Dear Wally, Thought you might like a battle report of "Bushy Run," put on by John Laing of RAFM at HMMC III. I believe John said he used modified Compleat Brigadier rules. The scenario pitted a force of about 100 Indian figures (at 20:1) against a slightly smaller army of British and Colonial troops in the forests of western Pennsylvania. As one of the Indian chiefs, I was supposed to destroy a supply column on its way to Pittsburgh. The start of the game resembled a Sword & the Flame battle, with all the British at one end of the table, needing to exit off the road at the other end, while all the natives were "hidden" in the many clumps of trees (we used map moves to keep track of our units until they appeared). My co-chief and I had great fan doing bird calls and drum signals while the redcoat commanders anxiously searched each patch of greenery. (Each unit could look at all woods within two feet, and in line of sight, and on a D6 roll of 6, it could tell if there was anything hidden there or not.) Because the supply trains moved faster along the road, we -laid our ambush at the bend, hoping to remain hidden until the lobster backs were surrounded, letting us bring all our numbers to bear. Our opponents' spotting rolls were awful, so we were quite hopeful of surprise, but the British commander outsmarted us by setting out cross-country into the only large, open field on the table. An interesting rule device was the morale system, which had the white men check by battalion, while the redskins checked by a stand of 3 figures. The result was that the paleface units could absorb a lot of punishment and still remain on the field, but if they did fail, they lost a large chunk of their army; while the savages would almost always fail their morale checks (33% casualties!) but lost only 2 more figures. Unfortunately, the round eyes took advantage of a +1 for their general, and a +3 for supporting units (although I question how a bunch of colonial irregulars skirmishing 100 yards away in a wood can be considered "supporting" a line of British regulars) and hence only failed morale once, while our units withered away under the European volleys, and were finally routed by a determined bayonet charge. All four players had a good time. The rules were fast and fun, with lots of D6 routs (which I like), although the fire system seemed needlessly complicated (divide the figures in the unit by a number, roll 2 D6 for each whole number resulting, adding in modifiers, then consult a table for the number of hits, then roll 2 more dice for the fraction remaining, which only hits on boxcars). The hand-to-hand combat was much simpler, each side rolling a D6 for each figure touching an enemy, with a 6 needed to kill (although you get pluses for attacking shaken troops or flank attacks). See you in Baltimore. Back to PW Review April 1985 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1985 Wally Simon 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