Sharp Practice French and Indian Wars British v French

Continuing our French and Indian War Sharp Practice games Dave and I took the British this time against Jerry and Richards French with Indian allies. The scenario this time was a simple encounter.

British Line appear and move towards the fields:

Colonial Rangers head towards the woods on the left:

Some French militia skirmishers appear in the distance, open fire and cause the first casualty of the encounter:

More French skirmishers have moved through the woods and engage the Rangers:

The British Line starts firing it's famous volleys. Although the skirmishers are hard to hit the British fire is very effective:

Losing the firefight the Rangers charge the French skirmishers:

A much smaller force of French Line infantry arrives:

The British waste no time in starting to blast away at the French:

Indians charge into British Rangers:

More Indians threaten British Grenadiers:

The Indians charge:

The Grenadiers are wiped out:

Some of the British turn to face the Indians:

By this point the British Line had devastated their French equivalents forcing them to quit the field. British morale had taken quite a hit as well so it was a close game.

Good fun again and showed the power of large groups of Line infantry firing volleys and using the 'Sharp Practice' ability to great effect! 

ADLG Later Assyrian v Warring States Chinese

Another competition practice for Gordon, this time one where all the armies had to have at least two chariots. Having used my Early Carthaginians not that long ago I thought I'd use the Assyrians this time.

I'd noticed that several of the 'Biblical' armies in V.4 of ADLG had changed their lists a bit so I went for a version of Assyrian that was almost all mounted and chariots with a vague plan of moving around one flank quickly or flank marching. The army was pitifully small though at only 19 elements.

Gordon's army was an odd one, masses of elite infantry and chariots with a lot of skirmishers. Quite what the rationale was for Warring States infantry being so efficient I'm not sure! He thought his army was small with only 23 elements!

The battlefield ended up being fairly open so I decided to try something 'unusual' (aka probably stupid), deploying two commands on table and one flank marching. Gordon would hopefully assume my flank march would be coming on my right to defend the somewhat abandoned camp or perhaps hiding in ambush behind the hill while in reality it was set to arrive on my left flank. It was a substantial flank march too, over 1/3 of the army.

Conforming to the 'plan' the Assyrians rapidly redeploy to their left leaving much of Gordon's army with little to do:

The Chinese slowly turn to face the Assyrians while sending a substantial force to attack the helpless Assyrian camp:

First contact! Chinese swordsmen charge Assyrian cavalry. The flank march has not arrived yet but with a 1/3 chance of arrival every turn surely they will turn up soon:

There are huge gaps in the Chinese line and so far everything is going to plan apart from two things. Firstly the Assyrian camp has been sacked (4 losses out of the 12 needed to break the army until the flank march arrives) and secondly the flank march has STILL not arrived:

Pinned against the table edge Chinese cavalry charge into Assyrian infantry. The odds favour the Assyrians here:

The slow moving Chinese are still struggling to engage the Assyrians, there are plenty of opportunities for the flank march to take when it arrives. No dust clouds, no flank march:

Now the Assyrians are starting to struggle a bit, losing the odd element and taking a few shooting hits. It does not take long to rack up 12 losses. The Chinese have lost more but then they have their whole army present so they don't care so much:

The army subsides to defeat despite only having lost (I think) two elements and a few shooting hits! The Chinese had lost quite a few more:

The errant flank march which could have appeared and changed the battle if only they had not got lost/turned traitorous/decided to stop off at McDonalds on the way: 

Despite being a bit of a disaster this was actually a really fun game, the plan was very different to usual and caused Gordon a lot of problems partly I think due to being so risky he didn't quite understand it! We played a fair few turns so with a 1/3 chance of arrival every turn the odds should (SHOULD) have been on them arriving in a decent place and making a significant difference.

As a practice I'm not sure how useful it was for Gordon, he reckoned that firstly no sane competition player did flank marches with anything other than a few elements of LH and secondly that the army composition was actually different and quite nice with a lot of firepower and manoeuvrability.

One thing for sure is that the commander of the flank march will be suffering all the insanely cruel torments Assyrian rulers were capable of inflicting! 

ADLG-R Jacobite v Williamite English

Having had a huge backlog of games reports to write up I've finally caught up as this game was played this week. I'd nagged Simon to include Jacobite Scots in his ADLG-R army lists so it seemed only fair to give him a game with them. Simon went for the historically accurate opponent of Wiliamite English.

The Jacobite army was vast, covering the table in a number of ranks and facing a much smaller but better quality English army:

The Scot's horde advances, surprisingly so does the English:

Irish pike and shot are charged by English horse:

The Jacobite's take shooting hits from the English while their own fire is largely ineffective:

Charrrrrrrrrrge! The Highlanders pile in but have been considerably weakened by musketry:

The charge ends badly with several units breaking:

On the left the Highlanders fare no better:

The second rank of Highlanders hopes the first have weakened the English enough for them to triumph:

They charge and, despite creating a small gap in the English line, the Jacobite army breaks from huge losses:

A totally one-sided massacre with my army putting up no fight what so ever! With such a large army and poor command and control it was hard to make the numbers count really or to rally units when they got hit (Simon was very successful in rallying his units). 

One of the options in the Jacobite list is to use 'Dispirited Highlanders' which I didn't select but, in hindsight, it looks like they decided they were dispirited and I certainly was by the end of the game!
 

Longstreet Campaign 1862 Game 2 Union v Confederate

Last August Dave and I played a couple of games for a Longstreet campaign and decided to return to it for game three, set in 1862. Fighting Joe Hooker (me) had his Division defending a crossroads while Stonewall Jackson (Dave) attacked it. Stonewall decided to mass all his force on the Union left isolating half the Union army immediately:

Most of the Union artillery is out of action, try to move to the left or try to advance and catch the Rebels in the flank later on? Neither option seemed likely to work but Hooker decides to live up to his name and advance them:

In support he sends forward an infantry brigade, attack is the best form of defence:

The Rebels maintain their advance:

They deploy a single brigade to face the Union attack on the right:

The Union units in the open throw up some hasty defences while things are starting to look grim for the brigade isolated in the woods:

The Union attack on the right is making good progress, so much so that the Zouaves from the crossroad join in:

Unsurprisingly the Union brigade in the wood is driven off:

The Union artillery on the right gets into action:

On the other flank the Rebels make slow progress:

Rebel artillery fire from the hill has been largely ineffective:

The artillery on the hill is becoming concerned about the Union troops flooding around their flank:

The situation looks grim for the Rebels in the cornfield:

Zouaves charge:

On the left the Rebels still have not managed to set up an attack:

Finally the Rebel Yell is heard! the Union troops are forced back from their defences:

They quickly return to the fight though:

Fire ripples along the Union line:

The Rebels prepare for one last charge:

The Reb's bravery is not enough to defeat the stubborn Union men though and the attack is thrown back breaking the Rebel army:

 

Good to get back to this campaign after a long break, an excellent game where initially I thought Dave would overwhelm my men quite quickly but gradually my own attack bore fruit and wore the Rebels down. The ACW is certainly one of my favourite periods and I'm beginning to appreciate the subtleties of Longstreet more with experience. As ever most of the figures used are true 'veterans' being around 35 years old and having fought many battles over those years!