The Devon Wargames Group is known for playing the odd game of French Indian Wars together with Rebels and Patriots (R&P), the rules being a very good compliment to this 'petite guerre' of raids and skirmishes that typified much of the action on the French-Canadian frontier from 1754 to 1763 during this discreet part of the Seven Years War.
The rules and this period are popular, facilitating as they do the opportunity of easily pulling together a game large or small with a wide variety of terrain and scenarios to choose from and are not too taxing on the grey matter for the age demographic of our club, which probably goes some way to explaining their popularity; that and the fact that they produce a fun game with plenty of narrative to match the colour of the period, and we certainly enjoy relaxing, rolling bones and enjoying the games they produce.
In this particular scenario we had opposing lines of French and British troops together with their respective Indian and colonial allies contesting control of a French allied Indian village in the centre of the table, with the British in a rather punitive frame of mind, looking to inflict some retribution on the owners for incursions and attacks on their own holdings.
So we indulged ourselves with a broad variety of types composing the two forces from Indians to regular infantry, French marines, British grenadiers, alongside a good smattering of irregular types such as coureur des bois, rangers and American colonial militia chaps.
The Indian village, using the lovely sculpts from Grand Manner, would prove to be an interesting challenge as British troops trying to occupy the place put themselves at risk from small parties of fanatical inhabitants charging out from the buildings and demanding a certain amount of circumspection as over confident occupation attempts triggered such attacks.
Meanwhile as the opposing lines attempted to close, the air became a buzz of ball as the muskets blazed away over the intervening ground causing any type of cover to become a bit of a premium.
In the end we played two games during the day with both sides swapping table edges to come at the objective from a different set of obstacles, and in both games a common theme developed as the French used their cover to thin advancing British ranks, whilst fanatical Indians sought to come to close combat as they braved the musketry that saluted their advance.
I hadn't played R&P for a while and wanted to reacquaint myself with their nuances as they along with Fistful of Lead-Big Battles are among my thoughts to use for my own AWI Mohawk project and as with all rule sets there are aspects that you find you love and others not so much, with thoughts turning to modifications and tweaks as required.
All these ideas though have to be considered with care so as not to detract from the original themes of play and the simplicity that attracts one in the first place, and so this game was very helpful in reminding me what I particularly enjoy about R&P and the few things I might change, principally around commanders.
The other thing this game reminded me, was the pleasure of some lovely figures married with nicely turned out terrain to compliment any ruleset one might choose and hence the camera was kept fairly busy during play, and I hope you enjoy the results.
As regards my play during both games, things improved from game-one, during which my rangers got trounced by a large group of Indians in the woods, that went on to overrun my flank and thus turning the British centre that was rather busy fighting hard to get control of the village, as depicted in the picture above.
The lessons with the Indians in the first game stood me in good stead though, as they came under my command in the second game, managing to charge in among some 'redcoats' preparing to present arms as they emerged from the tree line, before they were overwhelmed in a flurry of yelps and tomahawks, a moment captured in the picture below - thank you John for the lessons and the principles have been duly noted!
As always, its the folks one enjoys these games with that make them the experience they are and so I should thank Mike C for organising our games and letting us enjoy playing with his FIW collection, together with Stephen H, John R, Flaky Dave, Nathan and Jack for creating the fun of our two games.
Cheers chaps
JJ
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