Playtested a Scenario today for the upcoming supplement to Songs of Drums and Tomahawks - Beaver Wars. Great fun and 2 (yes, two) nail-biter endings.
But first, as always an apology to the writer, Mike Demana. He produces great scenarios, and then I do my best to butcher them up beyond recognition. Here's his map for the "horse raid" scenario:
And my butchered response. Don't have enough horses, so we'll use cows instead. Can't find the cornfields, so we'll use orchards instead. And half the Indians are still on the painting table, so it's now Settlers vs. Indians. But I did keep them as a tribe, not using SoDT settler archetypes.
Each band (232 points), had a leader, several warriors, and 2 youngsters along. The Indians were surprised halfway through their raid. In the first turn, most of the settlers approached from the North East.
Here in turn 2, one Indian is making away towards the wood with the prize bull. A lone settler enters from the South West and takes a shot. Miss!
The Indian War Leader, upset at the temerity, fires back. At long range he scores an amazing hit and takes out the first settler! (shown here before removal)
Since one of the ways to win is to collect scalps, the War Leader rushes towards his kill, dodging excited cows along the way. But wait...
Uh Oh! The Settler's partner enters the field. It's going to be a fight! Who will activate first?
The War Leader does! And gets a triple activation. He is able to rush up, scalp the unfortunate settler, and move into contact with the next one!
Action was occurring all across the board, of course. One of the Indian youths had frozen in the corral after missing a settler. He didn't miss his return shot, and rushed in for the scalp (blue dots).
Settler Joe hid in the center orchard and killed the other youth and scalped him as the cow wandered off, only to be killed by a return shot from the other cow-handler.
The rear guard Indian got grazed a few times, and finally rushed into hand-to-hand with a settler. He forgot it was the Leader of the Settlers! In the background, the 2 Settler youths started heading towards the cow that got away.
But catastrophe! The Settler Leader finally dispatched his opponent, triggering a morale check on the Indians. Both braves holding cows panicked and ran off the board (we ruled they lost the cows). The Leader calmly moved on, and ran into the settler boy just as he finished scalping his victim. This would be an easy kill for the War Leader (C3) versus the youth (C1)
But No! In an amazing feat of high-and-low dice rolling, the boy manages to score a kill on the Indian War Leader! It's a rout, a huge success for the Settlers. Tom (Indians) is inconsolable, Sara (Settlers) won't stop bragging!
Ending Two:
After enduring endless bragging, Tom realized he calculated the combat incorrectly! Ha Ha! War Leader wasn't dead! He demanded a replay, just like the Olympics. After pouting, Sara agreed.
The second fight went more to plan, and the War Leader killed and scalped the boy. But with more Settlers rushing forward, he wisely ran for the exit.
Final score was 4 scalps for the Settlers, 3 for the Indians, and no cows taken. Still a win for the Settlers, but not nearly as dramatic.
