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This is perhaps a bit more unusual topic, but as I am testing various color combinations for the counters, I wanted to also see how they appear to the color blinded. 1 in 12 men have this, so perhaps it is a big deal, perhaps not. Anyway, it’s not really that much effort to test it out.

User experience, or UX, has always been my passion at work. Why not carry the same passion over to my hobby?

If nothing else, I do hope the final colors appear legible to all, or at least most, players.

Today I continue my previous post testing a multipronged assault against the Fort Carillon perimeter. It was slow going as always, even before the first moves I was updating the rulebook. I also made significant updates to the test scenario by placing British light troops on the east bank of Lake Champlain to interrupt any French movements there. After adding the abatis I proceeded to a full British offensive setup which obviously differed from the historical one having detached a lot of the light troops to the flanking maneuver.

Starting with the French – they always go first. This is an old-fashioned IGOUGO game, so no cards and other more modern mechanics. The 300 Canadian reinforcements arrived at the north end of the map and had to get through the gauntlet to join the main army. I placed small British patrols around the lake for this exact purpose. The 400-man composite Grenadier battalion headed by the Swiss-born Colonel Frederick Haldimand was preparing for their strike into the Hornet’s Nest. Although the Canadians would be strong on water against the British Army, the Grenadiers are not alone. A thousand light infantry from the 55th and 80th Regiments were massing nearby and if they intervened, the Canadians would have little chance in the fight. Thus, they skimmed the opposite side of the lake to avoid the enemy’s main force.

Two companies of Stockbridge Mohicans, part of Rogers Rangers and totaling about 100 men, had been positioned to keep an eye on any French movements on the lake. They were headed by Captain Jacob Cheeksaunkin and his son, Lieutenant Jacob Naunauphtaunk. The Canadians paddled their whaleboats and canoes right under the noses of the Natives, but Jacob C. decided against an intervention even though the young Mohicans were anxious to strike the enemy three times their number. The odds were too great against them.

The Canadians joined their comrades guarding the right flank of the army – they also left a large group in reserve due to the threat of a flanking maneuver. Although there were many officers senior to him, the defending militia and French marines were in reality commanded by the famous ensign, Jean-Baptiste Levrault de Langis Montegron, also known as Langy. A man who ridiculed Robert Rogers and headed many patrols where even captains from regular regiments competed to join. Such is his weight in the game that he provides a +2 DRM along with the likes of Howe or Lévis – seconds in command of both armies.

As other French troops were already in place, we finally get to the main course – the British attack. To wreak havoc amongst the defenders, powerful light infantry strike groups were in place on both north and south side of the fort. Once they had successfully landed, they would be enforced by nearly 2000 troops carrying artillery in to the French rear.

Well, the plan sounded good when deliberated in the early morning council of war, where General Abercromby let his trustworthy #2, Brigadier General Lord Howe, reveal the ambitious plan to crush the French forces with one audacious strike from three directions. Although some officers were sceptical, they ultimately favored Howe’s approach. After all, you wouldn’t want to miss out of the moment of fame!

Fast forward a few moments and the first boats to enter Lake Champlain carried some of the famous Blue Jerseys from New Jersey. They were aiming at the area between the “Lower Town” and the newly constructed artillery redoubt anchoring the left end of the French main line.

Unfortunately, this was a true artillery killing zone. The fort had in two bastions 14 pieces of heavy naval cannons with a clear aim to this space, with additional pieces located at the battery Lotbinière overlooking the lake and the redoubt mentioned earlier. The first salvo killed about a hundred men and sent the remaining troops back to the foot of the Rattlesnake Mountain in chaos.

I have not yet defined the exact firing arcs for the bastions, but this will ultimately limit the direction the artillery in the bastion may fire at. It forces the French player to place them where the anticipated attacks come from. Moving guns between bastions takes time so unlike infantry, they cannot react quickly.

