Into the wilderness (don't mess with Corporal François)

Kevin Smyth, Dave Schueler, and I played a first game of Song of Drums and Tomahawks this Saturday down at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland. It was also the debut of Kevin's and my Flint & Feather armies. It was a fun little foray into the North American wilderness ca. 1640.

This has been a serendipitous project for me. I'd been looking at the Flint & Feather range since early in the year, but held off buying. The website listed several packs that weren't yet available and I wanted to wait to order until they were. Then Bob Murch came to Enfilade! this year with minis to sell—including the ones that showed as unavailable on the website. What could I do? I came away with 29 minis, which is enough to be getting on with in a true skirmish game (i.e., actual 1:1).

I painted the lot by the end of June, which is pretty fast work for me, especially when I'm not under the gun to get minis painted for a game. Kevin got a later start on his because he didn't buy in time at the convention and had to wait three weeks for his order from Crucible Crush to arrive. By then, he was preparing for a cruise around Eastern Canada. Despite all this busyness, he managed to complete five figures to get into the fray.

We originally planned a game for four at Meeples in West Seattle, but the West Seattle Grand Parade nixed those plans and only three of us could get to The Panzer Depot. I set up a 4x6 table that was very woodsy with some hills and river bits.

Field of battle

I made up three forces of 8 figures each. Two with all Indians and a third that was half Indians and half Europeans. I took the mixed force, Kevin had his five figures plus three Mohawks with Muskets, Dave took the others. Each of the all-Indian forces included a hero figure, who fights and activates better. The mixed force had Corporal François, who had the Leader trait, which I pretty much forgot to exercise the whole game. The other Europeans, Pierre, Jean-Louis, and Etiénne, had muskets and swords. All the Indians had the Woodsman and Scalper traits. The latter requires them to spend an action scalping any foe they kill.

I thought it would be a game of cutthroat 1:1:1, but it wound up being me against two. Dave and I came in from opposite sides at one end, Kevin came in from the far end.

Some of my boys at the start

My Frenchmen, not being woodsmen like the Indians, could only move a short distance. But I trundled them up to musket-range and prepared to blast away.

Corporal François encourages the men forward

I quickly got entangled with Dave's forces. He had two musket-armed warriors and several other with bows.

Old school Indian warfare

Newfangled warfare with Dutch-supplied muskets

While I slowly positioned my musketeers, Corporal François rushed out to meet the foe head-on. His impulse in this was matched by Dave and his hero. Soon we were locked in dire combat.

Corporal François, with an Indian ally, takes on Dave's hero

Combat in Song of Drums and Tomahawks can be alternately frustrating and lethal. Many times it seemed that you'd have someone at your mercy only to have them escape. Dave and I both managed to get an advantage over each other at times only to blow the attack with a bad die roll. At this point, a lot of the action revolved around the big rock that dominated the center of the battlefield.

Ring around the rock

Ironically, in the fight between Corporal François and Dave's hero, it was one of my Indians that gave Dave's hero the killing blow. Dave managed to extricate himself from being outnumbered and then rushed in to attack my non-hero Indian ally. Unfortunately, he rolled low and I rolled a natural 6. In Song of Drums and Tomahawks, a figure armed with a Primitive Weapon, as mine was, always kills on a natural 6 if they win the combat—even if the result would normally be fallen or pushed back. Thus ended Dave's hero.

His scalp adorns my lodge-pole

Because my Indian ally had defeated him, he had to spend an action taking the obligatory scalp. Big medicine!

Dave and I kept up a desultory exchange of gunfire and bowfire. Shooting had a few successes (or maybe just one), but otherwise seemed pretty futile. For musket-armed figures, there was the added inconvenience of needing to reload.

Gunfire in the wilderness

It takes two actions in the same activation to reload. That requires rolling at least two dice for activation and thereby risking an end to your turn. There was a lot of dice failure in the game. In Song of Drums and Tomahawks, a figure can activate by throwing 1, 2, or 3 dice. Every result that is equal to or greater than the figure's Quality rating (4 for everyone except the heroes and Corporal François) allows an action. But if two or more rolls fail for an activation, the player's initiative turn ends.

Mostly, we just tried one die to activate figures. If that fails, you can just move to the next figure. We didn't want to risk double failure before we'd moved a lot. Sometime figures just never managed to pass an activation. Which brings us to Kevin.

Kevin started at the far end of the board, so he had farther to travel to get into the fight. He was plagued by bad die rolls and managed to get very few figures moving towards the sound of the guns. One figure managed only two activations for the entire game.

Chief Stands and Waits standing and waiting

He survived the fight, basically because he never got into it. As for the rest of Kevin's force, because it managed to come in only piecemeal, it didn't have the impact it might have. Being outnumbered 2:1, I never really felt overwhelmed. Nevertheless, Kevin's warriors slowly crept in to make my right flank a bit dicey.

