"One Hour Wargames" - Scenario 9 - "Double Delaying Action" - Game

This is my 800th post, so it seems strangely right that it should feature, one, a game (which is after all one of the main points of the blog), and two, those venerable old Minfigs American war of Independence figures Lofty C donated all those years ago..  Funnily enough, it's also near enough damn it, the blog's tenth anniversary - my first test post was on the 20th August back in 2006 [clicky].. portents do indeed abound!

So the evening before Colours [clicky] DG came round for what is now our traditional game before the show- DG lives a few hundred miles away so Skype aside, and not being what you'd call a clubbable fellow, this is how I get most of my games...

As per the set up post [clicky] this is scenario #9 from the "One Hour Wargames" book, and that without spoiling the outcome at all, I can confirm that without a doubt this is the best scenario so far in both our opinions..

First things first then, and we diced for forces, and then we diced for who would be attacker/defender - since force composition might influence that choice...

DG ended up with a 4 for his force, I rolled a 3; we then threw again and DG won and opted to attack...

Die Roll	Infantry	Artillery	Light  Infantry	Cavalry
1	4	1	1	0
2	4	0	1	1
3	4	1	0	1
4	5	1	0	0
5	5	0	1	0
6	5	0	0	1

Table is as follows, north is the furthest edge - the key terrain points (in terms of scenario) are the town and the road entrance on the top (north) edge...

So  15 moves to get a result ...bring it on 

Initial deployment was as follows....

I deployed first with:

• my artillery (light) immediately on the hill at the rear edge
• one battalion of infantry in the town
• three remaining infantry battalions and the cavalry in the centre to cover both river crossings - one infantry until held back as a reserve

DG then deployed and moved - he concentrated almost his entire force opposite the town except for one battalion of infantry on his far left flank

This is the end of Turn 1 ==>

..and so the game started - the scenario calls for a staged withdrawal (from the road exit on the north table edge) by the red player (me) - the Blue player also has a requirement to get units off the table by the same road, and also a winning goal to capture the town... the cunning'ness of the scenario of course is that there are balances to be made (for the red player) as every unit withdrawn reduces your ability to deny the blue player his victory conditions..  fiendish...

End of first few moves - following - about move 3 I think...  DG (whose hands are visible top right) is launching an assault on the two - his artillery is deployed - I have already identified that he's out of range of my artillery (d'oh!) and have opted to use them as my first "withdrawal unit" - I needed to withdraw three in total..  I have also taken the decision to reinforce the town with an additional battalion of infantry - out of picture bottom left that single battalion of DG's infantry has crossed the river so my reinforcement force remains where it is covering both flanks....

Two or three moves later (piccie following) and I send further reinforcements to the town (one of my units is out of site the other side of the house)..  we treated the town as one large building in terms of terrain, so reduced movement and lots of penalties for firing, movement, and attacking in melee..  I think it worked quite well (see post match analysis)...

My tactic here was to hold back from the edge of the town meaning I was not eligible as a target to DG's artillery, but I also couldn't fire, but given the victory condition was to control the town DG would have to force me out at point of bayonet...

Which he attempted to do over the next several moves ==>

Many battle honours were won by DG's infantry as they charged repeatedly over that little bridge (which is by Bellona as spotted by one of my followers - bear with, as I'll put up a post about that long forgotten little manufacturer at some point in the future), eventually however numbers told, as DG started to feed units in from the flank (see above), and at the end of the game I was forced from the town on almost the last move..

So - end of game and time to tally up the results - I was convinced I'd lost - but when we checked the winning conditions again we realised that although DG had managed to take the town, he'd neglected to also exit the required number of units via the road! My how we laughed... "fog of war, old boy", I chortled...

Post match analysis:

• casualties were fairly light - I lost more units, but mostly as a result of failed morale - as usual Erbprinz looked magnificent and routed early!  This is not a casualty counting scenario so losses are largely immaterial providing you meet the other conditions..
• the rules cludge to manage the fighting in the town was to treat the entire area of the board as one giant building, but with firing/moving penalties in the area as if from building to building.. We worked out afterwards that for all the shooting no casualties were caused to either side while in the town, similarly there were only one or two successful melee's - by far the worst outcomes were as a result of failed morale checks.. units fled as a result of poor morale rather than outright casualties... and it was this that eventually delivered the town into DG's hands
• this is quite a difficult game for the attacker to win as not only does he need to take the town he also needs to me the unit exit criteria...  we talked about it afterwards and will definitely play this scenario again, but one area that worked well was DG's flank attack - rather than funnelling everything across the bridge, a bigger outflanking manoeuvre might have yielded dividends
• ales on the evening was Adnam's "Ghost Ship" [clicky] snacks were Hula Hops Puft (who have their own Twitter page - what a marvelous age we live in when a starch based snack can have it's own presence on social media )