Activation Deck

When I first was reading through the rules for Muskets & Tomahawks I was very intrigued by the Activation Deck that the game makes use of. The unpredictable nature of skirmish gaming that I wanted for 1812 - Retreat from Moscow game is provided by the Activation Deck. For those unaware of what the Activation Deck is, here is a brief rounddown:

The Activation Deck runs the game sequence. There are four types of cards:

• Activation Cards
• Morale Cards
• Forward Boys!
• Event Cards

Activation Cards
An Activation card contains three pieces of information: the side being activated, the Troop Type activated and the number of Actions allowed for these units.

When drawn, all Troop Types of the activated side (including Officers that are a unit consisting of a single model) may perform the number of actions indicated on the card.

Example: if the player who will control the Russian Army, adds a Russian Jaegers unit (Troop type: Irregular) to his army, he adds the Russian card for Irregular units. Once the game begins, when that particular card comes up, the player then activates all his units with the Irregular troop type characteristic. 

Morale Card
There is one card for each side. Once the card comes up that side will have to take a Reaction test for each unit. This card is only added when at the end of a turn one side has lost half or more of its starting number of models.

Forward Boys!
This card activates all Officers and units with the "Elite" trait of that side. Each of these units may immediately perform 1 action. For my cards I wanted to have the text Forward Boys in the two languages of my game.

Event Cards

The  event cards are  used to add a  random element to your game. They can be used to indicate a specific scenario event if  using the Scenario Generator. Some times these cards will not have any impact on the game, at other times they may have unexpected consequences.

The 1812 - Retreat from Moscow Activation Deck

The original deck for Muskets & Tomahawks while beautiful, cannot be used for 1812 - Retreat from Moscow. I therefore chose to design my own using InDesign and Photoshop. 

For the back of the cards I chose the well known image of Napoleon during the Retreat from Moscow by Adolph Northen. 

Through my work I have access to an online image database and here I found some excellent images of battle worn French and Russian flags. These would be the background for each of the cards front. It was then just a question of adding the different text to each card.

I am very pleased with the results, especially the look of the two flags.