Kevin's troops come on

Spearheading the advance was Kevin's hero. Before long, we had a standoff on the other side of the big rock, which eventually erupted into more of a fight.

Standoff at Standing Rock

I was beginning to take a toll on Dave's forces. The death (and scalping) of his hero, deprived him of a major asset. His other troops kept falling prey to the same fate as the hero: Attack and die after being whacked by a big Primitive Weapon. Before long, he was at half strength.

The fight against Kevin was getting hotter. His hero was making his presence felt, having killed one of my Indians. I had to pull Corporal François away from fighting Dave to deal with the new threat.

2:1 again, but no win

Dave managed eventually to kill off three of my force: 2 musketeers and an Indian. Kevin managed to kill off one of my Indians. Both Dave and I needed to take morale tests, which sent most of our surviving forces running back for a turn. Corporal François, however, remained firmly locked in combat with Kevin's hero.

Then the worm turned, despite being abandoned by all, Corporal François and his death-dealing halberd (which counts as a Primitive Weapon), clove Kevin's hero in two. Thus another enemy hero dispatched to the Great Spirit.

Smyth, last of his tribe

Corporal François hadn't been long enough in country to pick up the Scalper trait, so Kevin's hero went to the Great Spirit with a full head of hair.

The fight continued a bit longer after Kevin's hero went down. After Dave and I mutually fled, I only had one musketeer on my left. My remaining two Indians and Corporal François were facing Kevin.

The fight moves to my right

After a bit more sparring, I managed to kill four of Kevin's warriors, provoking a morale check, which sent all of his remaining four scurrying back.

The last kill

Dave's three remaining warriors were just creeping back, Kevin's force was potentially still potent, though in disarray. I'd managed to hold off against 2:1 odds and get a better than 2:1 kill ratio.  We called the game at that. Corporal François was the stand out champion of the game. He moved back and forth between the 'fronts' and managed to dispatch at least four of the nine casualties I inflicted against Kevin's and Dave's forces.

Among my native allies, one figure stood out, having killed Dave's hero and taken at least one other scalp. He didn't have the Hero trait, but he wore wooden armor and wielded a Primitive Weapon (plus a fearsome bearskin on his back!). That Primitive Weapon came into play more than a few times when I rolled natural 6s in combat.

Heroic, though not technically a hero

Afterthoughts

I really like the Song of [X] system from Ganesha Games. Song of Drums and Tomahawks is an adaptation of Song of Drums and Shakos done by Mike Demana et al. He tailored the available traits for the period, though there were some omissions. Several Indians wore wooden armor and/or carried shields. Mike does include a trait for Cuirass, which give an armor bonus to figures with metal breastplates, but otherwise doesn't account for the Indian armor and shields. To address this, I grafted in some rules from Song of Blades and Heroes. I gave figures wearing wooden armor the Armored trait (+1 to combat result if defeated, thus lessening or negating a loss) and figures with shields the Block trait (loss result lessened by one degree on a roll of 5 or 6). However, I only allowed them against native weapons. Against bullets and steel, they had no effect.

Muskets are potentially deadly, though I think we had only two musket kills in the game, both inflicted against my French musketeers by Dave's musket-armed Indians. The +2 to combat within the first range band and the potential for a -1 to the opponent for an aimed shot (requiring 2 actions instead of the normal 1 to shoot) mean that a shooter with a Combat value of 2 shooting an opponent with the same Combat value could have a net +4 versus +1 before the dice roll. Even without the aimed shot, a +4 to +2 is good odds. We just kept rolling badly. Plus, the need to reload reduced the amount of firing by how many times we could manage to get 2 actions for a musket-armed figure to reload.

It was a fun game and I'm glad we had a chance to get our new minis into battle. Kevin and I agree that they were a pleasure to paint. I hope to see a lot more coming from Crucible Crush/Pulp Figures for this range. We'll be running a game of Song of Drums and Tomahawks at our Fix Bayonet! game day in September. In between, I'd like to get another few games in. I think I may need to look into getting a stockade and some native longhouses...

I just received reinforcements from Crucible Crush: another 24 Indians to paint. That'll give me a total of 53 plus my Europeans. I have 12 of those (10 musketeers, 2 officers) and have another 8 I could bring in. The minis are from The Assault Group Thirty Years War range. I started several minis a while back, some of the first I painted using the Miracle Dip™, with the intention of making some units for Pike & Shotte. I still want to complete that project—and have many more unpainted and partially painted minis—but I'm sorely tempted to add more Europeans to the mix.

I also just received an order from Galloping Major Wargames: Some Candian militia and some Hurons plus a few free figures. That'll give me 24 milita, 25 Hurons, and 3 sailors. I'm not sure how the sailors will figure into this. They're very nice minis, but bare feet and blunderbusses didn't often find their way onto the wilderness frontiers of New France. I'll base these individually so I can use them for a variety of rules: Song of Drums and Tomahawks, Sharp Practice, Patriots and Rebels, etc.