French & Indian Wars: Musket Action at Good Games

2 weeks ago we fought our first battle using Musket Action, our house ruled variant of Bolt Action for brigade scale actions in the age of the musket.  We fought that battle in the American Civil War era. Since then I have raised enough troops to do a battle in the French & Indian Wars - an ideal period for this scale of action.  (Indeed, the main driver of MA is an excuse to paint some cool troops with three cornered hats).  This Sunday Chris commanded the Brits v. Steve's French in our 2nd go at Musket Action.

The Brits are on this side of the table.  To deploy, a command dice was put in the bag for each troop type on each side & troops were deployed within 12" of own table edge without moving or firing ina deployment turn.

On the right, the French Indians are driving the British Indians back thru the wood.  Right of centre the regulars of each side are exchanging volleys.  The French hussars have tried charging the British grenadiers but have bounced off.  On the left, the Colonial Regulars & British Dragoons are being shot at by Canadian militia as they move towards the centre & the main game. 

On the right the French Indians have overlapped the British line.  The hussars failed in a second charge at the grenadiers, but the grenadiers have blundered forwards into a ring of fire.  On the left side, the Colonials are keeping each other busy.

The British have lost over half their units & failed their army morale test (a Black Powder rule that seems appropriate & we'd lost count of the number turns anyway - about 7).    The Indians & French regulars have broken most of the British regulars.  The Canadian militia & the gun have broken one of the Colonial coys.  The only British win was a cavalry charge that broke a Canadian militia coy - only to be broken in turn by musket fire.

Both sides had about 1,050 pts & 11-12 units, so a pretty standard BA sized action.   The 2 pages of rules for the BA-MA conversion is a whole lot easier to grasp than a whole new set of rules & though it was only our 2nd game of MA the players had no problems coping with the rules.  They clearly enjoyed it.  It took less than 2 hours - so maybe faster than standard BA & way quicker than any Sharp Practice or Muskets & Tomahawk game I've played.

Meanwhile John & Rusty were reading the Chain of Command rules on another table.