Raising the Standard

I've committed myself to running a Jacobite '45 campaign. It would probably be smarter and easier to go with the very nice (and brief!) rules by Stephen Simpson, which I've successfully used in the past, but I really want to give the simplified Charge! rules a workout. That may require a larger table and slightly bigger armies. I intend to try the campaign structure from Black Powder's Last Argument of Kings supplement, and this requires a maximum of thirteen (!) Allied infantry regiments and up to six cavalry regiments.

My table is five feet across. A base of eight men is 30mm wide, so a Wofun regiment of five bases is about six inches. 

Yeah.

The other option is to reduce the armies by, say, a third or even half (I do want to retain the regiment sizes). This isn't hard for the Hanoverians but may be tricky for the Jacobites, as their army size is more variable. The campaign is a series of linked battles and choices, where direction, victory and defeat modify the numbers of troops available in the next action. Perhaps modifying the improvement tables (rolling on -1 or something) would work to start.

I roll for the Raising of the Clans; 2. I get only three clan regiments. I can roll again at +1 at a delay of two weeks, and this time I roll a 6! Eight clans and two squadrons of horse are available to me.

You may notice the poor bastard with the standard has
had his foot glued back on. A bad omen?

I posted a poll on the Wargaming the '45 Facebook group for Johnnie Cope's actions:

• Await Reinforcements: 6.
• March on Edinburgh: 3.
• Leave Garrisons and Retreat to England: 0.

Someone added:

• Retire to Carlisle and Berwick, then await reinforcement: 2.

Await reinforcement is the obvious winner, so Cope gets an extra regiment and another "turn" begins. I repeated the poll, and this time March on Edinburgh was the clear winner, though Retreat to Carlisle and Send Cavalry to Reconnoiter were also suggested.

For the battle, I decided to go by raw numbers, assuming a normal infantry regiment to number roughly a thousand men and cavalry to number 500. Thus, the original battle of Prestonpans had about 2,500 men a side, this one has 3,000 for the Hanoverians and 4,000 for the Stuarts. So I'll need 3-4 odds.

The Scottish side will be composed of five 32-man Highland clans and 12 cavalry, the Government of three 32-man plus 18 cavalry and a half regiment of Hessians. Probably will add one gun for the Government as well, though perhaps give it limited shots to reflect the crew morale? Except for the Hessians, the Government are classed as poorly-trained militia, thus will fire at one die per ten men. To reflect their poor morale (again barring the Hessians), they will retreat at one-third casualties and break at half casualties - the Highlanders retreat at half and break at two-thirds.

I imagine with the Hanoverians in such poor shape, the goal will be for them to mostly escape the field to reinforce Wade. A game of Charge!-lite normally ends once one side has taken half casualties; I think once all Hanoverians are retreating instead that will work, and if they can cause greater casualties on the Scots they will at least hold their heads high.

So soonish, a battle report. Will this work as a scenario? No idea. Any suggestions are welcomed.