Player preference: Hollywood style fort or historical fort for Old West games?

[Tom Dulski]

 I depends on the time period and location of course but my understanding is that during the plains Indian wars and especially in the south west most forts were just a collection of building laid out. Not the wooden fence surrounded type you see in F-Troop.

[Harry Faversham]

I depends on the time period and location of course but my understanding is that during the plains Indian wars and especially in the south west most forts were just a collection of building laid out. Not the wooden fence surrounded type you see in F-Troop.

Cavalry forts of any kind, Indians avoided like the smallpox!
Though I recall reading, in Red Cloud's war, about one small raid. A heavy snowdrift banked up agin the stockade wall, allowing a War Party to sneak over the wall. If memory serves, as soon as the alarm got raised, the Redskins legged it.


 

[guitarheroandy]

Cavalry forts of any kind, Indians avoided like the smallpox!
Though I recall reading, in Red Cloud's war, about one small raid. A heavy snowdrift banked up agin the stockade wall, allowing a War Party to sneak over the wall. If memory serves, as soon as the alarm got raised, the Redskins legged it.

 

I'm sure I recall reading how Sitting Bull's Sioux attacked a fort (can't recall which one) in the 1860s but interestingly, the garrison formed a giant skirmish line outside the fort's environs to fight off the Lakota warriors. I'll have to go dig out my books and find out when/where this was but it's interesting that the soldiers felt better about fighting outside the fort's boundary - guessing there wasn't a stockade! 

[FifteensAway]

The only US Army stockaded forts in the Old West of the post-ACW era I can think of are the three burned after being abandoned after Red Cloud's War: Fort Phil Kearny, Fort Reno, and Fort C.F. Smith.  The rest I am aware of were "open" posts in the sense they lacked a stockade.l.

[carlos marighela]

There's yer names right there. Fort Phil Silvers, Fort Circus Circus* and Fort W.H. Smith.


*Rolls of the tongue better than Fort Pepermill Reno and it's definitely an impove on Fort Craps or even Fort Roulette.

[Smokeyrone]

Fort Boone in the AWI had some drama. 

[anevilgiraffe]

it always bemused me that they would ship that many logs to the arse end of nowhere...

[FifteensAway]

Well, as a pretty sturdy general rule, they would only build a log stockaded fort within the vicinity of a ready supply of logs.  Perhaps why so few in the desert southwest methinks where wood was reserved for roof supports when building.

[Cat]

Close to a rail line would also count as a ready supply.