INTRODUCTION Observant readers will quickly note that it was on a skirmish wargame similar to this that C.S. Forrester based an incident in his excellent book "Death to the French". Imagine, if you will, that you have spent many patient hours observing the French on the far side of the river building up supplies of timber, rafts, and stores. Soon their army will be in a position to cross. Ail will depend on your ability to destroy these stores. On the first suitable reasonably dark night (which, in the case of our small group, is always a Tuesday at about 7:30) you will cross the river by raft and attempt to blow up, or set fire to, the French stores and timber. You will have a small party of veterans to assist you, and you will need a reasonable element of good luck. The basic rules used for this game, and most if not all of our games were those devised by Skirmish Wargames of 24 Mill Road, Gillingham, Kent, England, ME7 1HN. Entitled "Flintlock and Ramrod" they set out to cover the period from 1700 to 1850. They are very playable as published, as you would expect, the authors being very keen and skillful players in their own rights. They travel to many of the Games Days in the United Kingdom and the rules and demonstrations always attract many spectators who are soon drawn in to participate. The one basic alteration we've made in the rules is to couple the sequence to a card movement system. THE RULES SYSTEM We have adapted the Skirmish Wargames system purely for our own use by using the card system devised by Wally Simon. This has enabled us to dispense with the brief written orders used in the published system, and to automatically deal with reaction times (for the various grades of troops used) together with movement. I suppose that this is one of the attractions of our hobby. Players can get from it what they wish. Perhaps we have sacrificed a degree of "realism" in our search for a system that is fast moving and fun to play as we see it. In any event most wargamers are great adaptors and it must be a pretty rare event for a set of rules to be played exactly as published. I can strongly recommend that you write to Skirmish Wargamers and see for yourself what they have to offer. They are true innovators and I'm pretty certain you will not be disappointed-and they are not a giant corporation, so are not able to extensively advertise their goodies . . . don't lose that address quoted above! (By the way, they publish sets to cover nearly all popular periods, so we don't have to confine ourselves to 1700-1850.) Our adaptation goes something like this. Characters are classed as Veteran, Average or Novice. Make up two packs of cards, one for each side. Put in 6 cards lettered "A" forl Veterans, 4 or 5 lettered "B" for Average, and 3 or 4 lettered "C" for Novices. Each pack will have about 13 cards or so. To each pack add about 5 or 6 cards lettered "VM". These are Vehicle Movement cards, but we also use them as Horse Movement cards, or Boat Movement, etc. Shuffle each pack well and place face down, one to each player side. These will control the game in several respects and you will find that their use produces a sort of "suspended animation" effect which is fun and very playable. Each time an "A" card is turned over, the Veterans on a side will be able to carry out their 5 seconds of movement/action as specified in the main rules. They have more cards in the deck, so they will automatically react faster than the Novices who have fewer cards. When either side turns a VM card then all vehicles, horses, etc., can move, but only in a straight line unless following a road. To turn or carry out other actions, you need to turn over the card of the rider or driver. We allow characters to "Cover an Area" to give an Opportunity Fire effect. This goes quite a long way in getting rid of the undesirable effect of characters crossing covered areas with no chance for the defender to react at all. it takes one card draw for the character to adopt a firing position to cover an area, and another card draw for him to cease covering the area. The main rules allow for targets appearing or disappearing, as indeed they take care of virtually everything else you may care to think of in a skirmish game. A man wounded for 5 periods takes 5 card draws to recover, and an unloaded musket takes, say, 5 periods/phases, or 5 card draws, to reload. The card system works well, too, for melees. Character A charges B and makes contact. Now everything depends on the reaction times of the characters. If B is the next to draw a card then he can fire at A as he rushes in-but if A is the next to draw a card then B does not get off a shot and has to fight hand to hand. Lots of scope here for