Next, the Rangers attempted their strike against the artillery redoubt close to river La Chute. They did nor fare much better as the artillery from the fort interdicted at medium range and aborted the move. However, they took no casualties in the engagement.

Finally, the Indians bravely lead by the famous Superintendent of Indian Affairs, William Johnson, followed. The natives were already nervous as they saw the massive French firepower and reluctantly obeyed his orders. Again, devastating salvos hit the boats killing not only a significant number of Iroquois but also hit Johnson who quickly bled to death.

The attack from the south thus collapsed and no results were gained for the loss of 200 men and a respected leader. The morale toll was quite notable.

But enough for today!

A huge milestone was reached recently when I received the prototypes of the game. I like to support local, which in this case means Poland!

Although there are tons of issues with especially the counters (being protos & my own data errors), it’s awesome to actually have “real” counters to play with. The quality is so good! No more messing with blank countersheets, printing to adhesive paper, cutting, peeling, etc. I can just pop more counters whenever I need some!

And this also means getting down to business 🙂 I get the feel of the components while I am trying out various scenarios. Colors, image quality, font sizes, readability, whatnot are important. Also the rulebook is getting some serious attention – moving from a Google Doc sheet to an Adobe document that is print ready. That is a lot of work!

So I decided it is the time for some alternate history:

July 9th, 1758.

George Howe, 3rd Viscount Howe, did not bite the musket ball a few days earlier. The unfortunate Captain Alexander Monypenny of the 55th Regiment of Foot and Howe’s brigade major, being next to Lord Howe during the encounter with Captain Trepezec’s scouting party, was hit by the musket ball instead killing him instantly. Now he lies in an unmarked grave close to Trout Brook.

The British army, lead by Howe and his “young Turks”, was planning an audacious attack on Fort Carillon (the formal commander of the army, General Abercromby, stays mostly in the safety of the army camp). The French had retreated to the immediate surroundings of the fort and built a strong defensive perimeter around it. Against common sense, being young and impetuous, the British leadership decides against a prolonged siege and instead wants to strike the French from the rear – a quick victory here would open the road to Montreal before the bad weather arrives in the fall. The majority of the British army was ready around the perimeter for a major assault. Selected units were being readied to strike by boats against the French rear and perhaps even force their way into the fort.

It was an ambitious plan, but no risk, no reward!

As they were preparing the amphibious landing, carefully coordinated with a simultaneous all-out assault against the entrenchments, the French had not been resting on their laurels. They had spotted a hive of activity both north and south of the fort – the enemy was up to something!

The French army had to strip much needed troops away from the main defensive line to protect the rear of the army. However, the Admiral of Lake Champlain, Captain Joseph Payant dit St Onge, had managed to sail into the wharf by the fort on the preceding night. He was in command of the 10-gun schooner La Vigilante – and also the most experienced naval captain in the inner waters of America. That might be a nasty surprise to the British!

There are 300 Canadian reinforcements on their way to the fort (upper right-hand corner) – are the British going to interdict them?? They are preparing for the strike against the French rear, so probably no – it might disturb the coordination of the forces.

Captain Ord of the British Royal Artillery had been able to move some artillery pieces to the French left flank. They had evaded the enemy and built a strongpoint to soften up the French defensive line.

On the south side, William Johnson and his Indian contingency – ignored by Abercromby, but not by the young Howe – were part of the spearhead destined to hit the French. He was supported by Rogers Rangers and some of the best provincial troops, the Jersey Blues.

On the north side, Howe with the third in command, Colonel Thomas Gage, assembled their shock troops comprised of a composite grenadier battalion, Howe’s hard-trained 55th Regiment and Gage’s newly raised 80th Regiment of Light-Armed Foot. In the council of war early in the morning, they had coordinated the signals for each attack group. Once the two strike groups had landed, an all-out assault would commence against the strong French main line. This would place them between a rock and a hard place.

However, they were unaware of the French schooner in the wharf. With the 10 cannons it could devastate the invading light troops. Also, the French – understanding what was going on – had reorganized their artillery. The naval 18-pounders now covered all directions.

