BATTLE OF FURNACE FLATS

The Battle of Furnace Flats Halt, 1861 by Andrew Maxfield (Barnes Wargames Group, London, England)

Introduction

In 1855 Banner Stagecoach Company announced the opening of a new line across New Mexico from Truth or Consequences to Deeming, making the Mimbres Mountains more accessible for both settlers and miners. As part of the new line the company built a number of depots along the route where horse teams could be changed and passengers could alight or catch the stage. Each depot was a solid adobe building with accommodation for the manager and his family, together with a number of guest rooms, a communal dining area and a section given over to supplies for travellers heading into the mountains. Apart from the main building there was a corral and possibly a number of shanties and outhouses. Among the depots constructed was one at a waterhole on Furnace Flats.

The stagecoach line prospered but was subject to frequent raids by the Apache tribes through whose land it ran. The hostilities culminated in the so-called "Battle of Furnace Flats Halt" in August 1861, after which Banner suspended the line until troops could be released from the war back east to deal with the "Indian Problem".

The battle was in reality a typical Apache horse stealing raid which, because of the aggressiveness of both sides, turned into an untypical shoot-out. The Apaches succeeded in making off with the horses but only at the cost of three dead and five wounded, while the defenders of the Halt lost two dead (three if you count the Mexican stable lad, which the company and most of the other defenders did not) and three wounded.

The Forces

The Defenders

The defenders comprised the employees of the stagecoach company and an assortment of travellers who happened to be staying at the Halt at the time of the attack.

The employees were Homer (gunman/shotgun), the manager, Marge (citizen/musket) his wife, and their son Bart (gunman/pistol)[I didn't call them that, blame their player - ADM], together with Hernandez (citizen/musket) the Mexican stable lad.

The travellers were headed up by Virgil (legend/pistol), together with Lucky Pierre (shootist/musket) a trapper, Henry (gunman/pistol and hammer) a miner, and George (gunman/musket) a travelling salesman.

The Apaches

There were fourteen Apaches, split into two groups of seven which approached the Halt from opposite directions. The first group, which approached the Halt from the front, was led by Pinal (mighty warrior/musket), and contained six young bloods with an assortment of weapons (one musket, two bows, one pistol and club, one club, and one spear). The second group advanced towards the corral from the rear of the Halt. This was led by Das Luca (warrior/pistol and sword) and contained six young bloods armed with two muskets, one bow, one pistol, one club and one spear.

The Game

The halt consisted of a strong brick building with one long room running along the front, and two smaller rooms to the rear. There was at least one window in each side. The corral was deliberately placed so that it was only overlooked by one window and the side door of the Halt so that at least some of the defenders had to fight outside if they wanted to save the horses. The terrain was flat with plentiful low scrub and cactus to provide a modicum of cover for the hostiles in their approach to the halt. The game lasted about an hour and a half and ran through eight shuffles of the deck before the Apaches had driven the horses out off the corral and into the wilderness beyond, and the surviving defenders had sought the safety of the adobe walls of the Halt. There were three players and an umpire/caller, each player used a control sheet listing his figures, their class and weapons, which had spaces to record wounds and their effects and to note whether the guns were loaded.

Indian tactics were very simple, with the first group concentrating on drawing the defenders into a fight at the front of the main building while the second party rushed the corral. Most musket armed Apaches fired once and then treated their weapons as big clubs for the rest of the game.

Overall the plan worked pretty well with five of the defenders going to the front of the building compared with three defending the corral. However, due to some lamentable dice rolling on both sides the frontal assault degenerated into a series of, mostly non-fatal, hand to hand combats as everyone failed to hit everyone else with musket, pistol and bow. By comparison the assault on the corral was a blood bath with fatal head shots, equally terminal impalements and several serious wounds.

Most of the action was fairly standard but notable feats included

Hernandez's second turn musket shot which due to his citizen status and range meant that he tried and got a lucky three dice/two sixes shot, made even better when the Apache player drew a "fatal head shot" wound card;

Hernandez's less fortunate fourth turn when, having been on the wrong side of the reload card twice he was run through by an Apache spear;

Homer's desperate fight to hold off an Apache with a club (=tomahawk) with the butt of his sawn-off before spinning the gun, blowing both legs off his attacker (two serious leg wounds) and grazing two other attackers. Sadly Homer died in the next turn killed by an arrow wound to the head; and

Henry's fatal blow to one assailant with his hammer (also =tomahawk), before being removed from the fight with a serious leg wound from Das Luca's sword.

Rule modifications and problems

Musketry

We have found that the use of fire cards for those armed with muskets which are only issued if the figure has not already moved in the turn slows play, as players wait hoping for a favourable combination of cards which does not appear, so we did not use the system of two cards for those each of these characters. Rather, once a figure had fired it was only able to reload when the reload card had been drawn. Reloading took the full turn. If the player opted to have the figure do something else, or it was engaged in melee, or was recovering, then the opportunity to reload was lost and the player had to wait for the card to be drawn again in a subsequent turn.

It was also suggested that the presence of a designated loader, such as the loyal wife, would allow figures to maintain a higher rate of fire since the loader would always be able to reload a weapon when their card was drawn irrespective of whether the reload card had been drawn, assuming they were not in melee or recovering. The figure firing would require a turn to change weapons but would start the game with two loaded weapons and would not lose turns for reloading themselves.

Shotguns

We found the absence of shotgun effect line in hand to hand combat a problem. We felt that sawn-off and pistol grip shotguns, not to mention Le Mat pistols were designed to be used at very close range and should cause considerable damage. In this game the shotgun armed figure treated the gun as a clubbed weapon when first charged and, having survived the melee, was fortunate to draw an extra action card allowing him to recover the gun to a firing position and then blast away at point blank range (and beyond to others in the line of fire).

Also, given the rather dodgy local construction of many shotguns, particularly the pistol grip types, we discussed whether a player should be required to fire the weapon first or suffer the chance of an accidental discharge when attempting to use such a weapon as a club whilst still loaded.

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