AAR: Buckskins & Rangers: Bushwackers Vs. Union Cavalry.

 

   This last Saturday, Kalissa and I were play testing Buckskins & Rangers in a Civil War setting. The reason for this was that I plan on running a ACW gaming for Historicon 2020. The idea was to run a somewhat "what if" scenario on the famous raid on Lawrence, KS aka the Lawrence, KS Massacre. The idea is to run Quantrill's raiders in town and burn, loot, and kill (men only), but actually, stay and fight the Union cavalry that shows up, instead of running away. I got this idea for the movie "Ride with the Devil" where they show this. So need to find some rules with some more raider like qualities.
     So Kalissa and I played this out with 12 men on each side. She played as the Union. I was the raiding bushwackers. The game went a little in my favor, since more cards were drawn in my favor. I got the first kill and started a fire in the first turn. I, also, bagged my first male civilian in the mission. The first turn took much longer than normal. More than a hour for it. This was partly due to the fact this was our second game playing with this rules. The second turn took off to be about thirty minutes. Melee tended to be much easier of a kill option. Since it is an American Civil War time frame, we both realized that these rules might have to be too heavily modified to work for my games rules. This was a combination of the designer's rules were for a earlier timeframe (French and Indian War) and that there were some gaming issues that reflected certain realities. Example: in a melee on horseback, you have a -6 modifier on a D20 using a carbine. I read this based on the fact that a carbine for cavalry would be attached to a sling wrapped around the rider's torso, so he could not just swing it at someone like a bat. Nothing is wrong with these rules for a home game, I just need to flow a little faster for my game. However, the building fire idea in this game we are going to use.
   Our game ended when I killed all but one Federal. The Union soldiers were able to put out the second building fire. And I lost points for accidentally killing a female civilian, which a big negative in the game and Southern fighting honor. Kalissa killed all but four of my men, though only one was without a wound of some type. We had fun, however, I will just have to paint up the rest of our French and Indian figures for these rules. Below are the few photos of our game. Enjoy!