Guilford Courthouse replay. Great Battles of the American Revolution part 2

Yesterday my opponent and I played the Guilford Courthouse title in the GBAR series for the second time.  This time getting most of the rules correct but learning a bit about tactics near the end...

An overview of the map, Continentals setup and the British enter at the top right.

End of Turn 1.  British entry order as shown on the Time Track.

Tarlton (Mr. T) enters the map and gets within one hex of Continental Cavalry using road movement. (can not go adjacent when doing so)

End of Turn 2.

Still no fighting.  Mr T is reinforced with militia while the Continentals bring up some riflemen and light troops.  (they can move quickly through the woods)

End of Turn 3.

First blood goes to the British!

The Continentals used their light troops to spot the British regulars coming in this turn, this will allow General Greene to start moving on turn 5 instead of turn 6  (the battle took place at the top right...)

End of turn 4.

The Continentals move more riflemen up to slow the British advance.  Since it costs one extra to enter a Riflmen's ZOC and the units have 4 movement factors the crafty Continental player will hold the British advance to 3 hexes a turn..

End of turn 5

At the top of the map the Continental Cavalry holds the Infantry back by using a Cavalry withdrawal.  While the Riflemen hold up the British advance on the right.

End of turn 7 (I forgot turn 6?!?!)

Up top the Cavalry is holding up the infantry but Mr. T is coming up - that will keep them from doing a Cavalry Withdrawal again.  On the Right the main army with Cornwallis is plodding along.

End of turn 8

Up top the Cavalry is pushed back but not eliminated.  To the right the British keep plodding along.

End of turn 10?  Did I skip a turn, that would have a big effect on the end game...

The British finish off the Lt Rifle troops holding them from the main part of Greene's army (Greene is with the other portion of the army however).  Things will get hot here shortly...

Mr. T works with Cornwallis' subordinated to attack from the other direction.  The good troops were sent this way (with +2 morale ratings they are tough fighters)

End of turn 11.  The Continental army suffers major losses a leader, their Dragoons captured and another combat unit.

Cornwallis attacks (the lowest portion of the map there) and forced the Continentals to retreat.  When the Continental army tried to force the Rifle armed British units away (right next to the cannon) they failed and were instead sent running.  One of them demoralized and the others retreated.

Up top Greene forced a retreat of one of the units there.

End of Turn 12.  Based on Points the British now have a solid Marginal victory!  But Cornwallis wants more  - even though it is impossible at this point for the most part.

The British Rifles fire on the Cannon and kill it off.Cornwallis steps in to try and force a crossing, to no effect.

Up top the British try to skirt the Continentals (silly move, should have simply tried to grab Greene, that IS a major victory)

British get the Initiative on turn 13 and Cornwallis Crosses the stream to attack!  Disaster strikes as the Continental Rifleman finally score a hit and a leader casualty..

Cornwallis Falls in battle!  The previous good fortune for the British is now almost completely gone.  The game now being a draw.

Without Cornwallis to lead them (a lesser leader is still in the stack next door) they fight to a PIN result.  The Continentals have to attack back on their half of the turn.

On the other part of the field Mr. T mangles a good part of the Continental force there.  Another turn might have lead to the capture of Greene... 

End of Continental turn 13 (forgot to flip the counter)  Final losses, one General for the British and a whole slug of stuff for the Continentals but it is a draw since the Continentals hold the VC spaces.

The Continental counterattack ends up a disruption for them but the other units pass their morale checks to stay in place.

And Greene retreats his forces. 

The lesson learned is that a General can use his tactical prowess from an adjacent hex, no need to stack with the attacking troops and risk being shot. 

Great Battles of the American Revolution Part 1

Back in November I played a Face to Face game of Guilford Courthouse from The Great Battles of the American Revolution series by GMT.  My friend and I like the system but found we misplayed just about everything important...

An overview of the map.  The continentals are on the map and the Evil Empire (me!) comes in at the top right where the Blue Ten Sider is sitting.  (sorry for the Fuzzy Pic)

End of Turn 1, Tarlton speeds down the road to come to grips with the American cavalry unit.

Mr T attacks and kills the Continental Cavalry.

End of turn 3.  The stacks are the arriving British army units.

Mr T (Tarleton) is chugging down the road while militia units follow behind.  The main batch of Continental units do not get released till turn 6.

The map from the opposite vantage

End of turn 6

The Continentals have started to shift their forces to meet the British advance.

The tip of the spear...

End of Turn 7

Continentals formed a line while the British move up more troops.

