Jason Pipes - Sep 28, 2007 2:58 am (#20484 Total: 20537) In stores now my new book: San Francisco's Treasure Island Played another game of Wilderness War with David Moody last night at Endgame in Oakland, CA. This time I did much better than last week which was my first playing ever. This time I won! We played the 1757-1759 scenario and completed all turns. We played for about 3.5 hours. Like my first playing last week I love this game. It really is a lush, exciting, and very tense game with a huge number of strategies and options. The sign of an excellent simulation/game! Some highlights of our playing included David's French forces getting hit with not one but TWO bouts of small pox in 1757 and 1758 respectively. Talk about luck (mine and his). The first small pox struck when David moved a number of French forces south to Ticonderoga in the first impulses of the game. Clearly David was looking to move on Hudson Carry North as soon as possible. After a few impulses when David had brought up a fairly large number of units I played the small pox card on him. I think that hurt... Since he had more than 8 units in the space he got hit pretty hard. I believe 5 or 6 units were impacted. Next came the battle David was planning for when he moved to attack Hudson Carry North from Ticonderoga. Sadly the French were repulsed with fairly heavy losses. Two major blows in a row! For the remainder of 1757 both British and French forces in the Hudson Valley region remained stationary (while the action went on elsewhere) save for reinforcing them for possible future battles. The unfortunate thing for the French was as winter 1757 approached David had to spend cards and impulses pulling units from the front at Ticonderoga to move them back north into their winter quarters. I was much closer to the "front line" in the Hudson Valley where as David would have to spend a few impulses and cards reconcentrating his units to move south and start the offensive over in 1758. In this playing I focused on a totally different direction than our previous game. This time around I gave up on the conventional smash-and-bash I usually use and instead concentrated on building up forces, preparing for the future, building stockades and forts, bringing up supplies, and moving very cautiously. After my first playing I really saw how critical it was to understand how slow forces moved in this period and what it took to move and position them for a campaign. I planned this time to conduct my major offensives in 1758 – an entire year after the game started – and I used all of 1757 to prepare for those campaigns. Some additional things I noted in this playing was I tended to be very cautious about getting ambushed by David. If I didn't have auxiliary troops and light units in a force I tried not to move them into combat. I also used a number of campaign cards (which allow one to activate any two leaders and all their units under their control instead of just one which is normally all you can activate). This really helped speed up the tempo of my operations. In one use of a campaign card in 1757 I positioned more forces in Halifax to be ready for an amphibious assault on Louisburg in 1758 and also moved a force to Will's Creek (much to David's suprise) to prepare for a move on Ohio Forks, also planned for 1758. As mentioned above 1757 was a prep time for later. I didn't launch an assault on Louisburg or up the Hudson Valley like I did last time and instead concentrated on holding ground in those area (Ticonderoga and Hudson Carry North) while my major focus was the southwest and in building a base for operations at Oneida Carry East and West. This careful and calculated approach really paid off because not only did I suffer zero winter attrition but in 1758 I actually did manage to launch the assault on Lousiburg and secure it, take Ohio Forks, and press north in the Hudson Valley. But all was not entirely well in 1758... The French reconcentrated and moved south towards Crown Point and a critical turning point came when they moved on Hudson Carry North. I had to decide if the few forces available should stand and fight, retreat inside the fort and face certain destruction if they lost, or withdraw from the space entirely. In the end they stood and fought outside the fort, lost, retreated inside the walls, and the French placed a siege level 0 marker upon them. The Tension rose. The turning point really was at hand. If the British lost Hudson Carry North it would open the path and set the tempo for the French to launch south instead of allowing the British to push north. Everything would have changed; everything would have been redirected towards stopping the French offensive. The entire course of the game would have changed dramatically! Alas my British force proved to be much stronger than I had anticipated! Although they lost the battle they inflicted a fairly high number of losses on the French as well; all losses they could ill afford. In the following British impulse I moved a force into Hudson Carry North to attempt to raise the French siege. The forces in the fort linked up with the newly arriving units and together they managed to beat the French back causing them to retreat to Ticonderoga in a fairly weakened state. The British pursued and soon Ticonderoga fell as well. Aside from mopping up the remaining French forts left behind as they withdrew to Montreal, the route north was now open for the British. 1758 also saw the French hit with another small pox infection in the Hudson Valley, although this outbreak was not as destructive as the first back in 1757 (lucky for David). It still hurt though and every loss the French took really began to take a toll. Thereafter the French started to concentrate from all points in the hinterland and pulled back towards Montreal. David also repeatedly hit me with Indian and auxiliary raiders. Thankfully only a few managed to burn anything and gain victory points for the French. Many were slaughtered before they had a chance to do anything or simply went home empty handed. In a few very tense raids David directed Indian units at stockades along a vital British supply line running along the route Will's Creek-Laurel Ridge South-Gist's Station. They were unmanned and much to my relief stood after repeated assaults until Ohio Forks fell! Without those vital supply lines the British could not have put Ohio Forks under siege. By 1759 David had virtually no Indian or auxiliary forces left to speak of because most had been killed during raids (or from small pox). The largest battles of the war were fought during the final year of the scenario in 1759. I first redirected forces from British controlled Lousiburg (opting not to continue the assault from Lousiburg to Quebec) over to New York and then by river to Hudson Carry North and beyond. In addition, a vital play of the Highlanders card saw the British bring in four 4-4 strength units and a leader at New York. They too moved by boat up the river towards Crown Point and north. The remainder of David's French forces in Montreal loomed though. David had pulled most everything he had left towards his center and was concentrating for a final stand near Montreal. As the British moved north they captured intact a number of now empty stockades. When the British arrived at Ile-aux-Noix, they assaulted only to be defeated and pushed back from whence they came. In a shocking move though in David's next impulse he came out of Montreal and pursued the recently defeated British only to be himself beaten, and beaten badly. This left the French seriously weakened and in the next British impulse I ignored them and instead moved on to an otherwise empty Quebec. The British took Quebec with an impulse or two to spare in the late season of 1759 (the last turn of the game). With that I pretty much sealed up the victory and the game ended. A fantastic, splendid playing of a great game!