Neil Thomas One Hour Wargames Scenario 27

Okay, next up in the One Hour Wargames' scenario series is Scenario 27 'Disordered Defence', (very) loosely based on the Battle of Shiloh. Obviously all of the trees have disappeared! But this seems to be very much on the principle of 'having trees everywhere is quite like having trees nowhere'. Obviously this is on one level mainly untrue tactically...but it is potentially just sufficiently true...to make it a worthwhile basis for scenario conversion. This is part of the 'Neil Thomas spirit' of scenario conversion. Interesting at least (if debatable) as a minimum!

Again, this one played with the Polemos: Ruse de Guerre rules.  The aim for both armies is to control the crossroads. the dynamic is for the initial attacking force to try and overwhelm the defenders before reinforcements arrive to strengthen the attackers and change the situation.

 

 

The Forces:

Franco-Jacobite Army: 4 bases of Infantry, 1 base of Cavalry, 1 base of Dragoons

Hanoverian Army: 3 bases of Infantry, 1 base of Dragoons (Initial); 3 bases of Infantry, 2 bases of Cavalry (reinforcements)

The initial deployment: hardly ideal, but the defending British have been caught by surprise (i.e. mandated by the scenario)

The Battle:

The Franco-Jacobites are advancing on a broad front; an infantry brigade on each flank and a cavalry brigade straight up the road. One of the Scottish regiments has retired slightly in order to avoid being outflanked by the Jacobite Horse and French Dragoons.

Numbers tell in the firefight on the Franco-Jacobite Right: despite the casualties inflicted on Berwick's Regiment, the combined fire of Berwick's and Royal Eccossais defeats Fergusson's Regiment, which breaks...

A wider shot

Leven's Regiment is doing well in the firefight on the other flank, despite the 1:2 numerical inferiority...one of the Irish Brigade regiments (Dillon's) breaks...

Leven's Regiment withdraws towards the crossroads to get some kind of force concentrated...

The Franco-Jacobite infantry attack, supported by the Horse.

The British infantry battalion breaks, disordering the cavalry regiment behind it...

A wider shot. The Scots' Regiment had been resisting stoutly until this point (left)...

But now joins in the general rout!

The Jacobite Life Guards, supported by infantry and dragoons, then administer the coup de grace against the single intact British unit remaining...

The first stage of the attack is complete!

The main portion of the Hanoverian Army arrive to counter-attack

The British units press forward immediately, hoping to exploit early positional advantages; the Franco-Jacobite cavalry move around the flank looking to deliver a decisive charge (right)

The attack is a bit of a damp squib: Berwick's Regiment is forced back with some loss - but does not break - whilst Clare's Regiment (left) pushes the British attackers back (left)

And they follow this up with some devastating volleys which routs the opposition!

Berwick's Regiment meets the same fate in the centre however!

Leaving the position like so...

The British quickly re-organize, to avoid their flanks being turned on both sides; Clare's Regiment (left) advances (top-left) to attack the disordered British cavalry

Which their effective musketry fire proceeds to break!

Meanwhile, the Franco-Jacobites attack along the other flank with both Horse and Foot...

Royal Eccossais defeat Seymour's Marines, who break...

...disordering the 5th Foot, behind them...

At this point, the British have had enough and run/ride back to their own positions...

Victory to the Franco-Jacobites! The crossroads has been secured...

Game Notes:

A really thrilling, enjoyable game this one. However, this was another one where the non-obvious structural factors within the rules interacted with the scenario design to make things a little easier for the attacking Franco-Jacobites. Let's go through them:

Generous movement rates

Linear scaling of combat capability

No meaningful attrition, the currency is 'disruption'.

The first allows the attacker to rapidly close the distance and take ground; the second allows the efficient exploitation of superior numbers; the third allows combat to lead quite swiftly to decisive tactical victories. What this meant was that the attacking force was able to destroy the holding force quite quickly, with only the loss of a single unit. When the reinforcements arrived, they were forced to counter-attack at a 1:1 ratio, so their only chance was to take advantage of their freedom to attack in a configuration they chose until the original attacker could get in some form of order. None of these factors is 'huge', even in combination, but they all make a difference.

There was another important factor embedded in the rules in play for this scenario and this concerns the organization of the armies. In this game, the Franco-Jacobites were organized in three brigades of two units; whereas the Hanoverians had four brigades (two infantry brigades each of three battalions, a brigade of two cavalry regiments, and an independent dragoon regiment). Formation morale is calculated differently for small brigades (1 or 2 bases) than other brigades; in effect, you have to destroy them entirely. They also reduce army morale (Army morale is a single number, the number of formations in the army x 2; as a game balance measure, both sides use the highest number, so in this case '8') by a fixed value if they are eliminated: 4.  The combined effect of this is that smaller brigades are actually a lot tougher than slightly bigger brigades. Take a brigade of 4 units and a brigade of 2 units: the former needs the enemy to inflict 4 'levels' of Shaken to have a 33% chance of routing it, 5 to have a 66% chance of routing it, 6 to be certain; whereas the latter needs 8 'levels' of Shaken to eliminate it. True, the average hit to army morale of the former is 5.5 and the latter is 8 which looks worse, but if we look at it from the point of view of average Shaken levels at the time of loss, it is actually even, and it has more high-side risk since the 8-point loss is fixed, whereas the 5.5 loss could be a 10-point loss if you roll poorly. The other potential downside is that the force with more, smaller brigades needs more Tempo Points to do the same stuff.  This is sort of true, but given the relatively decent supply of Tempo Points in Ruse de Guerre compared to other Polemos games, then it doesn't actually make that much difference, unless you are constantly losing the Tempo bidding (and there is no reason why that should happen); it may even increase the efficiency if the commanders of these small brigades bring in at least 1 Tempo Point themselves (i.e. if they are average, or better).

 

My conclusion is that the author would be better off dropping the exception for 'small' brigades so that the toughness levels of formations are uniform. 

Anyway, some slighlty geeky stuff in these notes, but worth re-stating the main thing: the scenario and rules did combine to create a really cracking game!

Figures by Baccus 6mm.