That damned Tiffin Card again!

 Our Group decided to start the New Year out right and scheduled a game on New Year's Day at Blue Sky Hobbies in Bremerton, WA. Its a great place to game as they are always friendly there and although they don't have much historical stuff, we always feel welcome and the store has plenty of nice gaming tables.

I chose to do an AWI  Sharp Practice game to help me get ready for a mini-convention (Drumbeat) coming up soon where I am putting on a SPv2 game. We play a lot of different rules so I wanted to get into the swing of SPv2 again. I chose the Rescue Mission, Scenario No. 6 out of the SPv2 Rule Booklet. The Forces are fairly small, only 76 Points per side.Composition was as follows:

British Force:  76 points for core force.

Force Commander Leader Status III: Lt Colonel Phineas Horace Fordham, Ldr 1: 9 points

Line Infantry:  10 points
One Group of 8 men
One Leader Status I: Sergeant Maxwell Frid,  Ldr 4

Light Infantry in Line:  22 points
Two Groups of 8 men
One Leader Status II: Lieutenant Ashley Wickes, Ldr 2

Light Infantry Skirmishers:  11 points
One Group of 6 men
One Leader Status I: Ensign Quincy Slater, Ldr 3

Provincial Loyalist Regulars:  14 points
Two Groups of eight men

One Leader Status I: Lieutenant Lawrence Lockjaw, Ldr 5

Provincial Loyalist Skirmishers:  10 points
One Group of eight men

One Leader Status I: Sergeant David Twitter, Ldr 6

Support

None

Rebellious Colonists:  76 points

Force Commander Leader Status III: Captain Hercules Kinnard,  Ldr 1: 9 points

Continental Line:  27 points
Three Groups of 8 men
One Leader Status II: Ensign Azariah Clements,  Ldr 2

State Line:  15 points
Three Groups of 8 men
One Leader Status II: Lieutenant Moses Watt, Ldr 3

State Militia:  12 points
Two Groups of 10 men
One Leader Status II: Lieutenant Zebulon Leeper, Ldr 4

Rebel Militia Skirmishers: 11 points

Two Groups of 6 men

One Leader Status I: Sergeant Rufus Pymer, Ldr 5

Support

Specialist (Marksman): 2 points 

Per the Scenario setup, the Rebels(Patriots) roll to see where their Primary Deployment point is. It turned out to be at Blue arrow 2. They then roll to see where the Prisoner is being held and Cabin 4 was the result. The Brits rolled Red arrow 1 as their Deployment Point so everything was destined to happen on the upper half of the table.

Below is a map of the Set-Up and the troop dispositions after the first three turns or so. One Group of eight British Regulars starts in cabin No. 4 with the Prisoner. We started with two sentries outside the cabin and the rest inside.They really have no hope of surviving as the Rebels get to set up six inches away, but they define the Scenario and serve to hold the Rebels up for a few turns until the Reaction Force arrives. British start with Force Morale 10 and the Americans 8.

Rebel Leader 3, Lt. Moses Watts was the first leader to arrive and he deployed the State Line 6" from Cabin 4. They immediately fire on the cabin killing two British and inflicting several Shock. The Brits manage a mediocre reply from the one remaining Sentry outside and two soldiers guarding the door. (there were no windows on that side of the cabin). The British end up with more Shock than soldiers and suffer a Force Morale reduction. With no where to really go, we ruled they could stay in the cabin to defend it from assault.

British Force Commander Leader 1, Lt Colonel Fordham  arrived next bringing along Leader 2, Lieutenant Ashley Wickes with the British Light Infantry in Line. They moved up to the rail fence facing Cabin 4. Rebel Leader 1, Force Commander, Captain Hercules Kinnard arrived with the Continentals who moved up to engage the Light Infantry. That would begin a fire fight that would last essentially the whole game with neither side gaining the upper hand.

