AWI Skirmish Game Report

 

Stillwater was not very quiet today. We might have to call it The Stillwater Massacre
because so many British, Loyalists and Mohawk warriors died.

                                       Click on the pictures to enlarge

Last evening we invited two couples to our home for dinner and an AWI skirmish war game. None of them had ever played in a war game, but they knew about my hobby and they were all keen to give it a try. So I had five "newbies" and myself playing in the game. The scenario was a simple Indian/British/Loyalist raid on a patriot town, Stillwater,  in upstate New York near Saratoga.

I had my own set of skirmish rules "Croat Terror" that I adapted to the AWI (Croats = Indians; Prussians = British; Militia = Militia; Loyalists = Frei Corps, etc.). It looked easy enough, but then at the last minute (90 minutes before the arrival of the guests) I decided that even my easy to learn skirmish rules had too many charts and might overwhelm a newcomer to the hobby. I recall playing a Sword and Flame game for the first time and all of the charts made my head spin.

So I wrote a new set of skirmish rules on the fly, based on rolling only D6 dice. The rules fit on one side of an 8 x 5 inch index card. I put the rules on one side of the card and the individual personality traits and missions on the other side of the card. That's it!

Here is a picture of the  rules

By the way, if you click on the image of the rules they will enlarge sufficiently that they can be easily read. Feel free to use these rules.

As the game went on I decided to scrap the morale rules and forgot to use the card suit outcomes for the melees; if you had the high card in a one on one melee then the opponent was killed.

Each player had a particular mission to accomplish. I pasted their respective missions onto the back side of the index card. Here is an example:

I was Joseph Brant and I failed miserably in achieving my objectives. I captured two civilian prisoners, but then I forgot about the part about having minimal casualties. Thirteen out of twenty-four of my warriors were killed. I think that the tribe will be looking for a new chief. In the heat of the battle I got so caught up in shooting at the militia that I forgot about minimizing my casualties. Fog of war.

The cornfield was a bad place to be if you were an Indian warrior or a British regular.

The British commander, Major Payne, had a mission of finding the British spy in the town and escorting him to safety, back at the British camp. While I advised Major Payne to look for a church pastor, the good Major was standing next to the pastor and escorted the nearest civilian back to safety. I told the Major that he had carried off the wrong person and that he might need to go back and retrieve the correct person. Fog of war. The Major and I had a good laugh over that.

Who needs Fog of War rules when you can usually count on the players in the game to provide their own Fog of War.

Some Brunswick Jagers had the acumen to go and retrieve the pastor and bring him back to camp, so at least one player was paying attention. LOL.

The Brunswick Jaegers bring home the right man.

Everyone seemed to have a good time (and why wouldn't they?) and by the third turn they were starting to get a handle on how the rules worked. It was a good call on my part to write a simpler set of rules prior to the start of the game given that all of the players were new to war gaming. Everyone expressed an interest in coming back in the future and playing another war game.

Mission Accomplished.