Check your Dice

 

This week I was able to make a trip to Oxford to see an old friend and his wife, indulge in some wargaming and enjoy an excellent lunch and supper.  The game we had chosen was the Avalon Hill American War of Independence game, 1776, and we aimed to play as many scenarios as we could get through.

I drew the British for the opening scenario and advanced confidently with greatly superior numbers to grind down the rascally continentals.  Alas, however often I attacked I could roll nothing higher than a two!  The game ended with the British having failed to destroy a single American force and only having undisputed control of Boston.  Only in the aftermath did we realise that the die we had been using only had ones, twos and threes on it!  My opponent said that he had lost the dice from the 1776 box so had borrowed one from another game 'Class Struggle', not realising that it was not a normal 1-6 die.

The moral of this story is to check your dice before rolling them, but it was too late for my British.  In the two further scenarios we played, I drew the Americans both times and failed to win either game even with the aid of a normal die.  We thought about playing Class Struggle, which looks an interesting game, but it is recommended to have six players while we were only two.  Another time, perhaps.