I just returned from the fort itself as I was able to travel there for the 27th War College over last weekend. Now I will just post a couple of pictures from the trip as I learned so much about the area, battle and 18th century warfare in general.
First some details of a diorama they display at the museum. Very nice indeed as it is always great to see how the artist has envisioned the event and its surroundings. In my humble opinion, there should be a lot more abatis, but I assume this was more of a challenge with the required effort to create the diorama than historical accuracy.
Pay attention to those firing holes between the logs, that really is an awesome detail!
A small detail of the fort between a demi-lune and the main walls. Masonry was added mostly later and the original Fort Carillon was built more or less out of timber.
Artillery at the fort. This gun (or cannon) is towards the Mt. Independence. I believe they fire this piece although I did not have time for any of the shows! There were a ton of various types of artillery at the fort and I will add more pics later.
As part of the testing, the British army conducted some hasty attacks as soon as they ran into the French army. They didn’t go too well and casualties mounted, however, there is no morale factored in the game… yet. Montcalm’s troops were putting up stiff resistance around the saw mill and Bernetz Brook. As his army retreated back towards the famous hills, skirmishers and other screening forces were trying desperately to buy some time to allow the rest to construct defensive works.
The vanguard of the British regulars along with some supporting light infantry companies pulled back towards the brook to deal with the entrenchments they bypassed earlier. An overwhelming assault was mounted against the La Reine brigade which suffered catastrophical losses due to, well, the roll of luck, and was thrown out of the position in confusion. In the meantime, on the south side of the river, British and Provincial troops made a push on the redoubts prepared before the British landing. Although they stormed the position, they could not make it any further.
Ultimately, the remaining French pulled out by using boats and canoes. Artillery had to be left behind and it was quickly taken over by the British during their movement phase. On the other hand, sloppy play had left some precious British supply unprotected, and the French made a dash for it capturing more supplies to replenish their dwindling stores and improve that (un-factored) morale. It was hauled in their retreat back into Fort Carillon.
The leader counters above are fresh – (almost) the latest version although I did make additional changes tonight so these are obsolete now! I mean I made them yesterday! The rest are old, some really old, and as can be seen, we just ran out of stuff and replaced some of the abatis with blank chits.
While listening to the Eurovision song contest, I am making some big updates to the counters graphics. Of course, this is just my vision as the artist will take them as input and create his own versions.
Moving an element a couple of pixels here or there… tweaking a color while learning the intricacies of Inkscape’s Countersheet extension. Yes, I definitely want everything to be right there, and not “just”.
For clarity, I came up with e.g. the following small changes.
Here monsieur Montcalm has received a yellow-ish box around his leader value. In playtesting, it wasn’t obvious which counter was a leader and which a combat unit. Well, now it’s fixed(?). Colors make such a difference!
The green circle with a “1” is the leader bonus – green means positive! And… red is negative – as with the fresh and untried Berry regiment’s 3rd battalion below.
One more small, recent update is the “Reg XXXX” – Montcalm was the highest-ranking French leader and can only lead regular infantry units. He wasn’t too impressed by the irregular troops, especially the native Americans (Indians) although understood their value in the vast forests of North America.
Below, I smeared the soldier as I am using some, well, “random images” for illustration during testing 🙂
Artillery is divided into several categories based on weight, so I made it easier to quickly identify units’ “weight class”. It’s those three “o”s with the yellow-ish background . Three is heavy; If it is less like medium, well, you’ll have less “o”s. More weight means more troops are needed to unload them from boats or to pull them into the frontline.
The iron vs. brass topic is still under consideration. I am not sure if it will make it to the final product. You can overload both types of cannon with extra powder, and they both will burst at some point, but is there any real difference?? Oh well, decisions decisions!
(“Legal nonsense”:) All graphics currently on the counters are for testing purposes only and will be re-created by the artist.
Today I wanted to print out my latest counters and logged in to GitHub as always. Hmm, no counter*.csv files anywhere to be seen… ehm, what? Then I thought what was I doing late last night – in a hurry. I did git rm c* and such. Eeek – it actually removed all files starting with “c” and not just the obsolete ones that I actually wanted to get rid of.
Thought #2. This is why I use git. It stores everything. I mean everything. So some googling later I right-clicked my freshly installed GitHub Windows desktop client and selected “revert changes”. “Push upstream” (or something). And it’s all back there!
The learning is that “rm” [remove] only the files you really want to remove. Nothing more, nothing less.
Our game continued the other day and we got some action on the map! The British army was pushing hard to engage some French troops that were trying to buy time to allow last minute entrenchments built on the heights of Carillon. The die rolls seemed to mostly go against the British and their casualties kept mounting.
Head-on attacks were conducted just to see how combat works 🙂 Morale loss due to casualties is not yet factored in, so the British & American troops just kept coming. Maybe not so ahistorical, after all…
While I am generally quite satisfied how the game plays overall, I will make small tweaks here and there to factor in for more historical feeling although some will undoubtedly argue just the opposite to be the case 🙂 I’ll try to limit the complexity and make the information easily available that is needed frequently, whether it is e.g. movement multipliers or combat modifiers. Another topic I am quite mindful of, is the clutter on the map – are there too many counters and if yes, what can I do to alleviate this?
