John Corrigan Memorial game 2014 - "The Bridge Demolition" - Set Up

Hard to believe that another year has gone by, but with DG down for a visit (in rather sad circumstances, but every cloud and all that..) he suggested a visit to the hot and stuffy loft, and it seemed churlish not to suggest that this would be the ideal time to fight the 2014 John Corrigan Memorial game, specially as we didn't get the opportunity to do it in 2013...  

For those of you who don't know who John was, he was the guy who single-handedly kick started my American War of Independence* project, when he gifted me literally hundreds of beautifully painted Minifigs he no longer wanted. Lofty C, as he was known, was an ex-marine, good company, and would have given you the shirt off his back - hard to believe its been over 3 years since he died.

Being the John Corrigan Memorial game then the period was decided - we always use John's figures for this game.. 😊 

John was also old school, he knew a lot of the original gamers, and in some cases had actually played them, so when choosing a scenario I tend to go old school as well - the first one was "Action in the Plattville Valley", the second one was "Wagon Train", and this time I went to Teasers blog and chose "Bridge Demolition"..

*(he would never have called it "Revolution" 😏)

Setup:

Scenario map is as follows:

...which I translated to the following using my TSS terrain tiles and scenery:

Orbats:

For this game the Americans will be Red (the Defenders), so the British (naturally) will be Blue and attacking - I have slightly modified the orders of battle as defined in the scenario so as to meet what I have in my collection, but also to reflect more closely the cavalry light nature of the conflict...

American (Red)

1 Squadron of Cavalry (Dragoons)
5 Regiments of Infantry
1 Gun (Light)
1 unit of Engineers (for bridge demolition)

The engineers are a specific unit but without SP's (Strength Points) - they act as Light Infantry for movement/firing. If they are hit, or an enemy unit is on the bridge then their demolition efforts for that turn are interrupted - there are no other morale/damage effects from fire...

British (Blue)

2 Squadrons of Cavalry (Dragoons)
9 Regiments of Infantry
2 Gun (Light)

British arrival is decided by chance - they start with one unit on table (one of the two cavalry squadrons), the other twelve units we divided into pairs and wrote up on 6 cards..  we then turned them over, shuffled them,and then threw two dice per card - one for odd/even (ie. A or B entry point) and one for the turn number they arrive..

Victory Conditions:

The scenario victory conditions as defined are solely based round the destruction of the bridge - Blue need to capture it before Red can destroy it; there are no conditions about friendly forces stranded the wrong side of the river.

I use Will McNallys AWI rules for this period (have done for years - they're free, supremely elegant, and well recommended) and will use a flavour of the rules as documented to run the mechanics for destroying the bridge - in summary, the bridge is given 10 strength points, in their firing turn the engineers have an opportunity to throw greater than 7 on 2D6 to remove 1 point from the total - when the value gets to 0 then a further dice is thrown (as suggested in the scenario) to see when the bridge actually collapses..

6 - bridge is destroyed at once. 

5 - bridge is destroyed at once. 

4 - bridge is destroyed at the end of next move. 

3 - bridge is destroyed in two moves time. 

2 - more work is required — add 2 strength points

1 - more work is required — add 3 strength points

Stay tuned for the battle...