Backwoods Brawl - Muskets & Tomahawks AAR

This past weekend I was back up in Pennsylvania and met up with Carl for a couple of games at 7th Dimension. I had finally finished painting up two 400 point forces for Muskets & Tomahawks, and Carl was interested in trying out Carnevale. 

So we set up a table for a French-Indian War bash. The scenario was fairly simple - two small scouting forces encounter each others by a local settlement. The goal was to reduce the enemy force to half its original number, which would then cause the enemy to flee. 

The French and British forces were nearly identical: 2 officers, 2 units of regular infantry, 2 units of irregular infantry, and 2 units of Indian allies. The British irregulars were Rangers with the Marksman skill (making them better shots), while the French irregulars were Coureurs De Bois, which gave them the Native skill (making them harder to hit).

The area surrounding the buildings was clear terrain, while most of the rest of the table was light cover. The larger trees denoted areas of dense cover. 

Most of the fighting in the woods was between the British Rangers and the French Coureurs De Bois and Indians. The Rangers got lucky with their card draws, and were able to fire and reload at the right moment to force the enemy to retreat to cover before the tomahawks and knife blades came out.

In the settlement, one of the British-allied native units was harried by French Irregulars, until they were charged in close combat. In some serious dice rolling, the natives were able to slaughters the irregulars, leaving a single man in the unit left to flee the battle.

Meanwhile, the British regulars advanced and exchanged volleys with their French counterparts.

The undergrowth was sticky with blood as the British and French fought in close combat. It seemed like the Rangers might be able to hold out against overwhelming numbers...

But Carl was able to prevail, with only a single Ranger left in the melee.

And then, disaster! It had seemed like the British had a good grasp of victory even with the mounting casualties. But Carl had positioned his French Regulars to fire two volleys into a unit of British regulars, with ghoulish results. While the first round of shots only killed two men, the second round killed two more. This meant the resulting Reaction Test had so many negative modifiers, the remaining British infantry routed!

With that, it only took Carl a couple more casualties to force the British to their breaking point, and the Redcoats turned tail and fled into the woods.

We had a great time. Our only regrets were missing that 400 point games were played on a 6'x4' table, which may have offered a little more maneuvering during the battles, and forgetting to bring cotton swabs to mark which units had fired for visual effect.

Hopefully I can get M&T to the table more often now that I've got painted forces, which will also let Carl and I use more of the advanced rules that we skipped in this game - random scenarios, Officer traits, blinds and dummy markers.