Author: Mikko @ Flintlock

Today I had a chance to meet new people and spend some three hours walking through the current design of “1758 Fort Carillon” with Hannu from U&P Games (a small local game studio backed by some serious gamers). His game designs include Helsinki 1918 and W1815.

Essentially, I introduced my project and explained the basic setting and the key rules. French and Indian War really is not a big topic over here in Finland, but I am doing my best to change that, so we went through some basics of the period in history. Next we proceeded to discuss in detail the basic game mechanics and features. Three hours went by quite quickly.

The session gave me once again some great ideas how make this project better: what could be improved or implemented slightly differently (better). There are generally two objectives that I have in this project: 1) historical accuracy and 2) smooth game play. I assume these are the guiding lights for pretty much all designers of historical wargames. Now, these objectives do not indicate this will be a quick game – could be quite the contrary. I haven’t logged any real estimate for the length of the game yet, but we will plan for some group testing with other wargamers.

My homework from today includes testing some small changes to combat – especially when attacking entrenched positions, how to add a bit of fog of war (this really is a tough nut to crack), and how to actually implement some randomness I have had in mind for a long time.

[Disclaimer: All rules and game play examples are from pre-production version and will likely change one way or the other!]

One of the major challenges I have had in the design of the Fort Carillon has been the time scale and overall dynamics of the troop movements. I can’t do one, two or even four hour phases (“turns”) as the game would bog down with the large number of counters. After all, this is more of a campaign than a one-day engagement. My first design was based on three day phases (AM, noon, and PM) with the night phase for mostly recovery. Over time, this came down to two day phases with a full night phase that also includes an imaginatively named maintenance phase for doing, well, maintenance. This covers topics such as “planning” for the upcoming assaults (instead of plain attacks), checking the supply or morale, and so forth. Nothing major really, but resetting a few counters and adjusting a couple of others.

Initially, I had rather abundant movement points available. It didn’t take too long to realize guys would be all over the place pretty quick. Not very historical, unless you have a handful of rangers scouting the fort or something. Movement point allowances gradually decreased in search of the balance between the reality of moving a great army in the middle of a primeval forest, and the capabilities of irregular troops such as light infantry and the natives.

All this included skirmishing – reconnoitering the enemy ahead of the main army, or on the opposite side, acting as the rearguard of retreating troops. How do you cautiously move and maybe even briefly clash with the enemy? This is where the skirmish mode steps in. Not all irregulars can use it, because I decided to exclude the “normal” British Provincials. Also, from the regulars, only those designated as light infantry or grenadiers can skirmish (Troupes de la Marine are designated as regulars, so they’re not eligible).

Skirmishing cuts the movement points to half but doubles the Zone of Control. Also, a couple of actions become available: retreat and ambush. Expanding the ZoC implies the unit is scattered and moves in smaller groups forcing the enemy to advance cautiously or face the consequences of being ambushed. Enemy units’ movement point cost is thus doubled in the ZoC but they can move through the ZoC-2 without being forced to stop (if you enter EZoC-1, you must stop and attack). After the enemy unit has completed its move, the defending skirmisher is able retreat up to four hexes as essentially they would be slowing down the advancing enemy. That may not always be enough to get away, so don’t stay too close the opponent. This will take place AFTER the enemy completed its own move.

The example below depicts where ZoCs extend to. They do not cross double-elevations, but a single elevation or a stream does not block ZoC. (Apparently, I used a La Marine unit below, but they cannot use the Skirmish mode. Let’s imagine it is a Canadian militia unit instead.)

Of course, the fun starts with the ambushes. For now, I have limited them to a total of four per side per day instead of allowing every skirmish unit to attempt one. This forces some planning ahead and I am also worried the game would be full of ambush die rolls. An ambush is not possible if the enemy is also in skirmish mode.

Below is a practical example. Let’s say, its the British who go next.

[OUCH, just noticed I have the British Indians versus the British provincials in the below example. I’ll have to fix it!]

The red-green Mohawks are in Skirmish mode, so the ZoC extends for two hexes and overlaps with Bagley’s 2nd Mass. Regiment which is disrupted and on the same side of the river. This means the provincials have to take a morale / panic roll as the Mohawks are smelling blood and creep ever closer for some scalps. If the Indians had moved next to Bagley’s regiment AND could not force the provincials to retreat via the morale check, the Indians would have to attack. Disrupted units fight with half strength, and the Indians get a significant bonus against disrupted infantry, so it could mean big trouble for the New Englanders!

