by Marc M, 16 May 2024 ~ #UnboxingDay
A Dutiful Fight: The Battle of Châteauguay, October 26, 1813, from designer Paul Rohrbaugh at High Flying Dice Games, is the latest game in the Battles for Canada series. As volume 8 in the series, A Dutiful Fight covers the United States offensive during the War of 1812 to capture Montreal. The game gives you a chance to rewrite history and push the US forces through British, Canadian and First Nation forces or confirm historical events by frustrating the US battle plan.
click images to enlarge
This is a completely new topic for me, but that made it sound interesting, so I was very pleased to receive a copy of the game from Paul to try out. As a self-published game, A Dutiful Fight arrives in a Ziploc package with relatively simple components, but there’s a lot of content here for the price you’ll pay.
Once you unpack the game, you have
- An 11 x 17 gameboard
- 90 double-sided counters
- The ruleset
Keep in mind that the base game ships with unmounted counters, so there’s a bit of do-it-yourself involved unless you spring for the pre-mounted counters you see above as an add-on. You can add on some game cards as well.
This is a card-driven/card-assisted game – the cards tell you how much you can do during one round of turn. With the base came, you add standard playing cards for this. You can also order a deck 42 Battles for Canada cards that work with the game.
The cards are printed on card stock, and you’ll cut them yourself. Thankfully, Paul supplied both add-ons. Playing cards would work fine, but matched cards are a nice touch. One more thing – you’ll need to supply a 6-sided die.
The 8-page rulebook, like the other components, is self-printed, so it’s on plain paper, but that’s fine. It’s easy to read through them and get the sense that while this isn’t a terribly complicated game, there is some complexity there, such as morale, routing, assaults, advances after combat and random events.
A Dutiful Fight includes 90 double-sided, 5/8-inch counters (units and game markers) including, among the US forces: regular infantry and militia, as well as dragoons and artillery. On the opposing side are British and Candian units representing militia and regular infantry, as well as First Nation warriors. Both sides also have several leaders.
The 11 x 17 paper game map covers the swampy terrain of the battle. Most of the hexes are swamp/woods, along with the Châteauguay River, some trails and an abatis, a defensive barrier made of fallen trees. The map sheet also includes the turn track, moral track and a terrain effects chart. All of this fits comfortably on even a small desk or table.
Setup for A Dutiful Fight is refreshingly quick, and with US reinforcements ready to enter the fight, and the first game cards turned to check initiative, you’re ready to start round one of the first turn.
Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed a look under our hoods! You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
You can find our regiment’s social media on Mastodon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, BlueSky, and even Threads, if we could ever get an auto-post to it.
(We have an Instagram page and it’s really just a placeholder & redirect to our articles.)
You can support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, also, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
Want to contribute to next month’s #UnboxingDay? Drop us a line in the #UnboxingDay thread in the forum and let us know
