Gaming Table Report: Brushfire

For those who have never played (or heard of it), Brushfire is a wargame set on a planet populated by anthropomorphic animals. It parodies earth history and culture quite a bit (Agaminople is the capital of Scyzantine for instance. Or where as the New World on earth was named America after Amerigo Vespucci, the new world in Brushfire was named Vespuccia.) While some gaming buddies of mine have mentioned it before, I had never gotten to play it until TempleCon.

Rodentian Valkyrs and Trebuchets lined up agaimst me

Each nation (or region of the world) consist primarily of certain species of animals. So armies consist of bears, badgers, hamsters, gerbils, boars, pandas, dogs, etc. Our side of the fight was badgers and mongooses (both mongooses and mongeese are acceptable plurals) and the other side was split between an army of boars and an army of assorted rodents. We ran pretty much simultaneously two separate battles so I wasn't following too much what was going on next to us.

Three of the four of us had never played before, the fourth had only played a handful of times, and then only with small squads, never a 100pt army. In hindsight, we probably should have started before the staff from On the Lamb Games headed off to bed! (And unbeknownst to me, perhaps some of us should have read the rules first too!)

Our end of the battle

On our end, the rodents led off by hurling hamsters out of a trebuchet directly onto my Badger infantry shock troops. Both hamster shots landed directly on my troops and the squad’s leader managed to hold the hamster fear effects (after all who isn't afraid of rabid dual axe wielding hamster berserkers?) at bay long enough to cut them up pretty badly. While the hamsters went down pretty easy (no armor) those who survived hit back pretty hard with their axes.

In the mean time my mongoose legionnaires traded rifle fire with the gerbil steampunk mechs managing to take one out and wounding a second fairly severely by the end of the battle. Out of hamster ammo, the mice turned to boulders to arm their trebuchets and began firing into melee. Yes, you read that correctly, “firing into melee”. [Note: there are rules in Brushfire for firing into melee, but these assume handheld weapons!]  Boulders hit everything in a 5” diameter with rules for scatter based on how far you are firing. Shots went off the board, fells short and killed their own rodent general, and bounced harmlessly off the backs of their gerbil powered mechs!

By the end of the night the mechs were fleeing, one of the two trebuchet crews was under fire and too decimated to fully man their siege engine and the hamster berserkers were all dead. My clawed badgers we rushing to come to the aid of their badger/mongoose comrades at the other end of the table (who were getting cut to pieces by rampaging boar heavy cavalry) when we called the game for the night.

Overall Brushfire was a blast! Before bed I read through their quick play rules and definitely look forward to playing again!