1808, First clash on the eastern border

Many first games these days. This time the rules system was The Horse and the Musket. Last autumn I painted some cossacks to field against my friend's Carelian Dragoons. It took some time for us to arrange the game (and my friend to paint those Dragoons), but now was the day. I did some terrain suitable for the event during the week; based some cheap fir trees, did some pines from ready armatures and built a timber shed in the old Finnish traditional style.

The scenario was that the cossacks were looting some grains from the storage shed and got ambushed by the dragoons. The cossacks had to escape from the table edge where the dragoons entered the board. Both of us had 6 riders. I had a better force as my troops had better weapons (lances). There is a system for generating traits for the troopers by drawing cards, which balanced it out as  we drew traits for our troops and two of my troops were drunk (fittingly) and two had slow horses.

We didn't have on foot models, so we ignored the rules for dropping from horses. Our soldiers were professionals and didn't drop from the saddle even when wounded.

Here's a short presentation how it went in a picture form:

The snow was bit of a quick fix, but did it's part. The board was quite interesting as by crossing some difficult terrain, there as possibility to get into the forest to try to outmanouver the dragoons.

My drunken cossacks.

The brave dragoons.

First clash, my charging cossack wins the battle and switches places with his opponent.

But is taken down quickly afterwards.

The drunken cossack leader charges headlong into the enemy, manages to kill one dragoon, but is cut down. His fellow soldiers advance and manage to shoot another dragoon from the saddle. 

In the forest, two cossacks try to outflank, but get shot down by the pistols of the dragoons.

Finally, the situation is that there are four dragoons against two cossacks on the road. However, the dragoons in the forest spend the turn reloading their pistols and the cossacks make a push for it and charge the two remaining riders on the road and manage to strike both of them down, allowing a clear way for them to escape and ride back to the camp telling that the soldiers are active.

 All in all, the rule system was really great. The game is based on playing cards. Each player gets cards according to the number of units and the units are activated by playing them from largest to smallest. Certain cards give bonuses and the aces are wild cards. The game is designed for about six models and unlike some other skirmish games, it really felt like a game even with the small number of models. More of this certainly to come. Likely the next games will be in summer. I'll try to do a full farmstead for that game and certainly some footmen will be involved as well.
We also naturally already have plans on continuing the campaign eventually to 15mm or 6mm scale...