This weekend a friend of mine and I took several hours to enjoy fighting the first battles of the First Neutralian War.  I pulled out the set of rules "This Very Ground" by Iron Ivan Games. These are short, fast play rules with a lot of potential for ImagiNation gaming.

In a previous post I put together a scenario tree for the battles for the start of the war. In the first battles, the Keuhankans and their Freedonian allies are attacking a couple of isolated outposts. I have roughly 60 Indians from Old Glory and two half-companies of the Canaries painted up (around 21 figures) so these formed the basis of the fights. I wasn't too concerned about the force ratios as I wanted the garrisons to lose.

There were three leaders on the Indian side with one being the overall war chief. The garrisons had a mounted company commander and a member of the Franksian order of monks who was armed with a musket and treated as a grenadier NCO stats-wise and gave units a +1 for morale when within 6 inches.

First a few words about the rules. This Very Ground is written for small scale actions in the French and Indian Wars in America. The units used in the scenarios in the back of the rules use units of 5-10 men for the most part. My groups were in the 30s for the Indians and 12 or so for the regulars. This made the game pretty predictable as there were only four units to move. If the units had been smaller for the Indians, it would have meant a different style of game, however, as the units might have been more fragile.

The game mechanics are pretty straight forward although I did have some rules questions I could not find answers to. At the start of each turn, the players roll a D10 and add the courage value for their highest rated leader. The winner then goes first and activates a unit then the other player goes. The turn proceeds in alternating phases until all units have taken their actions (if one side or the other has more units, the remainder of the unactivated units go at the end of the turn.) Units may move and fire, or reverse that order. Close Combat comes at the end of each unit's activation and is played out by matching the figures against each other and fighting until one side or the other is victorious. The winning unit may then occupy the loser's position. Firing is done by individual model as well and there are several rates at which units can fire (volley for formed units - all figures fire and it takes one turn to reload, fire - up to half the models fire each turn, fire at will - up to three figures but less than half). The rate of fire is marked by puffs of cotton balls so you can keep track of what happens.

The battlefield is shown to the left. There were two buildings in a clearing and a cornfield. The woods are treated as light woods so movement is only slightly reduced. the cornfield is walled and it cost one inch to move over the walls. The cornfield effects movement in the same way as the woods. 

The garrison gets a choice of where to deploy and the entry for the Indians is randomized. The Indians rolled a D6 for each unit and came in on the sides as follows:

In the first game the Indians came in at locations 6 and 4 so were able to act in concert early on. One unit was stationed in the building and the other in the abandoned building.

The units were automatically activated when the Indians came within 10 inches, otherwise, they had a 20% chance of hearing something that would alert them (9 or 10 on a D10). Once the battle broke out, the other unit would have a 50% chance to activate. As it turned out, the Indians got within 10 inches of the building and the unit activated. The next turn, the unit in the ruins was alerted by the gunshots they heard. The pictures below show how the battle developed. What essentially happened was that the Indians swarmed the building, taking heavy casualties, and then carried on across the road and destroyed the other unit. The second unit died in a blaze at glory by charging the advancing Indian unit when they only had 6 regulars left. Although they sold their lives dearly, they fell. At the end of the game,the Indians had lost 21 casualties while killing 21 defenders. The popup photos have comments on them.

 The second game started with the defenders in the same positions. The Indians came in at locations 3 and 6 so they attacked each garrison unit separately. In this game, the units activated on the first turn. The unit in the building was destroyed as the Indians broke through the back window and ground their way through the defenders, even the now-revered Father Francisco. The other garrison unit formed up and moved into the cornfield for a first volley. Then they retired slowly, keeping the Indians at bay with half volleys. After losing three casualties they were able to move off the field towards their base.

Here are some of the questions I had:

1) How many men can be in hand to hand combat against one man, we got almost 6 against one man... rtaher deadly...
2) How do you handle attacks through windows?
3) What effects do doors and buildings have on hand to hand?
4) The rules talk about realigning between the phases of hand to hand combat - we played it as you would in Grant's The Wargame where if you had an opponent open you could move up and engage, don't know if that was correct or not.

Otherwise it's a good set of rules and we'll use it for our next scenario "The Supply Train." We'll do two battles, one with the wagon train not alerted, the next with the train alerted by the defenders.

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