I'm interested in KPW, I have 25/28mm figures from several manufacturers, but nothing is painted yet. I've read Leach's Flintlock and Tomahawk, the standard history of the war, and the relevant parts of Parkman some time ago. Jennings also wrote about KPW in The Invasion of America. Jill Lepore The Name of War is a more recent history of KPW. I've recently started Zellner's A Rabble in Arms, a study of the Massachusetts militia in KPW. I bought the boardgame, too, but haven't cut the counters yet. My reach often exceeds my grasp, I must admit...
KPW started with a wave of Wampanoag attacks on the back country Massachusetts settlements and these continued through the war. The settlements were mostly very small, but it was the Puritan custom for several families to build close together to form the nucleus of a town, rather than living in scattered houses on their farms.
In early war scenarios, the settlements were often surprised, with little organized resistance, non-combatants at risk, panic and havoc. The Indians made a point of burning buildings and killing livestock, and kidnapped women and children when they could. Later, the non-combatants were mostly evacuated to the coastal towns, but men were ordered to stay and continue farming. Buildings were fortified and militia garrisons were assigned to hold the towns and to actively patrol between the towns.
Early in the war the Indians used muskets in their attacks, and some sources (Malone The Skulking Way of War, in particular) say that the Indian muskets were mostly flintlocks, where the Puritans were still using matchlocks. It didn't take long for the Indians to run short of ammunition. After the first few months, they would mostly be shooting arrows.
A variety of attack-on-the-settlement or warparty-meets-patrol scenarios could be constructed from these elements, larger or smaller, early or late war.
Once they recovered from the initial shock, the Puritans mounted strong expeditions to track the Wampanoags to their camps and attack them there. By mid-war, the Indians were starving, as well as short of powder, and the Puritans had more success on the offensive, destroying several camps. There was at least one battle early in the war, at Bloody Pond, where a large Indian force ambushed a company of Massachusetts men and cut them up badly.
In the winter of 1675, when the Wampanoags took shelter with their Narraganset, neighbors, a large (about 1000 men, including 150 Pequot and Mohegan auxiliaries) Massachusetts army attacked the main Narraganset fortified settlement in the Great Swamp Fight, over-ran and destroyed it, dispersing the survivors. This was the biggest battle of the war, you'd need not only a lot of figures but a rule-set that could handle such a large engagement in order to model it in a wargame scenario.
28 February 2009, 12:19:25 AM
