Angus Konstam's Edinburgh Wargames
French & Indian Wars
Skulking around in the woods
This is an abandoned period. I'm still keeping this page up because some of you will still get something out of it. We simply found we weren't playing with the figures more than once a year or so. Besides, as a skirmish period I only had about 30 figures for it, most of which were indians. Still, I'm sure we'll still play the odd game from time to time - its only that I've opted out of having my own figures, which have now been rebased as auxiliaries for the American War of Independence.
Anyway, here's the blurb I posted about the period:
I'm not usually a great fan of skirmish games, but that's the best level to treat this offshoot of the Seven Years War. Forget the few big battles and sieges such as Quebec and Louisbourg - the real fighting in this war was the struggle in the backwoods. I was first inspired to game the period after reading White Devil by Stephen Brumwell, a really good account of the part played by Major Rogers and his Rangers - especially the attack on St. Francis which featured in that old Spencer Tracy film North-West Passage. A few others in the Edinburgh club raised their own forces, and although these figures don't appear on the tabletop often, the games are always enjoyable when we do play them. The only drawback is the terrain - to make the table look halfway decent you need an awful lot of trees! I landed up buying out the railway hobby shop, and spent whole evenings sticking the darned things onto bases! Still, it was worth it. The Indians, Rangers and victims had a place to fight in, and the same trees came in useful for anything from 20mm Russian Front games to American War of Independence, American Civil War and the "Back of Beyond".
Our preferred rules come from the Chris Peers stable - War in the Forest is an adaptation of his A Good Day to Die skirmish set, and the combination is well suited to this kind of low level warfare. War in the Forest even comes with a little campaign system, and little pieces of rules flavour, such as Abenakis are harder to spot in woods (skulky little buggers that they were), or that the Delaware indians can augment their forces with the heroes from Last of the Mohicans! However, the few games we've played with them have been something of a disappointment, as though the rules are quite good, they seem to lack the panache of other rules sets by the same writer. Its probably not even so much the rules themselves as our own lack of practice playing them, or indeed in playing with any skirmish set.
If you're interested in gaming this period then you could do worse than to turn to something like Pete Berry's Ranger set, which uses a 10:1 figure scale. By basing the figures on coins (British 2-pence pieces - roughly the same size as a US quarter), then moving six figures around on a 3" x 2" sabot base, then you can use the same figures for both rules sets. To be honest, Ranger are eminently more satisfying than WitF as they allow you to refight some of the smaller battles of the war, rather than just skirmishes, and troops such as regulars are something other than just scalping victims!
Above all, Pete Berry incorporated one of the whackiest and most amusing officer "incident" tables ever seen on a wargame table.
The rules are sold by Caliver Books, so check 'em out if you don't believe me!
Then again, when we play colonial games, we use a variant of Chris Peers' In the Heart of Africa rules. they're fast, fun, very bloody, and they suit big games - we've played them with as many as 250 figures a side, and still managed to finish a game in a normal club night. Consequently we came up with our own variant, called In the Heart of the Forest. They might be bloody, but at least they produce fast, enjoyable games.
As for figures most of the ones shown here are a combination of Conquest Miniatures, Dixons and Front rank, plus some from Redoubt (which are slightly larger than the others), and Perry Miniatures, which are fully compatible with Conquest. My only Redoubt figures were my Coureurs de Bois - mixed in with a few Foundry mountain men). Redoubt also produce some superb war canoes, settlers, fortifications - in fact anything you'd need to game this period. In my mind all these manufacturers produce nice figures, but I think that the Conquest and Perry ones really stand out from the rest.
.jpg)
.jpg)
For examples of French & Indian Wars games, see Journal 2 and Journal 9
_______________________________________________________
Seven Years War American War of Independence Age of Bonaparte American Civil War
back to Early Periods, on to Modern periods ... or Home