Half Time Show

Its been a busy few days with neither time nor energy to spare for my room. Tonight I found an hour for myself. I could have spent it tidying and organizing but......

The Cree warriors have galloped across the plain and are now creeping through the woods towards their exit point.

Only having an hour and minimal energy, I decided to get the 54's on table and hauled Thomas's One Hour Wargames off the shelf. I had a book mark on "Infiltration" which I had been planning to try a few weeks ago but hadn't. Looking at the open terrain with one patch of woods and a single hill, it looked like a scenario for the Prairies.

Black had a 4 unit raiding party moving on at the start with the aim of getting 2 units off the road exit on the other side. Road? OK obviously there must be a ravine or ford just off table.

Red ended up with 4 units of infantry,1 gun and 1 cavalry. A company of rifles manned an outpost on the sole hill. B battery and the Governor General's Bodyguard would enter from the road exit on turn 3 while the rest of the infantry would arrive by road from the opposite side a few turns later.

Turn 6: Every one is now on board. Its hard to see but there is a two contour hill behind the riflemen . 

The version of the Square Brigadier I had been using for the Northwest Campaign was slightly different in detail from the WWI version but I couldn't find a paper copy of either, or my dice and markers for that matter. Eventually I found a pair of dice and set too, fudging the rules as I went. (The regulars were fine but I had trouble  remembering what unit characteristics I had settled on for the Indians who were all mounted infantry but adverse to close combat.)

The Indians rode quickly across the table with the Victoria Rifles refusing to move without orders, turn after turn. Luckily the artillery and cavalry arrived in time to form a road block. A bit of a firefight broke out but that pair of dice seemed to be heavily waited towards scores of 3 or less.  Eventually the Indians charged the gun and dismounted cavalry, being repulsed by canister but breaking the cavalry who took 5 turns to rally. A second charge led by their War Chief took  the gun, opening the road. One turn earlier, the raiding party could have ridden off but with a flip in Initiative, the reinforcements were at hand and the dice had warmed up. Rifle fire broke two bands and the rest were cleared off with the bayonets and the swords of the finally rallied GGBG.

Turn 15, having rallied, the GGBG has charged and scattered the remaining Cree warriors.

With so few troops on such open terrain and such narrow victory conditions, it was a very quick game (about 30 minutes playing time) but it "hit the spot". It also confirmed  my decision to go with the 5" grid and make the table just a titch wider (14 x 11 5" squares). The old table had a more grid squares but the bigger figures and terrain fit better on the larger squares and the extra two 5" squares of depth that I was able to add after the move are just enough to make the difference.

OK, back to work!