The Battle Of Lonely Hill

There's no better way to come up with a solution for a nagging problem than to stop thinking about it.

The NorthWest Mounted Rifles had galloped forward to seize the hill (see) but were driven off by the Zouaves. The swift arrival of reinforcements allowed the Queen's forces to drive off the Zouaves in turn.

In this case my original intention was just to tweak my Square Brigadier rules so I could use more figures and play longer games without them dragging. However, lurking below the surface was that suppressed urge for something more like playing with toy soldiers and less like a board game even if that board game worked well and was fun.

Both sides rushed reinforcements to the front. An indecisive long range firefight followed while the armies extended their lines and prepared for a decisive attack.

What I ended doing, step by step without seeing where I was headed was creating exactly what I had wanted, a fairly conventional toy soldier game with units of individual figures (even if fixed to bases for convenience) but using a grid for measuring.

The Queen's forces won the build up race. (1 die each turn for 4,5,6 to bring on a new unit.) 

The key decisions were to use larger units on smaller squares and to allow units to spread across multiple contiguous squares, measuring movement, ranges and arcs of fire  separately by 3" square. (Invisible or nominal squares at the moment but soon to be marked.)

The Rebels have no option but to strike before the odds get worse or give it up. A fierce and prolonged close quarters fight resulted but the attack was eventually thrown back.

The result was so much like a simplified MacDuff game that I borrowed the morale and charge resolution and various other rules from MacDuff as well.

An attempt to rally was broken up by rifle and artillery fire and with all of the Rebel Brigadiers wounded, the Rebel army suddenly collapsed.

The result was exactly what I have been looking for. Now to bring my 6 and 8 figure infantry units up to 12, do some dismounted cavalry, get some limbers painted up  and......

The Defended Frontier (click on link to read the short, 4 page, version of the rules.)