Flint and Feather Playtest

So work continues on the project with three major developments in the last few weeks.   1) The Flint and Feather Miniatures are the Figure Spotlight in the current issue of Wargames Illustrated. We are thankful for the support and coverage of this magazine. I have read the article and it gives a great overview of the whole North American period of colonial warfare. It also gives some details about the legendary pre-contact era for which the Flint and Feather miniatures are specifically designed.  The article in Wargames Illustrated written by Neil Smith tells about "...a form of warfare, the raid to take captives and slaves, intensified after European contact, whilst still being waged separately from Europe’s imperialist wars. As tribal casualties mounted, and replacements were desperately needed, a culture of war emerged known as the “mourning wars”. The most successful group to conduct these wars was the Iroquois. The Flint and Feather rules attempts to portray these 'mour...

We at Crucible Crush Productions just wanted to take the time to discuss our Kickstarter with all those that may be following this blog. Back in July, we were doing our best to look ahead and we announced that we would be running our Flint and Feather Kickstarter at the end of October. As many of you know we did not run a Kickstarter at that time. We will attempt to make the reason for this decision clear. We as a company do not need to run a Kickstarter to get our miniature figures to market. We attend trade shows, we have a website in place and through our companies, Pulp Figures and Rafm Miniatures we have been producing tiny lead soldiers for over 30 years. Crucible Crush Productions was created by Bob Murch and Lee VanSchaik to create projects that could not be done by either of us alone. Therefore, when we say that we want to run a Flint and Feather Kickstarter it is not to simply get some new miniatures out on the market. We envision Flint and Feather as a complete gaming sy...

We were down in Lancaster Pennsylvania on the banks of the Susquehanna River, which we followed through the mountains, to get to Fall In 2015. It was great to spend time with Howard and play the game with six eager play testers. I ran two separate games and Howard ran a third. We then sat down and pounded through the rules and made notes and just got generally on the same page in our thinking. The most important change to the play test rules so far concerns close combat. We are only fighting one round of combat now. So in the rules on page 32 where the section is titled "The Defender Replies" we are not doing this step in the combat sequence. Please make this change to your playtesting. However, this rule change has brought on another change in the rules as follows. When a player moves a group into combat, as per "Declare Combats" on page 27 the Attacker can line up the figures in any way he chooses, moving figures into base to base contact with opponents tha...

My warriors sneak up through the woods to avoid that nasty bow fire. We had another play test of the rules on Saturday night. This time we were in Cambridge near the Grand River which is a long time home for the natives here in Ontario. We had two games going side by side with our usual six figures on each side. Once again we were teaching new players the rules so we ran the rules as written. Not being the writers of the rules we need to get a good grasp on the rules as written before we make any changes anyway. This is because we are not changing the rules to simply make changes to something that is working. We are attempting to make a revised version of the rules that plays simply and quickly while maintaining the integrity of the game. The old adage of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," is definitely being kept in mind during these play tests. We are also working on these play tests to create a set of rules that is readable and makes sense and plays easily as ...

Huron Warriors flank the opposition. We were at Council Fires in Cambridge Ontario yesterday and had a great day playtesting the rules and seeing our old friends again. This show was very successful in its second year with over 75 gamers in attendance. They are looking for bigger and better things next year as they move to Brantford Ontario on October 21st and 22nd, 2016. Please join us there next year. We had two Flint and Feather games going simultaneously. I am afraid that when we run these demo games at shows and because we are so early in the playtesting stages of the rules that we do not get very fancy with the games. We are always teaching the rules to gamers who have not played them before so we keep it pretty straight forward and easy. In this case we simply lined up two groups of six warriors across the table from each other and let them close into combat. Wargamers, being wargamers of course try to do some fancy stuff with this limited set up so we can get some gamers ...

I have finished off my other Crucible Crush projects, well just the Star Crush Rulebook, so I have time to focus on the Flint and Feather rules. So we got together to set up our demo games for upcoming conventions which we will be attending which include KegsCon, Council Fires and with the goal of ending at Fall In in November. Then we played through a quick game to gloss up on the rules. It was also Dave's first full game and our objective is to learn the system thoroughly in the next month so we can decide how we want the rules to fall together. So here are some pictures and a synopsis from our demo game. An overhead view of the table showing the setup. The Huron player (Dave) set up three warriors with bows in the woods protecting one of the patrol markers. We were playing a random scenario from the early version of the campaign rules and set up our board according to that system. These three warriors held down the flank and used bows to cause damage to my Iroquois. It wa...

The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee or "People of the Longhouses") and the aboriginal Huron built and inhabited longhouses. These were sometimes more than 100 m (330 ft) in length and generally around 5 to 7 m (16 to 23 ft) wide. The walls were made of hundred of saplings, sharpened and fire hardened, and driven into the ground close together. Bark, with a staple being birch bark, was then woven horizontally through the lines of saplings to shield the families from the weather. Horizontal poles were then used to brace the walls up. The roof was placed on top of these walls by bending saplings, resulting in an arc-shaped roof. Leaves and grasses covered this frame providing a roof structure. This structure was then covered by bark that was sewn in place and layered as shingles, and reinforced by light swag. The Longhouse had doors at each end of the structure which were covered with an animal hide to keep out the cold and the weather. Doors could also be inserted...