The counters we use are actually rather old, I am still missing (test) art for some types completely and none of the ones we play with are in any way final. Nevertheless, I have been able to pick up many improvement ideas for clarity, whether being a bigger font size or some marker to separate combat values from leadership valuers. Truly golden feedfack so far!
It is quite tedious to create new counters manually, but looks like I have no choice as it will give us a much improved test environment when we can play using semi-realistic (final) counters. Final does not mean like the art is final but more like these are the elements I expect to see in the final product.
One of the mechanics that I am still trying to validate is the casualties. At the moment, I have made a compromise with the larger units by making a step loss in some cases to mean losing two strength points (SP), instead of just one. So, first of all, in most games a step loss flips the counter over to its weaker side and a second step loss eliminates it. Not so here. Each SP is about a hundred men and typically a hit in combat is one step loss equaling to the loss of one SP. To keep the number of counters a bit more manageable, I decided to have some of the step losses in large units as two SP. So instead of losing ~100 men, a large unit loses ~200 men. There are multiple counters for a given unit to represent this and their sizes go roughly like this: 9-7, 6-5, and 4-2 indicating there are three individual counters for the unit. The largest one is 9 (front) and 7 (back). If the unit suffers a single step loss being 9 SP strong, it will flip over to the backside with 7 SP and thus suffers a 2 SP loss.
Non-Indian infantry losses are marked on the “initial casualties track” by keeping track of the actual SP losses – 4 SP means 400 men. All of them are not permanent losses as some stragglers will return to the unit, or are mentally shaken or just lightly wounded. Once your losses reach 4 SP on the track for e.g. the regulars, the next day you can bring 1 SP back as reinforcements for that unit type. The remaining 3 SP will move to the “permanent casualties track” and will be included in the victory point calculations. However, each SP returning to combat is just a single SP and you’ll need two of those to flip that 7 SP counter back to the full 9 strength points.
Rangers, grenadiers or Highlanders cannot receive replacements. You need a computer to keep track of their casualties!
The current art is indeed a bit different from the above-seen test map. I definitely like it better as it has a more historical feel! Coloring is not final until it actually goes to print…
The map is quite big indeed. This is a draft version of the whole battlefield as of now, early May. It will eventually be cropped down, as a good chunk of the area has relatively little gaming value. The largest area to be removed is the wilderness on the bottom of the map (east side) and also, to some degree, the left (south) edge isn’t important game-wise. They’ll be trimmed at some point.
Below is a detail of the La Chute river connecting with Lake Champlain. A victory location has been added (and no, likely won’t be that exact hex) close to the sawmill. Also, the waterfalls are now on the river. A stream hex side is clearly different from a river. There are quite well-defined elevations, and finally, a die roll is required to navigate around that swampy island on the bottom when trying to reach the lake from the river. With a bad roll, British boats have to take the northern route and will become exposed to the artillery at Fort Carillon who have ranged their weapons well in advance.
Oh, the red line visible on the lower right hand side is just a “six hex range indicator” from the fort. Shot and shell might start raining on approaching troops around that line 🙂
Finally got the game in all its glory to someone else’s table! A long-time wargamer I met recently was kind enough to take it for a test drive. As I haven’t set it up for many months myself, and I was a little rusty with all the pieces, rules, charts, tables, and whatnot. Who was Eyre again? What was his role, or did I drop him out? Was artillery able to move in the forest? What happens when the British army lands? What does this number on the counter mean?
After some time and a bit of remembering & explaining the basics, we got going. And it was such fun to actually PLAY it!
I had a hard time remembering all the rules, movement values etc. as I usually focus on a single rule (topic) and think it through. How they all come together is a completely different beast. The game has to be historically accurate for those who really know their stuff, and naturally, a good & interesting game to play. It’s tough to balance it all.
My tester’s experience came through quite clearly. He provided comments and improvement possibilities here and there, thought about how the troops and commanders would likely have behaved in real life, and basically (seemed to me) he “played a better game” than Montcalm himself. Ok, that is not really a fair comparison – Montcalm had a colony to defend and thousands of real lives under his responsibility.
Anyway, it was great to see how someone who has no clue about the game, its components, or even the historical context, approached it. Are the rules and different components clear and understandable? Things definitely need to be clarified, simplified, and tested thoroughly. We spent some 4+ hours and “got going”, but not too far yet. All this does indicate, as I knew all along, that this will not be a light, one evening game. On the contrary – there is a lot of detail, although the idea is to keep it at a reasonable level. Players will face historically accurate challenges and complexity. A simple example is artillery: It will not move by itself, the gun (cannon) crew is a barebone crew to operate (fire) the piece and if you want to move it… you’ll need men, and a lot of them!
Finally some comments about the picture above. I received a map update the day before our session and obviously it’s not seen here. It was a relatively big update, but at this image resolution would not be that clear to most people (you see the older version). Several details were added, colors slightly adjusted, and some errors corrected, while there is still much more to do.
