The Arikara War and Wagon Box Fight

[10thMountain]

Hello,
       Has anyone gamed the following:

Arikara War, circa 1830's
Wagon Box Fight,  1866

Thank you

[guitarheroandy]

The Wagon-Box Fight is one that really interests me, but it's a very a tricky one to game, because essentially it's a small number of defenders in a very small and static defensive compound beating off multiple waves of huge numbers of warriors. Given that only 32 white men were in the wagons and many hundreds of warriors were attacking, both on horseback and on foot, it's hard to see how one would scale it in order to give the attackers enough models.

It's also tricky to game because of the alleged impact of the new Springfield breech loading rifles on the fight, as the firepower/rate of fire was apparently unexpected for the Indians, and prevented enough warriors from closing and thereby prevented their numbers taking effect. How to simulate that within the chosen rules would be interesting in itself. Not only that, but how to make it interesting enough for both sides so that there is some tactical challenge (other than 'defender just sits and shoots/attacker just tries to close in'.)

The Plains Indian Wars of the 1850s and 1860s are, to me, much more interesting than the later conflicts, but they are very hard to game due to disparity of numbers and the Indian tactics/attitudes to the fighting - the fact that they often vastly outnumbered the soldiers, but relatively rarely made those numbers count, despite their vast superiority in fighting ability compared to the average American army recruit just isn't catered for in many rules as far as I can see (probably because it's so difficult to simulate).

[Pan Marek]

As I understand it, Plains Indian warriors fought as individuals, for personal glory.   Us soldiers fought, well, as mid 19th century soldiers.
You might look to rules for "colonials" or the Highlanders v. British soldiers or even for ideas, "barbarians" v. Romans.  All of these periods had similar dichotomies between the combatants.

[Inkpaduta]

There is one rule set that has gotten ravs over the years as the best rules to do the Indian Wars.
Yellow Ribbon. I tried them and did not really care for them but I am a rarity.

[Cory]

We have gamed the Box Wagon fight a few times as well as some similar "pinned down by superior numbers" such as Pierre's Hole, the Madison Massacre, and others.  They all share the same static situation with what appear to be limited options, so the key for me was changing up from a normal tabletop game to a near rpg focused one. 

To that end the scenario rules focused on supply and logistics decisions as well as tactical combat.

Command and control issues as well. The Box Wagon Fight had all soldiers. Many of the others had mixed civilian groups along with warriors of one or more tribes on the defensive side. A rules system that puts stress markers on a unit, much like pin markers in WWII games, will give more decision points than one with simple casualties. We also allow supplies and heroic actions to offset stress.

Attacking forces should not be clear. Using a single stand or model to represent a sighting works well, spotting becomes so much more important. It also allows reconnaissance actions where models are sent forward to scout/spot a token to see if it is a lone brave, a handful, or a hidden main attack. The models sent forward would be running back in event of an attack and not immediately available in the line to fight off opponents, but the more you sent out the more likely someone would make it back to report.

Ultimately we rewrote house rules for each game.