On the bottom left, Preble’s 3rd Mass. Regiment is a little different story. Although disrupted, they are across the river (Bernetz Brook) and are thus immune to the Indian ZoC. Perhaps Superintendent of Indian Affairs and a former British Army general, William Johnson, would join the Mohawks with the other Indian groups to lead an attack across the ford?

A small excerpt from the current rulebook.

I wrapped up my “Montcalm’s plan” testing at the end of the second day – this was a good run. I filled in a lot of the missing pieces such as ambushes and special rules for the Indians (I use mostly the terms found in historical [British] documents). As always, a game session lead to making updates to the counters as well… for the 2000th time.

The badly beaten Connecticut regiment was stuck in the tight land corridor between Lake Champlain and the Rattlesnake Mountain. Although supported by the New Hampshire regiment in its over one year old appearance (probably the oldest counter I still have – and it was supposed to be “brown”), the already disrupted provincials panicked once enemy Indians were seen lurking in the forest. This was a long-missing piece in the rules and I hope its now done. Disrupted infantry is easy prey for those brutal natives who seek scalps and plunder – the weaker the enemy, the better!

By just moving close to the disrupted unit and with a fine die roll, the Granite Staters were annihilated… First by panicking them and forcing to flee – straight into the ZoC of the other French-Canadian troops on the other side.

As Major William Eyre, the leader of the 44th Regiment, commented after the chaotic first evening (July 6th) and the skirmish with the French-Canadian troops returning from their scout : “Two or three hundred Indians surrounding us that night” would have routed the British army. Btw, he would have been the most senior engineer in the campaign, but had chosen to remain with the regiment possibly due to either being in bad terms with General Abercromby or simply planning for a better pension should something bad happen to him, or both. Alas, he was the chief engineer of the infamous Fort William Henry…

Although I am sailing for some time, there is no break in development. I am reading more books to understand even better 18th century warfare. Already ran out of reading material so my son had to bring additional books as he visited us 🙂

Any extra freetime I have is used in cleaning up the rulebook.

PS. “Vanhat tykit” means “old guns” in Finnish. What a find from a second-hand bookshop!

The British army has landed. It was split into eastern and western forces with an objective to outflank and overwhelm the French defenses. I literally wanted to see if there was a way to stop the British with the current mechanism.

Provincial and light infantry troops were sent fast forward to find a way around the formidable fortified line that blocked the area around (modern) Howes Landing and Mossy Point. Blocking forces threatened the French main line to ensure they could not make any sudden movements.

The eastern (bottom) strike force initially looked pretty good by simply going around the whole French line, but ultimately ran into some Canadians who ambushed them in the thick forest. The force of about a thousand provincials got sandwiched between the mountain and blocking forces on both ends. The final outcome is still to be determined, although the outlook isn’t good…

An 18th century blitzkrieg took place when another provincial regiment (or actually a battalion) of New Yorkers drove straight through a gap left by the French – who had reacted to the flanking movement – to Mont Agné (I recently learned “montagne” is mountain in French, so that probably isn’t really the name of the place). Backed by the regulars of the 1st battalion of the Royal American Regiment, they bravely attempted to encircle the eastern part of the main French line. Although successful in forcing the French to abandon the fortifications built before the attack, they took a heck of a beating by the French who mustered everything they could to crush the New Yorkers and attacked from opposite sides at the same time.

At the same time, the western assault was also shaping up. Light infantry supported by the provincials used the Indian path to go around the Bear Mountain (modern day Cook Mountain). Regular regiments pushed forward to fix the French in place and started to land artillery in preparation to breach the redoubts.

Back and forth combat took place around the path and the mountain-side. French reinforcements trickled in as the British were probing for weak spots. Small units comprised of Indians, Canadians and grenadiers were trying to pluck any holes.

A small counterattack was mounted by some 300 brave Canadians in an attempt to sink some of the weakly protected British artillery into the lake. They exploited the lack of protection for the artillery , and drove their bateaux into the waterborne artillery. Unfortunately, this was unsuccessful as the six 6-pounder cannon on the three “floating artillery castles” were able to break off the attack and drive the enemy back to their starting place.

That is as far as I got this time. My vacation started so I have to take some time off from the board. I am hoping to continue the scenario in a few weeks and finish off at least some of the remaining operations.