just the sort of thing that we enjoy. Will the fumbling Novice get off a shot at really close range-he couldn't hit a barn door at -long range-or will he have to fight the experienced and ruthless Veteran? The firing and melee sections of the rules are very well thought out and, allied to the card system, the game really races along. The firing procedure works as follows, taking a smoothbore musket as an example: Range 20 30 40 50 60 70 paces Firing Category 8 80 70 60 50 40 30 % All weapons are covered in the table and various adjustments are made for the skill or otherwise of the firer and for circumstances and cover. We will take just a basic example of, say, 60% at 40 paces. We attempt to roll under 60% on percentage dice and obtain as low a throw as possible on this Basic Chance to Hit. We then cross reference our score if it is successful on the Firing Wound Table. This quickly gives us the type of wound inflicted on our opponent. A score of, say, 27 on a basic chance of 60% would cause a serious body wound and our opponent would be out of action for 5 phases. After that he would only be able to crawl or stagger so we would have done a pretty good job with that shot. Had we thrown a double of any kind our musket would have mis-fired, and it's amazing how often that seems to happen at just the wrong moment! THE SET UP First, then, the British party Lt. Willerby Wykham-Ffforbes (How English can you get- note three f's) Fire 6 Melee 6 Veteran Sergeant Sam Finch Fire 8 Melee 9 Veteran Private Ben Smedley Fire 7 Melee 7 Veteran Private Chad Lister Fire 7 Melee 8 Veteran Private Paul Mobbs Fire 8 Melee 7 Veteran Private Peter Short Fire 6 Melee 8 Veteran Private Ben Crane Fire 7 Melee 7 Veteran Add more English as required according to the scale of action you require. All are armed with musket, bayonet; the Sergeant and Lieutenant have a pair of pistols, and each man carries a small barrel of gunpowder and tinder box/kindling. Now, what about the French? Well, we worked out our game on the following lines: In the Guard House - Throw 1 six sided die (1D6) for number of Average Guards. Throw 1D6 for Old Veterans who have stayed behind to play cards. On the roads or tracks - 1D6 for sentries on patrol. Define their routes. In the workshop 1D6 for average troops working overtime rates. All adjusted, if necessary, by the Umpire (if you are unlucky enough to have one)-or left as they are as you see fit. Can just 4 Frenchmen hold off the British until help arrives? Well, that is the sort of dice throwing I sometimes seem to get-often. You can start the British raft 5 moves out from the bank, with it moving nearer on Vehicle Movement Cards. Chance of sentries spotting can be, say, 50% minus distance in inches, and doubled if the moon breaks through the clouds. Chance of moonlight is 20% per card draw. All the French are Average except the Old Whatnots, and there is a Sergeant in the Guard House. He is aVeteran-Fire 8, Melee 9. You should also check to see where the raft actually lands. 50% chance it will land where you want it too. Throw over 50 and the excess will indicate inches up or down stream, with a 75% chance it will be downstream of the intended point. Last Effort So what happened in our last effort? Just the briefest report. When the raft returned to the British shore, it had only two wounded survivors. No fire could be seer on the opposite bank. The moon had come out, the raft had drifted downstream -- right to the feet of a French sentry. His warning shout seemed to raise at least 24 Frenchies. Muskets, once fired, take 5 card draws to re-load, hence one player being reduced to using his barrel of gunpowder as a thrown missile in the face of three charging opponents. Need I say more? Maybe, just maybe, it has all happened to you during the course of a game or two. Amongst other things, the Umpire dealt well with attempts to kindle using a shako plume and to step backwards into the river whilst firing an aimed shot The British were sure trying that night! The straggler! never turned up . . . Oh! yes I forgot to tell you about the stragglers. There is a 50% chance that 1 D6 of straggling Scots will turn up on one of the marked entry points. Although straggling, they are bravely trying to return to the British lines via a "borrowed" raft. Trust the English to try and burn them before they get the chance. Under Sergeant Jeffrey, an infantry man of considerable renown [Fire 9, Melee 9] it would have made a lot of difference if they had come "bounding" on but that's another story. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. V #3 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1984 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com