Preparing for some French Indian War Skirmishing

I was re-reading Donald Featherstone's "Wargames," a book I owned before the move to Cyprus and the great eBay sell off.  The Great Don includes his ideas on close warfare, French Indian war style skirmishing.  I was very surprised to see how close these were to the TooFatLardies rules.  The use of D6, 5 or 6 to hit, a D6 to resolve hits - the list goes on.  I scanned the original two pages of the book to give myself sufficient scope to do some adding or amending, and began to plan a game.

In my 10mm Marlburian/18th Century collection, which to be honest weighs twice as much as any other setup I have, such is the depth of metal, I had already gathered a FIW setup.  30 x 10mm Indians on 1cm washers (oddly the same size as a 1 cent piece.  Hurrah for the Euro) and a similar number of Seven Years War British Light Infantry.  

I`m sure Don used bigger figures so the first order of business was to convert inches to centimetres for the rules.  Mr Farage would not approve, but then I don`t approve of him so we're even...

I needed some central terrain pieces.  The forests of the new world were not flat terrain, so I decided on some hills.  One of the things I liked about the Last of the Mohicans was the landscape.  

My old artists paint board has sadly come to the end of it`s life.  It`s flock encrusted and multicoloured.  A nice piece of laminated MDF though, so I cut myself three three small sections.

I also acquired some sharp edged dark grey granite driveway pebbles from a source that shall remain nameless.  Some white glue allowed me to arrange the stones in a pattern I liked, and I had the beginnings of my hills.  Allowing this to dry I began the process of using filler to give my hills a smoother appearance.   

Once this had dried I coloured the white filler with grey, adding flock to represent the grassy areas.  I also added holes in the filler to accommodate trees - inserting trees on the hills may be an option I want to take up.

One of the finished hills here needs to dry out properly.  Using two different types of flock gives the impression of moss on the rock, with small scattering of grass.  Some of my 10mm Native Americans are trying the hill out for size, verdict... very defensible. 

The Petains of course will fully realise that hills such as this are a tactical error for a gamer like me.  The tactics of wargaming would insist on the earliest occupation of these hills, making them excellent for victory objectives.  

I would like to think that the Great Don would approve, and I`m looking forward to giving his rules a good go on my next wargaming day.  

The question is of course will that French Officer, lurking among the Indians, be a match for King George's Light Company of the 22nd Foot.

Why the 22nd Foot?  Well I am interested in the career of Colonel Edward Whitmore and his watery end, but more of that another time...