Tomahawks and Tankers

I had a chance to get in some gaming this weekend. On Saturday, I got together with Kevin and David Sullivan for a game using their Flint and Feather figures and the Song of Drums and Tomahawks rules. The figures look great and my photos don’t really do them justice (I recently got a new camera and I’m still learning how to use it, even on Auto settings).

Moving onto the board

It was planned to be a four-player game, but we only ended up with three people. David had envisioned a three-way battle, but Kevin and I didn’t really hear that part and ganged up on him. Kevin and I had eight native warriors with a mix of muskets, bows, and “primitive weapons.”

My troops with their stat sheet

David had a mixed force of natives, with mixed bows and hand weapons, and French, armed muskets and swords.

Frenchmen, with a big stick, in the distance

The rules have some interesting mechanics that is shared with other Song of … games, but also has some period specific rules. I like the activation rules, the combat rules seemed to be a lot of pushing and shoving with some surprising lethality mixed in to keep you on your toes.

some ineffective skirmishing

David and I started close together and engaged in some skirmishing. Kevin had some horrible rolls during the game and it took him a long time to get his warriors to engage. My bow fire proved to be mostly ineffective. I did have some luck with my muskets and by the end of the game I had killed a couple of David’s Frenchmen. My melee figures turned out to be pretty ineffective and unlucky. All my melee battles ended with my figure getting whacked by David’s primitive weapons. One of the special rules for the era is that if the player with a primitive weapon rolls a natural 6 and wins the melee, they automatically kill the opponent. This happened to three of my warriors, at which point I decided to focus on long-range shooting.

My bowman misses his shot while my hero tries (and fails) to bash a Frenchman

More skirmishing

After everyone lost half their forces, we decided to end the game. I lost five figures, Kevin lost four, and David lost four. Since Kevin and I had ganged up on David, we declared him the big winner.

My survivors limp off the field

I like the rules and look forward to trying them out again. You can read David’s and Kevin’s reports of the action on their blogs.

On Sunday, I had a little free time and decided to try a solo game of What a Tanker. I pulled out my 1/285 scale Desert War tanks (from a previous summer project) for the game and used centimeters for range instead of inches. I didn’t want to do a 1 vs 1 battle (that seemed a little boring, even if I was just learning the rules), so I decided to match a British M3 Lee and Honey against a German Panzer III H and Panzer II F (the points matched up nicely for these tanks). 

The British tanks ...

and the Germans

I wanted to include some basic terrain, which in the desert is mostly dunes and scrub. But because there aren’t any rules for hills in the game, I decided to treat dunes as minor obstacles. If two were stacked, the second would block line of sight. I felt like this gave me some decent terrain to try to hide behind and kept the battlefield looking like the desert.

The rules are pretty straightforward, but it still took me a little while to get into the swing of the action. Both sides moved forward and took a few pot shots, without inflicting any permanent damage. As the tanks closed, the Panzer III got off a good shot at the Honey hitting with four dice. But the Honey rolled four saves and only ended up falling back.

Lucky Honey

Once the tanks got closer I started getting more permanent damage on both sides. The Panzer III was caught in a crossfire and reduced to two command dice. But then the Panzer II, which had been slow to move all game, suddenly sprang into action. It closed on the Honey’s flank and blew it up with some rapid fire shots.

Not so lucky Honey

The next turn, the M3 Lee finished off the Panzer III, making it a 1 on 1 battle. The Panzer II tried to maneuver to get on the Lee’s flank, but the British tank was able to get the right combination of command dice to acquire, aim, and shoot. That was followed by goods rolls of the 6 strike value dice, which turned out to be too much for the little Panzer.

The M3 Lee is the winner

It was an interesting little game. There are a more decisions (and frustrations) than I originally thought there would be. Additionally, it seems hard to get an outright kill with the early war tanks (that may change with later war tanks) and the battle seems to be more about whittling down your enemy. I’m looking forward to playing the rules some more.