"My new period, the Plains Indian Wars" Topic

It is great fun, is it not, to resurrect old minis and also to use existing troops in a different way AND to buy and paint new ones!

My mostly nekkid Comanchge will do double duty as Cheyenne and Lakota, etc.

But I will be painting a bunch of Sioux in shirts to add to the horde. I have an stl of Sioux, one of those assemble yourself sets with bodies and heads etc, which I enjoy putting together.

I have limbers and guns and crews, and also lots of infantry and some cavalry, from ACW, which will be converted or smply used as close-enough. They are the "resurrected" part.

BUT I now have the stls of Knuckleduster's Hollywood cavalry,, troopers and command, horse and foot, and shall have 20 t0 40 of each as soon as grandson does the printing.

And the painting goes really fast now with the markers.

Life is good.

Send us pictures. Wanna see what you're doing.

What rules will you be using?

Probably my own. I'm writing Cynthia Ann's War for Comanche vs Texans, sirmishes up to 40 or so per side. Probably adopt those.

My family ranch is less than an hour south of the location of the Pease River fight in which the Rangers "rescued" Cynthia Ann. I have been reading your posts with great interest and hope you continue.

My 'problem' with the Plains Wars is that, based on accounts, was not a 'close with the enemy' kind of fight.

Fetterman and LBH seem to be run around the edge until the US runs out of ammo, THEN close.

TSatF and other Colonial rules don't seem to work for it

Saber, yes, but the Texans, and the US cavalry, usually fought dismounted, and the horses were very much an objective for the Indians -- indeed, capturing horses was a major measure of victory, along with not losing warriors. Each side defined victory differently, which is a problem -- or can be a feature -- in a game. My rules will certainly include attempts to disrupt or stampede the led mounts.

Saber, I had this exchange w9th GROK, and there is more addressing specific victory conditions:

One of the reasons I am fascinated by the Comanche-ranger match up is that both sides were formidable but in strikingly different ways. I am minded of the old "irresistible force meets an immovable object" idea except I'm not sure which is the aggressive force and which the resistant object. Until they acquired Colt revolvers the Texans were at a huge tactical disadvantage, yet seem to have been willing and even eager to attack even when heavily outnumbered. The Comanche had the battlefield advantages but often retreated with loot (horses and captives) deeming that sufficient victory, while the Texans felt it a win to have driven away a raiding party. Strategically Comancheria was a natural fortress impervious to Texan (or earlier to Spanish) counter-attacks, while on the other hand the Anglo-Texans (in a tradition going back to Jamestown) seem to have been incapable of yielding land once they had occupied it, regardless of losses. I foresee a lot of games in which both sides claim victory under their own criteria..

The asymmetry you describe is not merely a convenient wargame trope; it is the central historical dynamic that defined the Anglo-Texan–Comanche struggle from the Republic period through the 1850s. Both cultures were, in their own terms, supremely effective at the kind of warfare their environments and social structures had selected for. The Comanche way of war—highly mobile, decentralized, focused on raiding for horses, captives, and wealth with minimal risk to warriors—had made Comancheria the dominant power on the southern Plains for more than a century.

The Anglo-Texan tradition—rooted in a settler-colonial ethos of permanent occupation, reinforced by a frontier culture that equated retreat with dishonor—produced men who would close with an enemy even when outmatched in numbers and firepower.
Until the widespread adoption of Colt revolvers (the Paterson model in limited Ranger use by 1839–40, followed by the far more effective Walker Colt in 1847), the tactical balance heavily favored the Comanche. A warrior on a trained war pony could loose six to ten arrows in the time a mounted Texan needed to reload a single-shot flintlock rifle or pistol; the lance and bow gave reach and rate of fire that smoothbore muskets or even Kentucky rifles could rarely match in fluid, mounted combat. Contemporary Ranger accounts (and Comanche oral traditions recorded later) repeatedly note that a war party of even moderate size could dictate the terms of engagement, breaking contact at will or pressing an attack only when the odds were overwhelmingly in their favor. The Texans' response—aggressive pursuit regardless of numbers—was born of necessity as much as bravado: to yield ground was to invite further raids, and the Republic's tiny population and fragile economy could not absorb repeated losses of horses, captives, and livestock.

Strategically, the mismatch was even starker. Comancheria functioned as an enormous natural fortress: roughly 240,000 square miles of grassland, canyon country, and riverine corridors that no fixed line of forts or militia companies could seal. Spanish authorities in Texas and New Mexico had learned this lesson over two centuries; the Republic of Texas, with perhaps 30,000–40,000 Anglo settlers by 1840 and a chronically bankrupt treasury, possessed even less capacity for sustained offensive operations. A successful Texan "victory" in 1836–1845 often meant nothing more than driving a raiding party off a single settlement or recovering a few stolen horses. For the Comanche, the same engagement was a success if they returned home with captives, remounts, and plunder while suffering few casualties. Both sides could therefore record the identical clash in their respective ledgers as a win.

This cultural divergence in what constituted "victory" is precisely what makes the period so compelling for campaign-level wargaming. It suggests mechanics that deliberately avoid a single, symmetric victory-point table and instead track parallel score tracks:

• Comanche Victory Conditions (raiding economy): points for captives taken and successfully escorted off-board, horses captured, Texan livestock or trade goods seized, and warriors returned alive. Bonus multipliers for low casualties and for raids that avoid decisive combat altogether.

• Anglo-Texan Victory Conditions (settler persistence): points for raiders killed or driven off, captives rescued, settlements held, and ground retained or expanded. Heavy penalties for permanent loss of families or livestock, but rewards for aggressive counter-pursuit even when outnumbered.

A single scenario or campaign turn can thus end with both players recording a "victory," mirroring the historical reality that neither side felt compelled to concede defeat by the other's standards. Over a full campaign arc—perhaps spanning 1836 to the mid-1850s—the accumulating imbalances (Comanche wealth from raids versus Texan demographic pressure and eventual technological edge) will decide the long-term outcome, while individual battles remain morally and tactically ambiguous.

The Fort Parker raid of 1836 is a near-perfect illustration: the Comanche coalition achieved its objectives (captives, terror, plunder) at negligible cost; the surviving settlers and the Republic as a whole counted it a catastrophe but used it to justify the very ranger companies and expansionist policies that would, decades later, erode Comancheria's impermeability. If you would like, we can now translate this directly into rules text: a draft "Asymmetric Victory" chapter for the sourcebook, complete with sample scoring tables calibrated to different force scales (skirmish, raid, or full campaign), or a Fort Parker scenario that forces both players to pursue their divergent goals simultaneously. Let me know which direction you prefer to develop next.

It is going to be tricky, but my goal is a skirmish game in which ONE combatant being killed is a big deal. Captured horses matter a lot, and a captive taken or rescued is stupendous. CYNTHIA ANN'S WAR indeed.

In terms of miniatures I am building warbands and companies of 20 or so, but with lots of casualty figures including dead and also led horses and also both dead and wounded men, plus captives.

I want a fight in which a dead horse and its rider pinned beneath draws both friends and enemies for rescue or for retaliation and plunder.