The few days of inactivity allowed the French to improve their positions and emplace many artillery pieces along the shoreline.

This is the setting for my first setup with the near-production quality protos. I shall test some of the long neglected features of the game – water movement and interdiction. Upcoming posts will explain how things work and also – hopefully – what will happen in the decisive battle!!

Making a map… and starting with literally zero knowledge even how to generate and print hexes on paper. It’s been a long journey and I will definitely be an easier client for the mapmaker in my next project!

I have omitted the very first draft map from this post and the below draft is something I had for at least for the first 9 months of the project. Maybe longer. The masking tape was used because I was too excited to get going and anxious to shop for transparent tape, and just used whatever I found at home!

A lot of the initial play testing and brainstorming was done on this map – sometimes I still miss The Big Map!

The second version is just the base terrain to which I started adding elevation. After that there were significant improvements! Once I had the base map outline, I started drafting the elevation.

Based on the feedback I received early on, the map was rotated to cut out areas that were less useful for the game. This was a big decision but actually, a good one. Ultimately, I also decided to crop it quite a bit! My initial vision of a super game has had a reality check (or three) so I am trying to abide with the rules of a good boardgame.

The Super Game will be produced, in much much more detail, if there is a reasonable market for it!!

Then we see the real map for the very first time!! This is quite a while ago, somewhere in 2022? This map was also used for the first “external” playtesting.

It looked a little strange, not very “nice” – strong colors – but had all the basic elements in place. Of course, there was a reason I contacted Ilya K. for the maps etc. – I simply knew he produces the style I want. Probably comparing to a client like the Hollandspiele, I am a strange one… more than a little weird 🙂

But then, ultimately, I got the real map! Not just “something” but more like “I spent a good amount hours on your project & I have a vision”.

After some more tweaks, below is the “first version” – not perfect, but has all major components. Being a perfectionist, its never ready (sigh). But this is the version that will be in the protos… you get what you get.

I do have a bunch of updates to implement, but that will be another post!

Here is another sneak peek behind the scenes. I have definitely discussed what is involved in designing the 1758 Fort Carillon, but here are the dirty details! I use lot of applications or sources for various things, and they all are used for a purpose!

A whole lot of updated files, in this case, graphical elements for the rulebook. I use GitHub to store the data. This way I can always work with the latest versions on my computers (I have a few). Also backups are kept automatically… tried and tested 🙂

Creating graphics, art, maps, etc. – in this particular case with Affinity Designer. I use the Affinity product family, MS Paint, and Adobe’s suite such as Illustrator. Oh, let’s not forget Inkscape!

Using MS Word to manage the British Landing pattern (had to “brush away” some of the images!).

I have a 75 page word file where I collected interesting information about “everything” related to the battle: Details from a lot of sources, “what was it like”, related history, etc..

One of my Adobe Illustrator files!

And, of course, the main rulebook!

MS Visual Studio Code for a lot of the raw data. Doesn’t really work well with Illustrator, but oh well…

Inkscape for the my home-made counters (mounted on blank GMT counters!)

My bookshelf? It’s all over the place! Books, PDF files, etc. Stuff in OneDrive, local disk, here and there! Emails, word documents, whatever…

Books…!!! A lot of them! (Hobbit is not relevant here!)

Google Maps and OpenStreetMap!

Youtube videos!

What else?!?! There’s gotta be more! Weather…? How much daylight?

Deep or shallow water (~250 years ago)?

Who is who???

Random stuff in the internet!

After a long hiatus I had to put the game on the table to test some stuff – like basic combat. A lot of small tweaks had taken place and I wanted to make sure “it feels right”. If “it doesn’t” it goes back to the drawing table. Python scripts or not – I have to be able to reasonably replicate history, no matter how unlikely the die rolls need to be.

