The gift of Gunners!

Christmas is a time for giving and this year I am giving Seth and Bruce the gift of Artillery!

Seth is building up a force of Confederates for Sharp Practice and I've assembled a couple of batteries from the Perry Miniatures American Civil War Artillery set this leaves a whole load of gunners left over so I assembled and painted up a gun crew for Seth, although the guy leaning on the wheel while the other pulls the lanyard is likely not drill-book ;)

Bruce is building up a Seven Years War collection so while at Historicon I picked up a Crusader Miniatures Austrian 3-pdr cannon and crew to paint up for him. A lovely model and really easy to paint.

There usually some interest in colours for Austrian guns, I used a base-coat of Vallejo Gold Brown highlighted up with Pale Sand.

Finally, completed on Saturday and entry for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, five more gunners, this time for the Union for Drew.

These chaps are models re-aiming the gun, so one chap uses the trail spike while two more push the wheels. Two more crew members prepare to ram home the next round.

The 12lb Napoleon is from my collection and just included for the purpose of the photo.

These are also on the Painting Challenge blog here....

First try of Chosen Men Well Disposed

Sundays game saw our first go with the Chosen Men Well Disposed rules from Polemos pitting my newly painted Dutch against a rather two dimensional French army.

I've only gotten a handful of French units painted so I took some top-down shots of some of my units and then took them to Office Depot and had them printed out and then cut them out to the required size. A purchase of $14.00 dollars saw one sheet of Warflags three laminated quick reference sheets and the whole French army ready for battle. It's not as spectacular as playing with figures but better than not playing at all.

I picked two roughly equal armies to oppose each other both of three Infantry Divisions and three Cavalry Divisions, for our first game all units would be classed as Trained and all Generals rated as Active, this would hopefully keep things simple for the first game. In retrospective, we probably had far too much stuff on the table for an initial foray into the rules and splitting just the painted stuff we had in half would probably have been better.

Drew and Sasha took the French while Bruce and myself commanded the United Provinces forces. Drew and Sasha kept the tempo early on while Bruce and myself marshalled our own tempo until we had a good spread and were able to commit forces cohesively.

On our left we had the advantage of an extra division of horse while on our right we were at the disadvantage, so we committed to holding out on the left whilst trying to batter through on the right with our infantry swiftly closing in the centre to take advantage of our superior close ranged fire effect, if we could pin the French infantry in place they would not be able to take advantage of their A'Prest bonuses.

It went very well on or right and with just our lead division we had crushed and broken the opposing French horse, hastily re-positioned French infantry tried to shore up the line. The loss of the French horse on that flank saw almost half the critical morale of the French gone.

On our left we soon had lost one of the brigades of horse, but we were clinging on, passing several brigade morale tests and keeping our troops in the fight while our reserve infantry division moved up to cover any French breakthrough.

The centre was a devastating fire fight, initially the Dutch loosed some crushing volleys, in some cases the initial shots causing the opposing French to give way completely, but the line eventually stabilised and the firefight ensued.

With time about to be called we did a quick count up, the Dutch had conceded none of their critical morale points while the French had lost five, also the advantage of units lost was swung in the favour of the Dutch, we wrapped up giving a minor victory to the United Provinces and we need to re-read the rules to see what we did wrong.

Some points we raised from the game, if you've got some experience with the rules we'd be glad to hear your thoughts:

1. For the army generation, how do you decide how many batteries to allocate?
2. I know that artillery was not very effective in the period, but with an arbitrary four batteries per side I would have expected some effect.
3. How do you keep track of what brigade a unit has come from when you get into contact, in the cavalry melee on the flanks and the fire-fight in the centre we had units everywhere with no idea of their starting brigades.
4. When your enemy recoils from melee and your horse follow up, do the supporting squadrons accompany them?
5. Is there a good reason to big high for tempo early in the game, it seems best to amass lots on your units for a coherent committal rather than going in piecemeal.

Battle of Monmouth Courthouse - 28th June 1778

Battle of Monmouth Courthouse - 28th June 1778

Yesterday evening, along with James W & James M we were invited over to Steves' house to play a rather spiffing game of the American War of Independence using his extensive collection of beautifully painted miniatures and terrain.

