Report on French and Indian wars game 06/03/10

Report on French and Indian game 06/03/10
Situation:
The battle took place along a road running through a small settlement.

The English force consisted of a company of the 22nd foot, supported by a group of a dozen militiamen, and small parties of Delaware and Mohawk Indians. Facing them were a company of Metropolitan regiment Baern, a compagnie Franche, and several dozen Huron allies.

The English force started the game marching up the rough road toward a settlement, they had the militia scouting ahead, and Mohawks guarding the left and Delawares the right of the 22nd.

‘Les Francaises’ were deployed hidden, apart from the French regulars, who were advancing down the road towards the settlement from the opposite direction.

The Battle:
First contact was made when a small band of Hurons opened fire from a stand of trees into the Militia, killing one militiaman.

The militia naturally dived for cover and then began moving forward to outflank the enemy.

The Delawares on that wing advanced rapidly over a small rise to shoot in support, the first group fired their rifles killing one, and wounding another Huron, but were hit by the return fire, one of their number being killed, causing his companions to drag his body back to safety.

The rest of the Delawares moved up and fired ineffectively at the ambushers.

It was only when a section of regulars formed line and fired a volley into them that they fled! Suddenly, another party of Hurons jumped out from the left flank of the advancing militia, immediately killing their leader, and beginning a savage extended melee.

On the English left, the Mohawks had found another ambushing party of Hurons, stumbling into their flank. The Hurons bravely counter-attacked, but were no match for the Mohawks.

More Hurons appeared, baiting the Mohawks deeper into the woods, and soon they were isolated from the regulars.

The regulars, having paused to clear the frontal ambush, advanced past the militia’s melee towards the settlement, their objective.

The Mohawks were ambushed by another party of Hurons on top of a small hill, a sudden volley scattered a few of the Mohawks, but the remaining Mohawks outflanked the Huron’s position, forcing them to fall back from the hill.

The reason for them retreating became obvious, however, as behind them were several groups of Hurons massed behind the hill!

The Mohawks then understandably hastily retraced their steps, back to the regulars, before they could be attacked and overrun!

This mass of Hurons however had bigger fish to fry, and advanced to fire into the flank of the advancing 22nd!

The 22nd remorselessly continued towards the settlement, only to find the French regulars there first! – deployed in line in open ground by the settlement.

The English captain considered trying to outflank them, but their Indian allies finally persuaded them to fall back.

The Delawares covering the retreat .

The French regulars did not fire at the retreating English, preferring to leave them to the Hurons! (A few quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about blowing noses seemed appropriate at this point!)

The game showed us, perhaps, why Braddock’s expedition failed, though thankfully on a smaller scale!

(Regulars by Crusader miniatures, Irregulars by Perry and Conquest miniatures)

(Pictures by Lawrence and Richard)

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Pirate game!

Steve Spence has some very nice pirate figures and ships, and so it was felt right to give them an outing. The game was a treasure hunt. On the island were hostile opponents, and Steve commanded one ship of raiders, seen the far side of this photograph approaching the island, and and Lloyd another, seen in the foreground. The enemy had cannons, a ship docked for repairs, and various cabins etc. There was also a small town on the corner of the table (not shown).

A boy was recruited to bury the treasure. This consisted of a large number of small squares of paper, most of which were blank, to be placed under terrain features of the map. A few of these little pieces of paper had numbers on them, indicating their treasure value. The boy hid the papers while Steve and Lloyd looked the other way.

Steve's ship sailed between two islands, and exchanged gunnery fire with those gunners on the island who had woken up to the danger. A number of his pirates jumped overboard to swim to the central island, where booty was expected to be. We were using the Lord of the Rings system pirate rules, which are very harsh with swimmers, and a few drowned before reaching the island, and those that waded ashore found themselves out-numbered, and a short while later, defeated.

Meanwhile Lloyd's hearties landed and did battle with some of the islanders, and managed to find some booty. Steve's instincts then became competitive along a different line, and rather than contenting himself with a race to find the most booty (Lloyd's original plan), he decided that it would be much better to fight Lloyd's forces as well. Unfortunately for him, he had already taken some damage from the guns on the islands, and Lloyd twigged his hostile intentions early enough to leave enough men on his ship to defend her. The result was that Steve's ship became a wreck.

I would continue this write-up with more details, but the blogging software is proving to be astonishingly difficult to use. Lloyd's seadogs made away with a fair bit of booty, and suffered very light losses.

Figures: Steve Spence, ships: Steve Spence (and ex-Graeme Atkinson), scenery: Lloyd and club.

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Home guard Crossfire game.

I'm not going to write much now, just upload some pictures, because previous attempts at fabulously well-written accounts of games have just become lost in the system, and I'm not that much of a glutton for frustration and loss.

Oh god, I don't believe it. After an hour of wrestling with this bloody software, it's just gone and lost most of the pictures again. What is the bloody point? I did manage to upload about seven pictures of this game, but only two have survived the whims of the blogging software. When I had them all on the page, they were in random order, and all over the place, and all attempts at sorting them out proved worse than futile.

This is 31st March - a month or so later, and I've just spent another while trying again to update this and add more pictures etc. Nothing works for pictures. That these words are here shows that the text editor works to some degree, but adding pictures seems to be completely impossible.

Stuff this.





Steve Spence knocked out my 38t first shot with a double-six from his Vickers light tank. He then went on and on about how lucky I apparently am.

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Meeting CANCELLED - Saturday 13th March 2010

There will be no club meeting on Saturday 13th March 2010 as the hall is in use by another organisation.

Cheers

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