So, all the small changes I’ve made on the rules need to be played out. Although the images do not show it, “I had a small breakthrough with the Highlanders” (I want it to be around 20-30% probability for the July 8th big battle). In this case, the luck was not on their side and they were thrown out by a French counterattack.

I only managed to get half the historical casualties meaning combat needs to be more… a lot more bloody.

Having said this, I am also spending a good amount of time playing other games. After stepping in as the North Korean Commander-in-Chief after another player quit, the MMP OCS Korea is closing a final climax – or the last hurrah, and my first attempt at defending the Confederate against the Union in GMT’s US Civil War could go better 🙂 We tried to go for a “Shiloh” but didn’t quite get there!

No Shiloh this time, but we have had plenty of action around Memphis: a Confederate counter-attack liberated the city for some time from “the yoke of the yankees” (I made it up), but Grant’s Grande Armee gathered their… stuff, and pushed those pesky southerners back!

In Instagram, you can follow: https://www.instagram.com/gardencitygamer/ for occasional & random updates (not me!).

Although the title of this post is a little “provocative” considering the battle took place between two lakes and not at sea, the British effort in 1758 was enormous, and included also a Royal Navy presence. To transport those 17 000 men (believe who you believe as this number typically ranges between 15 and 17 thousand), over 1 000 vessels of all sorts were needed: 900 bateaux, 135 whaleboats, many radeaux and some “floating artillery castles” (or “floating gun battery”) to support a potentially contested landing at the north end of Lake George. Once they were on their way, the armada was some six miles long covering a significant part of the lake.

The vessels were built by carpenters at the camp site near the ruins of Fort William Henry or with great effort hauled over from the Hudson river as they were built in “battoe factories” in Schenectady, Albany, and other locations. Many artists have attempted to depict this flotilla as seen below. No matter what these paintings tell us, it must have been a unique and brutal sight of the strength of Great Britain!

Gary Zaboly’s work gives an idea of what it may have looked like (please ignore the clothing of the Canadians)!

French and Indian scouts observing the British fleet on Lake George before the Battle of Carillon, 5 July 1758. By Gary Zaboly.
byu/YoYoB0B inBattlePaintings

Commanding this vast flotilla was Royal Navy’s American-born captain Joshua Loring. In the game he has a small role as he will be able to improve naval bombardment accuracy in addition to improving bateaux (boats) to radeaux (rafts) and even further into small scale artillery castles (artillery-armed rafts). There is still a real 1758 “artillery castle” in existence called the Land Tortoise, lying at the bottom of the Lake George as a National Historic landmark and a State of New York underwater preserve site. For those interested in scuba diving, the site can be visited by experienced divers in the summer.

For some reason, the NY website for the Land Tortoise seems to be blocked at least for me over here in Europe, although it works via a VPN: https://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/55497.html. Anyways, below is an illustration from the website to give an idea of what this particular vessel looks like. It was finished in October 1758 and purposely sunk on Oct 22nd for the winter. However, during this process, it apparently ended up in deep water and was not retrieved in the following spring. The construction was overseen by two officers: Captain Samuel Cobb and Captain Thomas Ord of the Royal Artillery (he is in the game!).

There are numerous other resources available including a great video on YouTube.

There is a compromise I decided to make at this point: while it is possible to improve a radeaux into an artillery castle, it won’t be “a Land Tortoise”. That would take several weeks to build so the improved vessel is a radeau (raft) on steroids and designed to allow firing artillery from the raft without the defensive protection. For (mostly) the entrepreneurial British player, this enables bringing more heavy weapons against the fort or other entrenchments that may face them around Lake Champlain.

A British flotilla diorama at the Battlefield Park Visitor Center in Lake George, NY.

Refurbished Battle of Carillon diorama unveiled at Battlefield Park Visitor Center

The Sunken Fleet is another documentary about the British fleet that was sunk on the lake after the failed campaign of 1758 and as Abercromby never got around for another try, the new ships, boats, and rafts were left at the bottom of the lake waiting for another year of war.