Long Rifle: French Indian War Skirmish Game, Basic Rules: 2 Ranged Combat

In our first installment of Long Rifle Basic Rules Introduction we covered Activation, with French Infantryman Alexandre (REP 4) facing off against the British Allied Woodland Indian; Windrider (REP4).

Long Rifle - Ranged Combat

At Activation Alexandre roilled a 2 and Windrider rolled a 5. Alexandre gets to activate and, unfortunately for him, Windrider does not.

Alexandre decides to fire at the Indian.

First we check line of Sight (LOS). To be able to shoot something a figure must be able to see it.

At nighttime, Line of Sight is reduced to 12", similarly in woods Line of Sight is reduced to 12", or 6" at night. The Indian is 12" away from Alexandre.  Alexandre can see Windrider clearly and it is daylight. Alexandre has clear Line of Sight to Windrider.

Next we check range. In Long Rifle each weapon type has a range in inches up to which is can be used. Alexandre is armed with a musket, which has a range of 18". Windrider in within range of Alexandre's musket.

Alexandre rolls 1d6 and adds his REP (4)

Alexandre rolls a 1, therefore, 1+REP(4) = 5

The result is checked against the Ranged Combat Table. The ranged combat table takes into account circumstances such as, Target is Charging, Moved Fast, In Cover or Prone or the Shooter is taking a 'Rush Shot'. In general terms you need an 8 or higher to hit, so in this instance Alexandre has missed.

Alexandre's miss means two things in game terms:

1. Windrider must take a 'Received Fire' check (we'll address this another time) and...

2. Alexandre must now re-load his musket before he can fire it again.

Next time we'll explore more of the basic mechanics of Long Rifle.

Re-Painting John Jenkins Designs Woodland Indians

In preparation for a new chapter in our French Indian War narrative campaign we have a small scale skirmish planned using the Muskets and Tomahawks rules from Studio Tomahawk.

We plan to recreate a Rangers Raid on an Indian village in the Ohio Valley to recapture the daughters of the British Officer. The last attempt to secure the prisoners by force met with failure as the British line fell to pieces in the depth of the woods. The British have decided to fight fire with fire.

As there is only a limited number of John Jenkins Design Woodland Indian sets currently available, some of which are out of production we did consider we might not have enough Indians to fully realise our vision.

Having picked up a few individual figures, I also acquired some complete boxed sets at a later date and was left with some duplicates which seemed suitable for re-painting.

It might seem a shame to re-paint such superbly finished hand painted collector’s models but having seen other people's conversions it seemed it worth a try.

I selected figures from WIM-04 Woodland Indians with Muskets #3 and the WIM-07 Woodland Indians Attacking, as these were the ones I had duplicates of.

Rather than re-paint the entire model, I chose to touch up a few specific areas that I felt would help the model look different from its ‘clone’.

The kneeling Indian with rifle from WIM-04 set is a quite distinctive figure with its full black body paint, so this was an obvious choice to re-colour without the war-paint.

WIM-04 - Original on left, re-paint on right.

The Indians from the WIM-07 set have distinctive war-paint, buckskin trousers and loin cloths, so whilst other alterations were made, these were the areas I focused on.

WIM-07 - Original on left, re-paint on right.

The first step was to gently clean the figures in warm soapy water. Some of the figures have gathered dust so I used a soft brush to clean the parts we couldn't reach.

The figures were set aside and once dry, painting could begin.

A wide selection of acrylic paints was used from the likes of Humbrol, Vallejo, Games Workshop and Tamiya.

The painting style is a little different to my personal technique and took a little getting used to but progress was quite quick. The figures were finished with a light coat of matt spray varnish.

WIM-07 - Original on right, re-paint on left.

I am happy with the overall effect and look forward to using the figures in our next game.