trying to catch up: Battle of Gloucester Point (TTT)

Gosh, Frank has been doing most of the posting lately. I've been busy with some of my grad school classes, and a bit in the dumps, so not up for writing a lot.

But that's not because I've not been gaming. Besides our recent foray into DBA-RRR, I've helped run an Age of Eagles game recently, introduced one of the local clubs to Fortunes of War, and back several months ago I organised a Tea, Taxes, and Tories battle. The last of the three I actually have a few photos of (thanks to one of the other club members), so let's start with that.

I've been experimenting with 'Tea, Taxes, and Tories', a set of American Revolution rules by Vincent Tsao based on the Too Fat Lardies' 'Le Feu Sacre' Napoleonic game. Last year the Army of Central Maryland hosted a small con and I ran a TTT game featuring the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, which was fairly well received. I've run VT's battle of Bunker Hill scenario there as well, and I have a feeling that I've run one other as well at some point.

I acquired the 'British Grenadier' rules and scenario books. The latter are especially nice, as their scenarios are very well written up, with excellent maps and OBs, and can be fairly easily adapted to most other rules. As I come from The Peninsula (as the ground between the James and York Rivers is locally known), Yorktown and Gloucester are of great interest to me. I remember the thrill I got at seeing all the reenactors who turned up for the Yorktown bicentennial in 1981--little did I know that ten years later I would be joining their ranks for a decade. So with the help of another local chap I put together the forces for the Gloucester Point scenario, and we ran that at Games and Stuff in October.

For those not familiar with the Yorktown campaign, the British Army in the southern colonies under Lord Cornwallis had moved from the Carolinas, where he had had mixed success, to Virginia. Here Cornwallis planned to link up with British forces under Generals Arnold and Phillips and subdue Virginia, the breadbasket (and, with its tobacco crops, the cash cow) of the colonies. Due to misjudgment and bad luck, Cornwallis ended up being surrounded by a larger army of French and American regulars, unable to persuade the commander of the British field army in the northern colonies to come support him, and forced to surrender.

Cornwallis was stuck on the south bank of the York River, having fortified York Town in hopes of using it as a base of operations. He had a small force on the north bank of the river under the notorious Lt Col. Banastre Tarleton; this force was watched by a Franco-American force under the French Marquis de Choisy. Near the end of the siege, Cornwallis sought to move the main portion of his army across the river at night, planning to break through de Choisy's covering force and escape northwards. A storm prevented the British barges from carrying more than a small portion of their strength across, so the plan was abandoned and the British surrendered two days later.

The scenario we played assumed that the storm did not take place and the bulk of Cornwallis's army was able to cross and attack the besiegers of Gloucester Point. The cream of the British forces (23rd, 33rd, 71st, Guards, Queens Rangers and British Legion) attack a mixed force of Virginia militia and French regular and irregular troops. A brigade of elite Continentals rushes to the scene of battle, but it may not arrive in time to shore up the defense.

I'm afraid the terrain was rather crude. Here's a shot of the Allied line: French foot and horse on their right; in the center, French guns in the small redoubt that guarded the front of the Allied lines, with a section of heavy guns on the ridge behind the army; Virginia militia on the Allied left. Marshes form the flanks of the Allied position and some cornfields are visible on the American left (near the camera).



Here's the British line advancing onto the board. British light dragoons (I hadn't finished painting the British Legion horse, of course) on their left, Legion foot next to them, then lines of British regulars and sections of light guns. The British played mind games with the Allies by appearing literally smaller--most of Mr Stewart's figures, which made up their center, are ancient Scrubys that really are 25mm tall (if that). Most of the Americans, by contrast, are Front Rank, closer to 30mm than 25mm.



In the next shot we see the dragoons, having chased off Lauzun's irregular horse, about to put a hurting on the French infantry. In the center, the intrepid British regulars are assaulting the redoubt, while on their right the canny Highlanders speed around the American flank in column (three was some confusion that arose about this, but I forget what it was).



In our fourth shot we see a hapless battalion of French who are about to suffer at the hands of a combined force of British Legion horse and foot. Behind them their artillerists try to reposition to help while other Frogs who have already broken in the face of the fearsome lobsterbacks cower on the ridge.



Finally we see the desperate straits of the Americans on the left, facing crack British light infantry and more Highlanders than they even knew existed stand firm under the eye of their commander (look at that dandy with the feather in his hat!) They held firm for one volley and a rush by the lights and were then quickly off to the rear.



The Allies were firstly quite unlucky in losing the cavalry engagement so overwhelmingly and then victimised by the rules, which allow horse to overpower foot a little too readily for 18th century combat. Their reinforcements didn't arrive very fast, and they suffered from indifferent commanders (the ratings for the historical figures, not the players! :-) The British felt hard done by when some of their troops stalled when close the the French redoubt, but in truth of they had carried on with all speed (as they might have done), the Allies would have been rolled up in perhaps half the time, and the game might have been less enjoyable for everyone!