Scouting the woods turned into a slaughter

Thomas and I managed to squeeze in a game of Muskets & Tomahawks this weekend as well, it was nice to give the game some attention - I had not played it since I bought my own rulebook at Salute. Thomas had been busy with real life stuff so it wasn't until this weekend that we could get together for a game. Though we had a small planning misunderstanding, which left us with just my collection of miniatures to play with, we still managed to split my collection into two playable roughly 260 point strong forces.

The British side was made up of

1x Provincial Officer
1x Irregular Officer (Mel Gibson "Patriot" mini)
2x 10 Provincial soldiers
2x 6 British Colonial Militia
1x 6 Indian allies - with rifles

The French were made up of:

1x Regular Officer
1x 10 French Marines (deployed as regulars)
1x 10 French regulars
1x 6 Indian allies - with rifles

Both sides ended up rolling the reconnaissance/scouting scenario which requires units to move into each quarter of the table and then have the friendly force withdraw from battle with at least 30% of its troops intact.

The side plot for the French was "I will never forget his face", which is all about picking an enemy model and having your officer enact revenge upon him for some old grudge. The British irregular officer was chosen to be the target of the grudge.

The side plot for the British was "I'll prove my worth", which was ironically determined to belong to the Mel Gibson mini and funnier still was about killing at least 3 enemy soldiers in close combat (the Patriot style!!).

As the battle started the British seized initiative and pushed their troops hard to move into position and cover ground. The French activation cards were all at the bottom of the deck during turn 1. Some pot shots were fired but nothing came of it. French Indian allies move on the right flank and managed to occupy a small grove from where they fired at and killed 4 British militiamen - sending the remaining 2 into panicking flight towards the friendly lines. This weakened the British right flank, but on the other hand their left flank was a solid wall of Provincial infantry just making themselves comfortable in consolidating the center of the table.

British militia, and "Mel" charged the French Indians, Mel managed to kill one enemy before getting mauled by Tomahawks himself. Then the Militia jumped into the fight and reduced the Indian unit to a single model when the dust had settled. All British militia being dead the Provincials moved up and formed a nice line - preparing to fire at the French regulars who unfortunately for the British - now caught a break with the activation cards and were able to move up and fire first. The French regulars annihilated the British Indian ally unit, while the French Marines inflicted light casualties on one of the Provincial units which was forced to recoil.

The Brits returned fire, dropping a few French, and then the French regulars activated again, reloaded and unleashed another devastating salvo which decimated the British units which were both pushed back again.

Realizing that they had scouted all table quarters the Brits began withdrawing from battle - their numbers becoming critically low. The French of course pursued them, trying to kill enough enemy troops to have the enemy drop below 30% and becoming unable to fulfill the victory conditions. This turned into a very tense couple of final rounds where every French shot counted and the Brits came extremely close to losing but were able to withdraw from table with a 2 soldier margin on their 30% force requirement!
Neither side managed to fulfill their side plot mission.

It was a very brutal battle, Regular troops are just awesome when they begin firing and reloading, using their salvo to better hit the enemy and reduce enemy morale.

Just too bad that I forgot to bring along my cotton balls, we missed out on some atmospheric effects without them lining the gun lines.