F and I at Game Matrix

Tuesday about eight of us took advantage of our Veteran's Day holiday to play a French and Indian War game at the Game Matrix in Tacoma. I was expecting a rather small gathering, and it was going to be great because Mark Waddington was going to run it and I was going to play.

It was a great game, but there were eight players slogging through the woods trying to lay hands on one another. The scenario required a British force to slog through the woods and across a stream and exit, with a pack train, the opposite side of the board. The tricky part for the Brits was to get their force through the woods on trails, that would doubtless be ripe for French and Indian ambush. The tricky part for the French and Indians was to determine which of the three possible exit points the Brits were aiming for.

The French, played by myself, Scott Murphy, Jason (of unknown last name) and Bruce Meyer, opted to put somewhat weakish forces on the either flank, with fairly strong forces in the middle that could fairly quickly move to either flank. Our task was further complicated by the use of counters to represent each unit until they were actually spotted. Both sides also had a handful of dummies, so it was possible to make a weak force look pretty strong.

The game opened with the British running their Rogers Rangers unit straight into two units of Indians and a unit of Coeur de Bois. Bad thing. Though we Bruce was only able to get two of their three units into melee, the Rangers were thrashed, which really opened the middle up to our strong reserves.

The British feinted on their left (our right,) and sent their main force up the left flank road. It might have worked, except our strong middle was able to crash the left flank of their advance. The Indians under my command also earned undying glory as they turned back a strong unit of British line infantry in the woods, in one of those Sword and the Flame rolloffs. I was down to my last two guys, when I trashed the eight or so Brits remaining. To quote Barry Fitzgerald in "The Quiet Man," "It was heroic."

As the reserved troops crushed the Rangers remnants and made mincemeat of a Highland unit, my surviving heroes sneaked into the pack train, and the game ended. It was fun.

The pictures show the British left flank as their advance is stalled. The Highlanders, trying to hold the column's left flank is fighting disordered and shaken in the woods. A British line infantry unit has taken its position in a rocky clearing. Dead Rogers Rangers are in the foreground. The second picture shows a coordinated Indian assault on the Highlanders. Bad things are about to happen. The last picture shows My Indians and Scott's Marines firing on British light infantry in the rocky clearing, moment before launching my deadly assault on the line infantry in the woods.