Blog

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.

Busy week(s) behind and finally I had a little time to catch-up with the notes I took during the playtest session recently. Artillery table happened to be on top of the pile, so I took a deep dive into it.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Buzzwords, surely, but as I am designing a boardgame and not a computer game, I took the axe and cut off a bunch of columns and charts from the artillery procedure. In my humble opinion (IMHO), it wasn’t overly complicated, but definitely needed a touch up. Now the overcharging of cannons, and brass vs. iron are gone. Gone. You can put all the powder you want into that barrel, but whether it is brass or iron, it’ll blow up. Yes, the barrels break differently, but perhaps – as I have no artillery ammunition modeled here – in the scale of the game, this would’ve been just a bit too much. If I can bring it back in a manner that makes sense, I am more than happy to do it.

These 18th centurity artillery pieces weren’t exactly science (Treatise of Artillery, anyone?) so beyond ~one kilometer range, you’re happy to come even close to the target. Definitely, the 40-50% of fired shots or shells are within X meters of the target, but again, I don’t have Pentium to calculate those little variables here.

I also made the cruel decision to drop the penalty of using captured artillery. The reason was simple: French already were using captured British artillery, so if they got their hands on additional pieces, they really should not suffer a penalty… A cannon is a cannon, so let’s keep it simple.

Arty range is now capped out a 8 hexes and roughly one mile (enough to reach the Rattlesnake Mountain from the fort, or vice versa). That should be all right, because in order to be effective, you need to hit the target first and these things were shooting all over the place at long range. Besides, the chart is a bit easier to read now 🙂

Light artillery impact table is also gone for now. I need to think about it as I am not sure how effective something like the Royal 5½-inch howitzer (or mortar) was. Modelling these little things will take a few additional cycles during the summer months.

So, in the above table, the idea is that you can combine arty pieces with similar characteristics into a single fire mission. The type (direct or indirect fire), size (light or medium/heavy), and the appropriate range band (similarly colored range) have to match. More pieces together means more punch, but only when they can work together.

But Kilroy wasn’t. It was quite an impressive feeling standing in front of the French center at the Heights of Carillon. What remains of that hastily built line is basically a bunch of earth walls. The line was beefed up post-battle in 1758 and reused by the British in 1759. Additionally, it was used again during the American Revolutionary War in 1776-7 although the American forces abandoned the fort as they realized they were being surrounded.

This was the center and apex of the French line. Montcalm was likely right behind this wall managing the defense as the British army was charging against the timber walls. As each of the regiments only defended approx. 100 yards (or a bit less in meters), we might even see the positions of three or more French regiments from this central spot.

Image above is from the Carillon Battlefield Walking Trail Guide.

The Highlanders attacked a bit down from this location (on the French right), but it was just a stone throws away from this location. That is saved for another post…

For Friday night fun I set up a small “scenario” where I have 2x 24-pounders and 4x 12-pounder guns bombarding the Fort Carillon. Assumption is that the British have set up their siege batteries and the French have some big pieces still defending the fort.

Fort Carillon, a somewhat awkward and almost-but-not-quite-Vauban fort in the wilderness of today’s Upstate New York, is a wonder by itself. Modern reconstruction was built approximately a century ago and is of masonry. The original fort, in the tumultuous years of the French and Indian War, was mostly made of timber and earth.

The “proper” plan was to besiege the fort as it is located on a small peninsula and surrounded by elevated ground. Amherst did that in 1759, but the previous year Abercromby had been led to believe e.g. by prisoners that strong French reinforcements could arrive almost any day, thus he hurried the attack believing the overwhelming numbers of his regulars and American provincial units would carry the day.

That didn’t quite happen, so I want to test out bombarding the fort with heavy artillery. The 1757 Fort William Henry (or the big battle scene in the “Last of the Mohicans” movie) is perhaps the closest comparison in this what-if situation. How much and what kind of damage do you need to inflict before you are able to carry a successful attack against the fort? Should / would the defenders fight to the end: How much is enough before a polite parley will come a mutually-acceptable conclusion?

Brushing all that aside, I’ll just do some artillery bombardment to observe the effects of the current “to-hit” and “impact” tables. Of course, a small Python script could do this is more effeciently, but don’t have it now, so I’ll just be happy rolling some dice.

The cannon can only fire against the redoubt as they are direct fire weapons. Mortars can fire indirect so they can fire the units behind the redoubt. The French have three heavy cannon that can fire into the direction where the British are coming from. Two 18-pounders and one 16-pounder – they all are heavy pieces with similar performance. How many artillery pieces are available depends on which bastion they are located. Fort Carillon had four bastions and two demi-lunes that extended out of the main fort. Artillery was placed in these and had only specific directions to fire. As the French player, you have to rearrange the artillery inside the fort to engage the British troops the best you can.

Let’s see what happens here. The French go first in this game, so they’ll have a chance to disrupt the British who have built level 2 entrenchments (“siegeworks”, redoubts really). In this case, direct fire is against the hard target i.e. the redoubt, and indirect fire is against the “soft targets” behind the redoubt (the artillery).

First fire is directed against the redoubt protecting the four 12-pounders in hex 48.17. Three heavy cannon unleash direct fire, assisted by an artillery leader (-1 “to hit”). They also get -2 “to hit” firing from the fort (French had ranged their cannon before the engagement) so essentially with a “9” you’ll miss – everything else hits.

We roll a “7” and it’s a hit as we get +3 from the modifiers mentioned above. The second (red) die is for impact, so three heavy cannon against a hard target (level-2 redoubt). The second roll is a “2” without any modifiers and we get a “reduce-1” effect reducing the redoubt-2 to a fieldworks-1. In the current chits, this is delineated with the single or double line as seen below.

We also have two heavy mortars taking a crack at the British. They can use indirect fire and target the four cannon. We roll a “3” giving us a hit and then an “8” – no effect. The big and heavy mortars missed their mark this time (or damage was too small in the context of this game).

The British artillery is still out of optimal range to breach the fort walls, but we have six heavy pieces ready to pound the fort. On their turn, the British artillery conducts the bombardment. Six pieces open fire and there is a “-3” to hit the fort – it’s a pretty big target. We get a hit without rolling a die (medium band, six pieces and -3 DRM is “9” or less to hit – i.e. automatic hit). Then I rolled a “5” for the damage roll, which against a hard target, is a “breach-1” inflicting one damage on the fort. It’s a good start but it will take a lot more to reduce the fort enough for the French to either surrender or flee, or for the British to mount a successful assault on the fort and its walls.