Muskets & Tomahawks at Barrie's

Muskets & Tomahawks is a set of rules for small scale 18th actions in North America with 28mm figures.  We played this game 3 a side with each player having 2 units.
British: Richard, Steve, Jim.
French: John, Barrie, Leigh.

The star of the show was Barrie's terrain...and maybe Steve's British regulars - with only a couple of dozen figures to paint for a usable force he did an even more fastidious job than usual.

The system gives each side different objectives.  In this case the French attacking from the right had to destroy the 4 buildings on the left.   The Brits had to hold half of them to win (with some units off table at the start).   The French badly damaged 1 building with artillery & setting fire to another, but the Brits stopped the French advance and held onto 2 buildings.  So the Brits claimed victory when time ran out.

Though a completely different period, the game bears a marked resemblance to Bolt Action, with the same figure scale, similar numbers of figures, and a randomised turn sequence.  In each turn each side gets to move units in response to cards drawn from a special pack rather than in response to special dice from a cup as in Bolt Action.  As it does with Bolt Action, this slows bigger multiplayer games down as you can only do 1 or 2 units at a time through each turn.   But the system seems to flow pretty well given that everyone involved today was either a total newbie or close to it.

I rate it better than Saga - there was definitely more of a feel of playing at war rather than playing a game system.  I put it on a par with Bolt Action - unlikely to become my favourite game, but it makes an interesting change of scale, and requiring as it does only a small investment in painting time, it's well worth adding to the list of games we play.