The US Plains Wars

A Scenario for Blood and Steel - Battle of Walker's Creek

I have joined several Facebook groups for games I enjoy. One of those is the official Blood and Steel group from Firelock Games. To date Firelock has only released the “core” rulebook. It has a wide variety of forces from the Victorian Age. Zulus, Maori, ACW, etc. It is an entertaining and enjoyable rule set.

One of the things I keep seeing in the group is that people wish there were more supplements. Thanks to people like Mr Wargaming from the Joy of Wargaming and Attention Span Labs, I have come to realize that it is my game, and I don’t need companies to tell me how I can play my games. I can play them however I want.

I’ve been reading Empire of the Summer Moon, which is a history of the Comanches, and the various forces they fought over the centuries. There are no Plains Indians lists for the games. There are Seminoles, Zulus, and Maori. None of these quite fit with what I am imagining.

The comanches fought a mobile kind of warfare. All from horseback, quick feints, launching many attacks.

Depending on what year, and what battles you want to fight, the American forces started out with Kentucky Longrifles, and fought mostly on foot. Later the Texas Rangers adapted to fight on horseback with revolvers.

I’ll talk about models, and forces later. Right now, I want to discuss the Battle of Walker's Creek between a “newer” force of Texas Rangers (which are detailed in the core book).

The Battle of Walker’s Creek consisted of about 15 rangers fighting about 70 Comanches. The Comanches tried to run and hide behind a hill, waiting on the rangers to rush over the hill, where they could be peppered with arrows.

The rangers instead raced around the hill and hit the Comanche in flank. This wasn’t the decisive charge it might have been, and the Comanche were able to quickly turn and fight back. The rangers in the meantime took a hint from Napoleon and firmed a circle (ok, maybe it wasn’t quite a foot infantry square, but the principle was similar). This allowed the rangers to fire their Colt revolvers and kill quite a few of the Comanches, while protecting themselves from being flanked.

On to the scenario. The forces not being that large, I would almost be tempted to run it on 1-1. 15 mounted Texas Rangers, and 69 mounted Comanches, and 1 Comanche Chief.

I don’t know if I have the patience to paint 70 troops of the exact same type. So when I finally get around to testing the scenario, I might cut the forces down some.

The rangers should be mounted and armed with pistols. The Comanche should be modeled with bows, and lances. I haven’t quite decided on stats for the natives, so I still need to work on those. I’ll probably use modified Zulus from the rulebook.

As far as scenery goes, you need a hill, and some cactuses, and trees. Use what you have. I wouldn’t play on much larger than a 2x2 or 3x3 table.

I am planning on giving the Texans a +1 or +2 defensive save when they circle up to represent their defensive posture in a circle.

I would go 5 or 6 turns. The one thing I’m not certain about is how to represent the rangers limited ammo supply. They couldn’t reload their colts in the field, and I think they only had 10 to 20 shots a piece. So 300 shots? Maybe it doesn’t matter.

The last thing to know is that the Rangers did run out of ammunition, one of them was ordered by Hays to go and shoot the chief. When this happened, the Comanches fled, due to their bad medicine. That is one rule where I think the Comanches points value should be reduced even though most of the time they outnumbered their opponents.

If the chief is killed, the Indians should receive a large negative to their morale, if not lose outright.

Scenario objectives:
Rangers — Kill the chief, and survive for X turns
Comanches — Destroy all the Rangers.

Hopefully, I can get my printer up and working again soon, and get these forces on the table. Or maybe I should just ask for some for Christmas…

Let me know what you think and any changes you think should be made.