Meanwhile at the other end of the table, the Rebel Militia units, Skirmishers under Leader 5 and Militia Line under Leader 4 arrived and deployed to defend the Primary Rebel Deployment Point. The British Skirmishers under Leader 3, Ensign Quincy Slater arrived and moved through the woods to face the Rebel Skirmishers. 
The map below shows the situation after about three turns. All the rebels are on the table, but no British Loyalist units have arrives yet. The Tiffin card repeatedly kept coming up within the first quarter of the card deck making for a lot of short turns. This kept happening for most of the game and led our group to incline towards using two Tiffin cards in the deck the next time we play. It really made it hard to use Command Cards for other than just activating units at the end of a turn that didn't get to take their turn.

Below you can see a picture of the table as depicted in the map above. As I was running the game I forgot to take some pictures at critical times, but you can get a general idea of the action. Tom Condon and I played the British. The Rebels were split between Kevin Walker, Gary Williams and Rich Vandoren. My units, the Loyalists are not even on the table yet.

Below, the State Line successfully assaults the cabin and rescues the prisoner. They also captured the three remaining British including Sergeant Frid(Ldr 4) causing  a significant decrease in the British Force Morale. Fighting in buildings is not entirely clear in the rules, but we ruled only the center Rebel Group could assault, the other two groups giving support. I think we gave the Brits the advantage of defending a Minor Obstacle(or was it Major). At any rate the Rebels got more kills and with nowhere to run to, Sgt. Frid and his two remaining Redcoats surrendered. It took a couple of turns for the Rebels to sort themselves out and reform, but they were then off toward their Primary Deployment point.
The Continentals are still in a firefight with the British Light Infantry, but have suffered five casualties and have about 4 or 5 Shock per Group.

Picture below is slightly later. The British Light Infantry appear to have taken one casualty, but their Leader was hit reducing him to a Level I status. They have also taken quite a bit of Shock. The Rebel Militia Skirmishers have moved to allow the Militia in Line to also fire. Their combined fire proved to be too much for the British Skirmishers who eventually had to fall back being severely reduced.

Ok, below it has been some time since the last photo and both of my Loyalists units  have shown up. The Loyalist Skirmishers engaged the Militia Skirmishers with no better luck than the British Skirmishers. The two remaining Loyalist Skirmishers with their leader, Sergeant Twitter( Ldr 6) have fallen back to the rear of the woods. The Loyalist Line unit has moved up to engage the Militia Line unit. The Rebel State Line unit with the rescued Prisoner and captured Brits has moved up to the stone wall. There is not much chance they can be stopped from reaching the exit point.

The Loyalist Line eventually charge the Militia Line but are beaten by 4 in the Fisticuffs and route back 18 inches joining their Skirmisher brothers at the back of the woods.. The Continentals have taken a beating and due to several push backs from Shock causing the Rebel Force Morale to be reduced to level 2. The British side has also suffered several setbacks and their Force Morale is now at level 1. Now we could have played on, but it was clear that there was nothing the Brits could do to prevent the rescued prisoner from escaping off the table so we called the game in favor of the Rebels.. Perhaps the Brits could have caused the Rebel Force Morale to be reduce to zero, but it was just as likely to be the other way around.

Below is the situation as shown on map above. We had fun playing although the Tiffin card plagued us the whole game. Next time I will use two Tiffin cards. Also we all felt the movement was too slow. It just takes too long to get anywhere and if you have significant shock, you're not going anywhere soon. That's what happened to my Loyalist when they tried to charge the Militia. The shock reduced their movement so they had to endure more fire from the Militia so that their fisticuff dice were much reduced from the shock points. I'm thinking of adding a basic six inches to all movement as long as the unit uses at least one movement die for their actions.

I completely forgot about doing the Random Actions when three Command cards in a row come up. It might have made a difference, probably not. Well hopefully I'll be ready now to gamemaster the Drumbeat event February 4th 2017 at the Lake City Community Center in Seattle. Thanks for looking. Comments or suggestions, always appreciated.