"Rescue the Spy - Sharpe-style skirmish" Topic

I set this up as a "gamesmaster" facing a player or players commanding 14 British rifles and 10 artillerymen including three characters.

The idea is that the British player is Richard Sharpe, given orders to capture a French officer and knowing not much else. He and his men enter at night from one side of the table (marked with the white dot) and have to observe or search various parts of the terrain and its buildings to discover where the officer might be, at the same time keeping his men's presence a secret from the enemy as long as possible.

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He, Sharpe, can react spontaneously to circumstances taking a squad within a six-inch command radius with him, but squads outside of his radius have to follow the orders they were given.

The terrain contains:
A wood (at the top),
A castle (marked by a yellow dot in the photo above),
A large house (purple),
A chapel (blue) and in the compound:
A small house (green) and
A barracks (red),
and various impediments and cover like ploughed fields, vineyards and hedges.

The "gamesmaster" manages the surprises, which are enemy units, enemy guards as well as friendlies and civilians who can offer snippets of information and equipment useful to Sharpe's mission, which is to capture or rescue the spy and take him back off the board where he came from. The gamesmaster doesn't really have much free-will. The game begins at night and the various units or civilians hidden in buildings or the wood are triggered to make themselves known when British soldiers get within, initially, twelve inches. This means the game has a natural pace: as the British explore, they are confronted with a serious of pre-set encounters which they have to deal with.

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Here, having explored the castle in the dark, they discover a old cannon. Sharpe sends a message to the British artillery officer to occupy with castle and start loading the cannon, which will take five turns. They chose to load it with a cannonball, not knowing how close their own side will be when they might use it.

Rifles also meet a civilian in the wood who tells them there's a cannon in the castle (which they already knew).

Sharpe glimpses a French guard in front of the compound – luckily facing the other way, and orders his men to retreat and lie down in a fold of ground.

Here, rifles get within twelve inches of the large house and trigger the emergence of a troop of seemingly Spanish dragoons. The British prudently retreat into the ploughed field but an officer trots his horse closer, tells the Britons that he has seen French cavalry about and suspecting Sharpe may be trying to enter the French compound, offers him some rope and a grapnel.

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The cloud-markers represent the limits of vision for the British side.

This the imagined view from the sleepy French compound, still shrouded in darkness.

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Neat idea. I may have missed it, but what rules are you using?

Maggot
Hello, we're using Oculus "Chosen Men" rules with character cards.
Free here: link
The only supplement is the sniper rule from the update "Chosen Men Fat" rules, which enable them to pick off officers.

The theme is inspired by elements in the Sharpe's Enemy book. I like the idea of a target to capture whose exact location is unknown, combined with an external fortification whose capture redresses the balance. Together with the player gradually finding stuff out during the game and having to adjust strategy accordingly.

As the gate-guard at the French compound might have said,

"…. an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the east,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the city's side,
So early walking did I see…"

Rifles! The ensuing hullabaloo with the false dawn as background alerts the sleeping French infantrymen in their barracks who sleepily emerge. French hussars who had turned the chapel into their stables, by cue, emerge and head for the woods where the rifles had been sighted.

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In an uncanny piece of scenario timing, the horsemen charge across the open ground just as the British horse artillerymen in the captured castle (top right) finish loading. A cannonball sent thence scores a kill before they've even reached the enemy

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French infantry (centre-background) head towards the British troops they see at the castle.

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Hussars (left) enter the wood and spot the larger rifle squad (in the foreground) who have reached the nearer wall of the compound. Sharpe is there, ready to throw a grapnel over the wall. Can he get over before the enemy arrive?