To kick off the evening Steve had prepared a rather yummy curry which we were soon tucking into and then it was down to business. Steve had set up the table to represent the Battle of Monmouth and sorted out the commands for the game, rather than the original units on the day. The forces, if I recall correctly, were:

The British

British rear guard

• Rearguard - Commander, one Legion Dragoon sqdn, one small British Dragoon sqdn, 1 small Rifle detachment (sharpshooters), 1 large Hessian battalion.
• Brigade - Colonel Webster, two large British battalions (fierce charge, elite 3+,  indomitable), two light guns.
• Brigade - Commander, two British Guards battalions (fierce charge, elite 3+,  indomitable), one small Grenadier detachment (fierce charge, elite 3+,  indomitable), one small Light Infantry detachment(fierce charge, elite 3+,  indomitable), one light gun.
• Brigade - Commander, three Scottish battalions (fierce charge, elite 3+,  indomitable)
• Brigade - Commander, three Loyalist battalions.

The Americans

American advance guard

• Advance Guard - Commander, one Dragoons, one small Infantry detachment, 1 small Rifle detachment (sharpshooters).
• Advance Guard - Commander, one Dragoons, one small Infantry detachment, 1 small Rifle detachment (sharpshooters).
• Brigade - Commander, three Infantry battalions, one small Rifle detachment (sharpshooters), one light gun.
• Brigade - Commander, three Infantry battalions, one small Rifle detachment (sharpshooters), one light gun.
• Brigade - Commander, four large Infantry battalions.

All the commanders were CV8 apart from Col Webster who was a 9. All the infantry were standard musket armed infantry units unless where noted.

The Game

After a quick roll off James W and myself would play the Rebels while Steve and James M would play the British and Loyalists. The forces of James and I were entering from a wood in the top corner of the table facing the rearguard in and around Monmouth Courthouse while the British troops would be approaching down the road in the opposite corner.

We soon set to, my advance guard immediately engaged the troops defending Monmouth Courthouse while the advance guard commanded by James crossed the ford and moved to attack from the other flank. rather than die a death of a thousand cuts from the accurate rifle fire, Steve deployed the Hessians from the town and moved to drive off my skirmishers. Unfortunately, the Hessians became disordered and were soon engaged in a fire-fight in the open.

The 23rd Royal Welch and the 33rd Foot under Col Webster were soon rushing to the fray and the British Guards were also deployed.

My second brigade moved on the table to support the attack on the town while James advanced over the ford and was soon deployed in the centre of the table.

The Hessians were having a hard time of it and soon they and the skirmishers were running for the rear, leaving only the cavalry to screen my troops from Monmouth Courthouse. The British Dragoons and Legion horse both charged and were both repulsed decisively, soon my rebels were deploying in Monmouth Courthouse ready to engage any British who tried to recapture it.

In the centre the rebel units under James quickly realised that they were never going to win a fire fight against the hardy troops under Colonel Webster so launched a charge, but blundered and instead took up positions in a cornfield to their left.

Colonel Webster launched his attack and the first American unit was swept away easily, but the second unit held and put up a stout fight which eventually swung their way causing the  33rd Foot to flee and reform! However the 23rd Royal Welch were soon giving cold steel to another American battalion so all was not so good.

A terrible set of rounds followed where the British commanders failed to get their troops into action (some terrible command rolls) and James and I soon capitalised. My troops that had taken Monmouth Courthouse crossed the bridge and started to engage the faltering Scots while our large brigade of infantry moved all the way behind our lines and started to deploy to threaten the British right. 

Soon both the 23rd Royal Welch and the 33rd Foot had been routed and the heroic Colonel Webster shot from his saddle, Time was getting on and things were not looking good for the British.

We had had some excellent luck, while that of the British, especially for their command rolls had been dire. 

 Here are a few more images, all the figures and terrain are from Steves' collection and were painted by himself.

The Hessians are routed.

Hessians and skirmishers stream through Monmouth Courthouse

Websters Brigade attacks

The rebels push on

First go with Maurice and first go with Battle Chronicler

I have had the Maurice rules and cards for about a year now. When I initially read them through my impression was, these sound great, I cannot wait to give them a try. Well, other projects got in the way and I never did anything with them.

Yesterday I popped round to chum Steve's place and over a hot beverage we decided that we would break our Maurice duck and give them a go today using his huge collection of 40mm semi-flat 'Toy Soldiers'.

