It was time time for the next monthly horse and musket game. Unfortunately, my house is having some work done, so I would not be able to set it up. Fortunately, another buddy of mine stepped up and offered to run an AWI game using Crusader Publishing’s Rank & File rules. All I needed to bring was a tape measure and my copy of the rules!
My buddy has been rehabilitating his AWI army done with old school heritage models. He started the army forty years ago and just had it stored away. In the last few months, he decided to clean up the old figures and remount them on new bases. Where necessary, he painted up some new figures to fill out incomplete units, but generally, it was just doing new nicer bases. It just goes to show that it does not matter how old your figures are, if you do a decent job basing, they look great on the tabletop!
The table was set up deep, on a 6 x 4 mat. He added some roads, fencing woods and buildings. The town area, was treated as an area terrain, along with the walled farm. The continentals started the game as the defender and could set up from 18″ from the British board edge. The British would enter. The victory conditions would be based on the British breaking through the perpendicular fence crossing the board.
The continentals set up across the board, with the regulars on the flanks and the continentals in the middle. There plan was to slow the British down and back off to the fence line, while attriting their units.
The British marched on staggered to their left. This was the longest distance to the fence, but the British felt the terrain was more favorable to the advance.
The game kicked off with the British advancing and some long range artillery fire. Both sides decided to go with counter battery fire to silence each other’s guns. This was the overall trend through the game, with the continentals getting the upper hand and winning the dual.
The British started their attacks on both flanks against the walled farm and the town. The continentals were able to through back the initial assaults with heavy losses. On the British right, things went very poorly, so the British decided to pull back and pin to the front. On the left, the British pushed forward. The attack was seesaw for a couple of turns.
The British in the center took some casualties and broke ranks. Unfortunately, this caused a mass panic and the entire British center fell back to lick their wounds. This left the grenadiers on the left, who finally broke through and cleared the continentals from the town.
On the British right, the continentals launched a counter attack to drive back the red coats. As the British center reorganized itself, it was forced to reinforce the right, leaving the main attack force on its own.
While all this was going on, the continentals fell back to their main fence line to set up the new final defense position. Having won the artillery duel, the continental artillery count concentrate on the British infantry.
At this point, the British losses were just too much and the army broke, reaching its army break point. The game ended with a continental victory!
It was nice to dust off the Rank and File rules. They are a fun old school toy solder set of rules. I look forward to the next game! Maybe I should finish basing my AWI figures…..
- Manteuffel