Neil Thomas One Hour Wargames Scenario 24

Scenario 24 in One-Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas, entitled 'Bottle Neck', is inspired by the Battle of Thames from the War of 1812, although it has been heavily reconfigured here, I think.  In any case, this one was the next in my series of refighting the scenarios of One-Hour Wargames...

Here a smaller Hanoverian Army is trying to stop the advance of the Franco-Jacobite forces.

The Forces:

Franco-Jacobites: 6 units of Infantry, 1 unit of Dragoons, 2 units of Cavalry

Hanoverians: 3 units of Infantry, 1 unit of Artillery, 1 unit of Dragoons, 1 unit of Cavalry

The Franco-Jacobite forces are not allowed to enter the woods - they are to thick to operate in effectively without local knowledge.

If I had read up on the battle before playing the scenario, I would probably have made the 'Hanoverian' force more irregular to reflect the nature and share of Tecumeh's forces: 2 Native American light infantry units and 2 British line infantry units would probably have been okay here.

The Set-Up:

Okay, not really the set-up since the Franco-Jacobites started off board and I didn't get a photo for some reason. However, not to matter, it doesn't make it too difficult to explain. The Hanoverian Army is holding the bottlenecks between lake and wood, and lake and impassable flanks (more woods, probably); the Franco-Jacobites have pushed an infantry brigade against each bottleneck, with the Dragoons, dismounted, lending fire support against the British Dragoons in the woods.

 The Battle:

First blood to the French! After a fierce exchange of musketry, Regt. Normandie breaks its opponents

The second 'French' regiment (Royal? Royal Italiens?) takes over, and another bloody firefight ensues...

Having forced the French to deploy, the British Dragoons then re-positioned to line the flank of the woods - this forced the Irish brigade and Dragoon regiment du Roi to re-deploy to match: the time wasted allowed the British artillery to hammer Berwick's regiment.

Over on the right flank, the French infantry have managed to push the bloodied Scotsmen back, although at some cost to themselves

The wider position at this point in the action

Despite being under pressure earlier on, the Scots of Fergusson's Regiment turn the tables and defeat their French opponents!

The Irish infantry are getting nowhere fast between wood and lake...

British horsemen charge the wavering Regiment Normandie...

Who heroically stand their ground, seeing off the British cavalry!

...then spoiling the effect somewhat by panicking and running away, with Royal Eccossais joining them before they have fired a shot!

And it was all going so well...now the Franco-Jacobite right has collapsed and completely stalled on the left

...and then things go from bad to worse, as the Irish, although they had inflicted a fair few casualties on their opponents, collapse in hopelessness at ever getting forward...

The Jacobite cavalry makes a last-ditch attempt to save the day, charging the guns and the redcoats!

The British infantry turn and flee! But the gunners hold on...

Shades of Sherrifmuir as most of the infantry on both sides is now in flight!  But the Franco-Jacobites have totally collapsed and are in full retreat, and just enough of the British are holding on to claim victory!

Position at the end of the battle

Game Notes:

A really exciting battle, this. It could have gone the other way and very nearly did, twice over! The biggest factor I think was Fergusson's Regiment, defeating the French advance on the Right, then not running at the end when all the other British infantry units were.  As a general rule, each army in these battles has 3 brigade-sized formations; sometime 2 for 6-base armies, but even then, it is generally 3 smaller brigades rather than 2 equivalently-sized ones.  There are actually quite a lot of problems with this, but I am not going to discuss these now: that is for a later post. For the current game, the important point to note is that an army might be defeated after the defeat of a single brigade, probably will after the defeat of two, but that is not definite...unless the brigades consists of 1-2 units only, in which case it is definite. It perhaps sounds a little more complex than it is, but suffice to say, all the Polemos rules but especially the Chris Grice and Glenn Pearce-penned rules tend to allow the possibility, but far from certainty, of defeat quite early on.  This makes the formation and army morale rolls the most important in the game by far.

The other really useful move was the move of the British Dragoons within the wood - this negated the French numerical superiority in the firefight and gave the French attackers a really difficult choice - get stuck in a worse-than-evens firefight, or try and assault through enfilading fire.  As 'rolling more dice' is much more important than any other factor most of the time in RdG, this really hurt the Franco-Jacobites, not to mention the time and command effort it took to re-organize the attack.

Figures as ever by Baccus 6mm.