I wanted to test the absolutely strongest possible French defensive setup with the “Montcalm’s plan” scenario. The historical context is that the Governor of New France, marquis de Vaudreuil, planned to send a large contingent of troops led by Chevalier de Lévis to raid and disrupt the British by moving through the Mohawk river valley corridor to threaten Albany and the British left flank. This operation was fiercely opposed by General Montcalm, the military commander, but the governor stood firm until it became quite evident that there is a vast British army assembling at the southern end of Lake George with the intention to strike north, towards Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) and then further on to Fort Saint-Frédéric (Crown Point). This would be a major threat to New France as Montreal lies north of this lake Champlain corridor.

The British outnumbered the French by 5 to 1. Late June Vaudreuil finally approved to divert the expedition to join the troops moving towards or already at Fort Carillon. However, most of the troops arrived too late for the battle.

The scenario assumes that Montcalm had been more successful in persuading Vaudreuil to not split the army and instead meet the enemy at Carillon, with full strength. Montcalm himself arrived about a week before the British invasion, so he had a bit of time to set up defenses which is a core part of the scenario. The French player is given a number of Build Points which can be spent on building various defensive works and placing artillery outside of the fort.

The setup here is an aggressive forward deployment with a number of artillery pieces supporting the main line. This is a tough line to breach with a head-on assault, but that’s not really what I wanted to try out here. Historically, whatever the French decided to do, there would be a weakness of some sort. If you build static defenses, they can be bypassed. And if you fortify the area around the fort, you would be surrounded, a siege would be setup, and with little supplies available, the French army would not last long.

The path around the Bear (Cook) Mountain is left open to test how that would affect the French defense. I want to avoid too much blitzkrieg here – it didn’t really exist in the 18th century North America.

Below, the French troops man the fortified line & artillery is located at the fort (box). Although playing solo, I added a little bit of fog of war even if I don’t have all the necessary counters yet.

The block below is a standalone fort box with four bastions of the fort Carillon. It will be placed someplace convenient on the map so the French player has easy access to it. The artillery located in the fort will have a specific field of fire and it will take time to relocate pieces from one bastion to another.

Btw, the bastions are called La Reine (NW), Languedoc (NE), Germain (SW), and Joanne (SE).

The first wave of the British army has landed with rangers, grenadiers and light troops. The forward elements of the second wave (provincials) are also landing, before the regulars join them.

The French artillery held their fire until the regulars were in sight – they can’t shoot at all of the units so had to choose wisely. They successfully interdicted two regiments, which were forced to retreat to become available only in the next, “PM phase”.

Aborted units go back to the “fleet” and can try landing the next phase.

While waiting for the actual art to shape up, I’ve made small tweaks to my test counters. I am still processing the playtest feedback as things weren’t as clear to other people as they were to me (what a surprise).

Small changes that I am trying out include removing unnecessary data from the counter and either replacing them with an image or just clarifying the rules wrt. counter colors.

One of the unluckiest men on July 6th, 1758 – George Augustus Howe, 3rd Viscount Howe – represents an infantry (combat) leader here:

Base color is for the British Army regulars and LT to indicates he can also lead Light Infantry. I really like this bright red & light tan color combination.

As not all leaders are infantry leaders, some are engineers, artillery, or naval leaders. Captain-Lieutenant James Stephens represents the artillery, with that awesome little image of a gun (i.e. cannon) above him, and a white cross in his yellowish “leader box”. Unless all this turns out to be somehow miniature in the physical counter, it should be immediately evident what he can lead – artillery.

A white dot was inserted to simply indicate the counters belong to the British starting units. There really won’t be any difference in the historical and gently-less-historical scenarios for the British, unlike with the French who can define their defenses freely and the exact composition of units may vary slightly. This should help finding the correct counters from the pile on the table.

The raw data for the above two counters actually looks like this, in csv format (had to crop it a bit):

It’s taken a while to learn how to generate counters for my use but now it’s going just fine 🙂

What a lovely surprise as I was checking my personal emails during the work day (not giving up the day job): I noticed my artist informed he has bandwidth for me! We are now concentrating on counter images to transform them from “test” to “real” graphics. I am pretty sure I have more or less all required counter types identified, so now we need to make sure they all are included.

I requested some small map updates at the same time. This thing is really starting to shape up. Next week I will have the house all to myself and that means… a lot of testing! I want to set up the big what-if scenario and play it through + clean-up the instructions. Too bad it is really hard making test counters at the time, so I’ll have to utilize the learnings from the previous testing round. I also have tons of different versions at the same time on the table – some are cutting edge with the latest parameters printed, and some are like one year old, which is an eternity!

Once I have the first batch of the counter images available, I hope I can have them printed. This is not some local print shop, but the actual manufacturer. I am planning to get good-enough copies of the main components so I can have them tested by various people.