With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#96: Henry Knox Continental Artillery Commander from Washington’s War from GMT Games

Washington’s War is a war game, make no mistake about that. But, it is virtually impossible to win the game by focusing only on the field of battle. For that to happen, the Patriots need to completely drive the British forces out of the 13 colonies or the British need to wipe the American forces off the map. Both are extremely difficult and I would be surprised if any more than 1 out of 30 games ended in such a way. Rather, the ultimate goal of the game is to have political control of the colonies. If at the end of the game the Patriots control 7 colonies, while holding the British to control of less than 5, they win. If not, the British win. Simple as that. So, you can see that battle is not the main goal but control is. And more importantly political control.

I really like this about the design and feel that the real core of the American Revolution was the groundswell of patriotism and the desire to live free from the shackles of an overseas monarch who cared little for the American way of life. This desire led great men of the time to sacrifice themselves, their livelihood and their families to further the true cause of liberty and build a truly free and democratic nation where individual liberty and freedom was prioritized over anything else. And yes, I realize that this nation was not perfect, not without contradiction but the concept of liberty helped to form a country that would lead to the ultimate freedom of all people.

Washington’s War is a Card Driven Game, and as such, relies on cards to provide to players the actions needed to play the game. The cards contain OPS Points which can be used to drive various actions, including such things as activating leaders, who in turn will then move with forces to attack, and also contain written text in the form of events. These events can be played only by the side they are intended for and if drawn and played by the opposing side, they can only be thrown away while granting a few possible actions, such as placing or removing Political Control markers.

In Washington’s War, the Strategy Card Deck contains several different type of cards of which one is Battle Cards. Battle Cards are special event cards that provide a powerful +2 Die Roll Modifier (DRM) during combat and allow the user to draw a replacement card at the end of the turn. All of the Battle Cards offer a +2 DRM but each of them are tied to a different historical character or event. In this instance, the card’s effects reflect the work of Henry Knox who was a prominent Continental Artillery Commander during the Revolutionary War. There are only 9 total Battle Cards in the 110-card deck with the Patriot side having 5 cards, while the British side only has 4. I also want to point out that when these cards are used, they allow the using player to draw a replacement card at the end of the active player’s turn, keeping your hand size strong and not forcing you to sacrifice a card. And due to the fact that they swing combat odds significantly and also replace themselves with a draw, they are heavily prized and typically are saved in a player’s hand for those critical campaign-deciding clashes.

Henry Knox was an American military officer, politician, bookseller, and a Founding Father of the United States. Knox, born in Boston, became a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in all of George Washington’s campaigns. Following the war, he oversaw the War Department under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1789. Washington appointed him the nation’s first Secretary of War, a position which he held from 1789 to 1794. He is well known today as the eponym of Fort Knox in Kentucky.

During the siege of Boston, the idea arose that cannon recently captured at the fall of forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point in upstate New York could have a decisive impact on its outcome. Knox is generally credited with suggesting the prospect to Washington, who placed him in charge of an expedition to retrieve them even though Knox’s commission as an officer had not yet arrived. Reaching Ticonderoga on December 5, 1775, Knox commenced what came to be known as the “noble train of artillery”, hauling 60 tons of cannon and other armaments by horse-drawn and ox-drawn sleds across some 300 miles of ice-covered rivers and snow-draped Berkshire Mountains to the Boston siege camps.

The region was lightly populated and Knox had to overcome difficulties hiring personnel and draft animals. On several occasions, cannon crashed through the ice on river crossings, but the detail’s men were always able to recover them. In the end, what Knox had expected to take just two weeks actually took more than six, and he was finally able to report the arrival of the weapons train to Washington on January 27, 1776. Historian Victor Brooks writes that this was “one of the most stupendous feats of logistics” of the entire war, and Knox’s effort is commemorated by a series of plaques marking the Henry Knox Trail in New York and Massachusetts.

The cannon were immediately deployed to fortify the Dorchester Heights recently taken by Washington. The battery’s position over Boston harbor led the British to evacuate Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia. With the siege ended, Knox undertook the improvement of defenses in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York in anticipation of a possible British assault. In New York he became friends with Alexander Hamilton, commander of the local artillery. He also established a close friendship with Massachusetts general Benjamin Lincoln.