He has a monumental collection of these, all cast by himself from Prince August moulds and painted in a 'Toy Soldier' style, I know that is not every-bodies cup of tea, but we like it and it really suits the 18th Century games.

We settled down and picked two forces, Steve picked Prussians and spent his 100 points on: 9 Trained Infantry (54pts), 4 Trained Cavalry (24pts), 3 Artillery (6pts), 4 Elite upgrades (14pts). I would be playing with the 'Imagination' of Scrivslandia and spent my 100 points on: 8 Trained Infantry (48pts), 4 Conscript Infantry (16pts), 4 Trained Cavalry (24pts), 2 Artillery (3pts), 3 Elite upgrades (9pts).
Steve upgraded two Cavalry and two Infantry to Elites, I upgraded two Infantry and a Cavalry to Elite.

As you can see, neither of us purchased any National Advantages as it was our first game and we wanted to keep it simple.

I won the attacker/defender roll-off and chose to Defend, Steve put the objective in the middle of the large hill in my deployment zone.

This is my first go at reporting a game using the Battle Chronicler software, and I forgot a couple of things, like where the objective went and where the generals ended up.

The Scrivslandians are in red and the Prussians in blue in the maps.

I deployed first, on my left I deployed five of my Trained Infantry and two of my Conscript Infantry with two Trained Cavalry in reserve behind them. My two guns were pretty central and on my right were two Grenadiers (Elite Infantry), one Trained infantry and two Conscript Infantry, in supporting echelon of these were an Elite Cavalry and a Trained Cavalry.

Steve's deployment from right to left two Elite Cavalry backed up with a Trained Cavalry, two Grenadiers (Elite Infantry), two Trained Infantry, two of his Artillery then the remainder of his Trained Infantry and artillery on a large hill and then his last trained Cavalry in reserve echelon.

The initial turns saw Steve make an advance on his left flank which I moved to counter. My large infantry formation started to advance upon his smaller force.

As the game developed both of us were expending our Action cards on the events developing on my left. The infantry were soon in a firefight.

Steve charged both of his Elite Cavalry into my Elite Cavalry

Although I initially fought them off and then used a well timed 'Valeur et Disipline' to rally them up to full strength there really was only going to be one eventual result.

The Prussian Infantry were also getting the better of the firefight, we both lost a unit of Fusiliers, but I was certainly on the back foot.

I started to fall back towards my guns to contract my line and also committed my other two Regular cavalry to that flank. It was about this time that we exhausted the deck. I put the 'Reshuffle' card in and reshuffled the deck, I chose a "Pass" and immediately drew the 'Reshuffle' card on the third pull, phew I would only have to last another 50 Actions.

After some intense canister fire, my reserve Trained Cavalry charged one of of Steve's Elite Cavalry and destroyed them. Steve was still putting my Infantry on that flank under intense pressure, I lost two more Conscript Infantry while Steve lost a Grenadier, I was up against it now.

Another charge by my Trained Cavalry saw off another one of Steve's Cavalry, but my Grenadiers succumbed to intense musketry. As you can see on my extreme right, one of Steve's Elite Cavalry was facing off against my Cavalry, but neither of them could spare the Action Cards to get them committed.

With my Grenadiers gone, Steve charged his Fusiliers into my Artillery who were soon scattered, one of my victorious cavalry units was pulled back to prevent Steve a clear run at the objective.

By now the Action card deck was exhausted and we were left to playing with the cards in hand. I about faced three of my Infantry units that had originally made the feint advance to come back and help my cavalry out on the hill, Steve pushed on with his Fusiliers and Grenadiers.

Despite some nifty rallying my cavalry were eventually shot to pieces but the Prussian Fusiliers and Grenadiers pushing on to the objective were under heavy fire, we eventually ran out of cards with both players touching the objective. A draw!

I was really, really lucky, my initial Moral Value was 18 and by the end of the game I had lost nine units, but when rolling the D3 for the decrease in the Moral Value I was typically rolling ones and twos. That coupled with the almost immediate turning over of the 'Reshuffle' card probably saved my bacon.

I was so engrossed in the game I stopped taking photos really early on, but here are a few images. All the figures are home cast, mainly from Prince August moulds and are painted by Steve.

Getting the Scrivslandia forces out of the box  

Another view of the Scrivslandia contingent

The Prussian aggressors 

The Scrivslandia deployment

The Prussian deployment

Prussian cavalry test my flank