The version shown is a compilation of individual photo paper sheets taped together. It’s quite laborous to make, but I like the strong and relatively thick photo paper, and it looks quite sharp too! Besides, I can make a new version at home at any time with low cost. I haven’t used any of the local print shops yet because they seem to mostly print A0 in some type of poster paper which I think is not really that good at this stage.
Talking about A0 paper size, yes, the map will be rather sizable. It will not be A0 size(!), which is close to two 34×22 inch sheets (34″ is about 86 cm, and 22″ about 56 cm). I think the final size will be quite a bit less than 112 cm x 86 cm because there is a lot space that can and will be removed. There are areas that are definitely under-utilized in the game and will be either cut off or repurposed to something else like a holding box. This is one of the many aspect testing should highlight.
The main British army has landed! Group of counters below the fort are the French artillery and commanders inside the fort. The artist had added a few extra boxes on the lake which we repurposed on the fly as a holding box for the arty. Now I can scrap another sheet that I had set aside for all the artillery in Carillon.
Trains, planes, and … well, you probably know how it goes. Boats, ships, vessels, watercraft, whatever. The terms I use in the game have been changing like the seasons, but I’ll stick with “boats” for now.
Here a is walkthrough of what I’ve got in the game.
Canoes(UPDATE: Canoes were removed from the game)
Obviously small and light, the canoe is go to transportation for light troops and Indians. You can only carry so much, but they are easy to transport over land between bodies of water.
Bateaux
The bateau was the real workhorse of the North American wilderness, perhaps “comparable” to the Liberty ships of the Second World War? They were used to carry the bulk of the men and material across lakes and rivers. Between bodies of water, the men had to carry the bateaux, so e.g. from Hudson River to Lake George (or Wood Creek) – locally known as “Great Carrying Place”. This is not to be mixed with Oneida Carry, which may be the more famous Great Carrying Place. These overland portages could be several kilometers or miles long but there was no other option unless animals were available to haul the boats.
Bateaux came in many different sizes created by local carpenters, so a single bateau could carry maybe 10 or 20 men and quite a bit of cargo (barrels of food or gun powder, shot or shell for artillery, tents, and whatever an army might need to live and fight). Sometimes bateaux were also equipped with sails but typically they were rowed.
In the game I have two sizes for bateaux, basically small and large. The map does get a little cluttered with bateaux and canoes all over the place, but then again, that’s how it goes!
If the other guy leaves some unattended, just go get them!
Radeaux
Radeaux were rafts used to haul larger loads, such as artillery. Slow and cumbersome, but so necessary if you want to move heavy pieces to the other end of the lake. Sometimes they were made by joining a few bateaux together with a platform on top.
I am not yet 100% sure if I will allow artillery to fire from a Radeaux – likely yes, but time will tell if this sticks. There is definitely a penalty involved.
Artillery Castles
Two or three floating artillery platforms, which I simply call Artillery Castles, were documented by contemporaries. Their purpose was to support a contested landing at the end of the Lake George. However, the French pulled back once they realized the massive size of the approaching fleet. These Artillery Castles (I love the term!) had guns ready to bombard French positions during the landing.
Jacobs
In 1757, Lieutenant Louis-Thomas Jacau de Fiedmont of the French Royal Artillery tested adding cannons to bateaux and thus created the small gunboat called a “Jacob”. Apparently already used in the attack on Fort William Henry, I have decided to have a optional rule to enable a bit more support for the French. After all, if it could have been available in 1758, it should be available in “1758 Fort Carillon”.
Ships
Yep, there is more. Sources have not really been clear where the French “fleet” was located in July 1758, but we’ll have a few key vessels roaming the lake.
La Vigilante, a 10-gun schooner, and Saintonge, a lightly-armed barge showing its age, were the two main French ships on Lake Champlain at the time. Especially La Vigilante will bring a notable addition to the French defenses. If you have captain Payant* at the helm, he’ll give the Rangers a hard time if they try to cross the lake 🙂
* L’Amiral du lac Champlain, Joseph Payant dit St-Onge – or something; I don’t speak French, so please pardon my French!
Below is an image I took in 2014 at Fort Ticonderoga of a diorama showing various vessels on Lake Champlain. If I recall correctly, the diorama depicts vessels some twenty years after the battle, in mid-1770s.
Below is a pretty picture of the 42nd Regiment of Foot, i.e. the Black Watch, charging through the infamous abatis the French defenders had set up the day before in front of their lines. The diorama is located at the Black Watch Castle and Museum in Perth, Scotland.
In the game, abatis can be created on forest hexes, but it can also be destroyed e.g. by artillery fire. It took me a while before I made them separate hexes and not part of other fieldworks (due to the size). Who doesn’t love even more counters! There is a nice little penalty when attacking out of (“through”) an abatis hex, of course.
And yes, the 10 companies of the 42nd Regiment – that made the famous charges over the top – make up the biggest, strongest single combat unit in the game.