End of Turn 8

Here is where we started messing up the rules.  Combat effects only apply to the Lead unit in a battle but we were applying them to the whole stack.  In this case it was two stacks attacking one British one - putting the Continentals in much more trouble then they should have been after a bad die roll...

End of Turn 9 (the losses are all Continentals so far...)

Things go "badly for the British".  A victorious attack caused an advance - which then required a bad position, so I only moved one unit forward and it was Disrupted by the counter attack in the Continentals turn.

End of Turn 10

Combat continues, the Continentals retake a victory location (top middle at the crossroads) while the British attack the Continental line.

End of turn 11 and I think we called it here.

The Continentals attacked and put a hurting on the British but then the British hit back hard scattering the Continental army.  Once again this was an extreme result brought on by applying the combat result to the entire stack rather then just the point unit.

This is a fun and generally easy to play game system and my opponent and I are planning on playing more in the series.  This particular battle took us roughly 5 hours to play so it is perfect for a single day game.

Purple Heart Draw TM2

Played the second Tactical Mission (TM - a campaign game scenario) quite a while back and am just writing it up now.  (one more writeup and I am up to date with my game writeups!  but I have a game scheduled for tomorrow...)

Sadly I lost or messed up my usual vasl log file so I don't remember many details...

On the plus side that means you don't have to plod along through most of my usual prattle...

The entire map at the start of the second TM.  The prep-fire markers denote units that have gone through their refit phase, not that they have fired.

Here is a closeup on where the North of the map where all the action for the coming TM will take place.  The Allies have made very little headway so far, the Germans started the campaign game 5 hexes away from the top of the map and I contested every hex.  The big note for this TM is that I was able to purchase a 75L and put it in the building where it could fire on the Sherman (with a 10-2) in no man's land.  At the end of each TM units in No Man's Land have to roll to move out of it and the Sherman failed the roll, this left the tank in a VERY bad position - otherwise it could have moved its full MA i to anywhere behind the Allied lines.  Having run out of 75L AT guns to purchase I bought an 81mm mortar for the right flank.

And the first shot of the game does just what was expected (TH11 or less due to range and target size).  Come to think of it the Shreck holding squad was probably toasted first but easy come, easy go...)

Next up came a TM long arty duel.  The US got off the first shot and smoked my (obvious) observer location.  The shot drifted in the next to worst possible way leaving me an LOS to part of the enemy (actually the LOS may have been to the left of the board but after a couple of turns Tycho moved on to bombarding my frontline leaving my Observer free to spot anywhere).  I don't remember my arty actually doing much the whole game but it is a matter of perspective - although it did not cause many casualties it did keep Tycho from moving his troops forward.  At one point he had troops in the Foxhole the line is pointing at for a couple of turns while the arty fell on top of them.  Another interesting bit about Arty in the game is that pulling two red chits does not end it, each red chit is put back into the draw pile and ANOTHER is also added.  So it is possible to get the full amount of Arty no matter how many red chits are drawn.  I ended up drawing most of my black chits but wasted two of them trying to fire at concealed units...

And the end of the TM.  Highlights are the hidden guy I had in the area marked on the right, he opened up at point black on a moving enemy - and did squat!  Then he did squat on an FT toting leader, I don't remember the leader doing anything in return (perhaps he broke and ran, memories....).  The blue lines show me frantically moving units from the left to right flank.  By the end of turn 5 my guys were practically done for, on turn 6 they just managed to hold on and then the TM ended.  They would most likely be able to regroup back across the draw and be prepared for the upcoming TM restored and armed.  Since the US does not have the Bridge area contested (no Tactical Location in their control nearby) I would be able to place AT Mines, AP Mines, Wire and another roadblock there.  In addition to the bridge the draw entrances already have AT mines on them (I could not add more since they are contested now).  The US could clear away the defenses and make a lodgement on the other side of the draw by the end of TM3 but that would leave only 2 TMs left to capture the paved road at the bottom of the map.  Starting on TM3 the Germans are able to purchase Stugs, which makes the US armor less useful since there is a mobile threat to them in addition to the 75L guns.  All this in consideration we called the game there.  We both liked the game and I went and bought all the other Lone Canuck campaign games since they are an excellent value.  In addition we plan on playing the campaign again in the future with lessons learned from this first play through.

As for the Germans and their victory, it will be short lived with the preponderance of Allied men and material stockpiling in Normandy.

This particular picture is courtesy of the Wargames Exchange Facebook group, don't know where they found it but I love it.