalauppror's Mohawks on Monday night. It was both a fun and a little frustrating experience. This is a short AAR, unfortunately with just one picture as I was too busy playing the game to remember taking photos, and some general thoughts on the game at the end.

We started by setting up the terrain according to the rules. After some discussion we decided that all areas – except some which we clearly defined – not covered by terrain were "light wood" and counted as difficult terrain. This would have no effect on the movement of our troops as all units had the Scout trait, but they would of course still benefit from the cover.

We then rolled for Missions: the Mohawks got the Slaughter mission and the French a Scouting mission. This meant we had to scour up some civilians for me to defend. I then made a stupid mistake when choosing which table edge to deploy on (or rather enter from) and this more or less cost me the game. The civilians were deployed behind one of the buildings, as far away from the indians' edge as possible. Unfortunately, this meant I had to place them on the edge of the forest with the only clear area on the other side of the building (nearer the indians).

As this was our first game, and we were concentrating on learning the basics, we didn't include weather or side plots.

All units started on blinds which lead to a very tentative first activations. The only unit without a blind were the civilians who tried to flee into the forest. Well, that didn't go too well as the -2 penalty to movement in difficult terrain meant they could move just 1 inch each activation.

Here is picture of the board after a few activations. The French entered from the left and the Mohawks deployed on the right table edge. The civilians started just to left of the building in the center. The inside of the area marked in red counted as open (except of course the field and the buildings), everything else was either light or dense wood, or difficult terrain. Instead of blinds markers we used single models and put stickers under the bases to show if they were units or dummys.

The battlefield. Click on the picture for a larger view.

The indians in the bottom of the picture moved silently and swiftly through the woods, charged the slow moving civilians and slaughtered every last one of them before the French could stop the Mohawks. Here we struggled a bit with the rules, as it's not very clear how you handle the end of a melee with troops still alive on both sides.

Looking at the remaining number of cards it was now clear that the French had no chance of winning the game, but we played on anyway. I was keen to at least get my troops into some action, as they effectively had yet done nothing but move.

The Compagnies Franches de la marine were forced off their blind and then opened fire on the indians. However, a rather disorganized placement meant the shooting was quite ineffective – and made worse by my bad dice rolling.

The Mohawks answered by charging the nearby militia unit and again cutting down all of their enemies without getting so much as a scratch in return. My bad dice rolling continued, and this was beginning to get very frustrating.

The saviours of the French honour came in form of the allied Hurons. On the left flank (top left in the picture above) they had crept up silently and now opened fire on their hated foe the Mohawks, a group of which was lurking in the forest ahead of them. And at last the dice were with me – one Mohawk fell down dead.

And that was the end of the game.

So in summary, an interesting game but very frustrating – first the misstake in deployment and then the very bad dice rolling. Still, some good lessons to ponder for future games, and some questions about the rules.

• Deployment! Think carefully about how you deploy and if you can choose which side to deploy on, choose wisely.
• Do not get into melee with indians. Better to stand back and shoot as they will break rather easily when shot at.
• Placement within the unit is very important as friendly miniatures block line of fire. Or so was our understanding of the rules anyway. Can anyone please confirm this?
• The 180 degree "seeing arc" means it's pretty easy to spot and get a line of sight to the enemy and therefore (or so it was in this game at least) facing is less important than placement within the unit.
• Despite re-reading the rules, it's still not clear how you handle the end of melees when there are miniatures left on both sides. The general view on the M&T forum seems to be that the melee ends if the side forced to take a reaction test gets a Flight or Recoil result.
• One other thing which isn't clear in the rules is if Officers are a blind on their own or if they "hang on" to another unit. As they normally count as unit by themselves this would indicate they are on their own blind (this is how we played it), but a confirmation would be nice.

After some reading on the forum, it seems this particular combination of missions (Slaughter vs Scouting) can lead to some very one-sided games, just as we experienced.

Anyway, we have our next game planned for tomorrow and hopefully it will be a more even match this time. And I'll try to take some more pictures this time.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers David and Monty. I hope you'll like my blog!