Arrest Captain Merryweather Playtest

I took my L and C stuff off to Game Matrix to playtest my Enfilade scenario today. I put together the game on 10' by 5' table, which is the size I'm planning for the convention.

There were two things I hoped to accomplish with the playtest. The first was to determine whether the rules would be playable with a game this size and with some of the modifications I made. We had five guys running twelve units and roughly 120 figures, and it seemed to work okay. I did away with a couple of morale checks and made some other minor modifications. This seemed to work reasonably well. It didn't hurt that my intelligent and helpful friends were doing the playtest.

The other thing I hoped to learn from the playtest was whether my planned set up for the game would work out. I learned the Americans needed to be more spread out for to involve all the players, particularly the Spanish, quickly. It also means the game will turn into smaller, more desperate actions, rather than allowing the Americans to form more deadly mutually supportive actions.














The details. The Comanches opened the battle with a rapid advance toward the river bank. Unfortunately the quickly were caught in a rapid crossfire that became a massacre when the Spanish rolled above their activation numbers two turns in a row. The Indians were unable to move or shoot and simply were shot to pieces by Sgt. Pryor's squad, Ordway's squad and Clark's men who came up from the island to help.

As the remaining Spanish watched their Indian allies flee, they staked out ground in front of the river banks and engaged members of the Corps. In an uneven fight, the Spanish killed a couple members of the Expedition, while they simply took it from the Americans. On the left the Spanish sent their militia cavalry who moved close enough to empty their carbines at the Americans, but not quite close enough to run them down. All told the Spanish suffered fifty percent losses, and the Americans took slight casualties.

A lot of this will be balanced by simply stretching out the American deployment and positioning the Spanish. Life is good.