In our continuing series of Action Point posts taking a look at the actions available to players in Revolution Road: From Boston to Concord from Compass Games, we will now take a look at a few of the Patriots’ more effective ways to deal damage to the British in Ambush and Snipe.

Before I go into both of these actions, I want to discuss a qualifier that must have happened first to allow the Patriot player to use these actions. This qualifier is referred to as The Shot Heard ‘Round the World. In order for the Patriot player to use these offensive oriented action, either side must have used an Attack or Assault action against the other. But if the Attack or Assault action is initiated and the other side retreats before combat though, meaning before any shots are fired, it doesn’t count. You see, the rebellion at this point was generally peaceful, with the Patriots focused on fighting a war of words for representation in the affairs that governed the colonies, and there was a real feeling of hesitancy among many who didn’t want their efforts to escalate to bloodshed. In fact, even on the day that the British marched into Lexington to seize arms and take away the colonists’ liberty, a Colonial Militia officer named John Parker gave the following directive to his troops:

Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

If the Patriot player initiates the first combat of the game as an attacker, or even if they fire upon the British using Op Fire while retreating from an attack, the British player will be awarded 5VP’s.

As you can see there is a historically based choice here. In order to take these important actions, and they really are the only feasible means by which the Patriots can damage the powerful British regulars and gain VP of their own, the Patriot player must decide if the gift of 5 VP is worth the price.

If shots have not been fired before the British reach Concord, the Patriots can attack without penalty but frankly the game is over if that happens.

Ambush

The Ambush action allows the Patriot player to attack two unbroken British Regulars that have Moved and are both located in the same region. No Patriot units need be located in the region where an Ambush is happening and the Ambush cannot target Leaders or the British Field Cannon. You also cannot have performed an Ambush action in the targeted region on a previous activation this round.

For each unit chosen, one die is rolled and on a result of a 5-6, the unit will break and be flipped to reveal its broken side. The unit is not dead but but must be Rallied by a British Leader. Each broken British Regular is worth 1/2 VP to the Patriot player at game’s end.

In the picture above, you can see that as the Patriot player I rolled a 6 (hit) and 1 (miss) on this Ambush attempt which will lead to one unit becoming broken.

While the Ambush action is the least powerful of these two actions, it still has its uses mainly in causing the British player to have to use their precious actions to Rally or risk losing VP at the end of the game rather than moving toward their goal of Concord, searching for Hidden Arms or capturing Sons of Liberty.

Snipe

The Snipe action allows the Patriot player to attack a large group of British units consisting of at least four or more unbroken British Regulars or healthy Leaders that have moved at least two spaces along a road using the March action. As with the Ambush action, no Patriot units need be located in the target region. The British Field Cannon cannot be targeted and also cannot be counted toward the minimum units required for the action to occur and there cannot have been a Snipe action performed already in the target region during this activation round.

The Patriot player will roll 1d6 for each Leader and British Regular present in the space and each rolled result of 6 will either break the Regulars or wound the Leader. A wounded Leader can never be returned to its healthy side but may continue to Rally their troops.

In the above picture showing a Snipe action, I as the Patriot player performed miserably and didn’t roll a single six with 4 dice. A pitiful example of a proper Snipe action.

At the end of the game, each broken Regular or wounded Leader will also have to pass an Attrition roll. Leaders will die on a roll of 6 and units will disband and are considered destroyed on a roll of 6. Patriot units will disband and are considered destroyed on a roll of 5-6.

Snipe can be decidedly more powerful than Ambush as there is no limit to the number of dice you can roll in a region, one die for each Regular and Leader. This action will discourage the amassing of British Regulars in the same spaces and as such will reduce their effectiveness in their stated goal of destroying the Patriot units, capturing Hidden Arms and Sons of Liberty as well as in reaching Concord.

In our next and final Action Point for Revolution Road: From Boston to Concord, we will examine the Attack and Assault actions as well as the British only Charge.

If you want to catch up on our previous posts, in Action Point 1, we looked at two of the Patriot actions, including Call to Arms and Escape. In Action Point 2, we examined the Search/Capture action for the British as well as the Hinder action, which can be used by both players but to effect different actions.

-Grant