Programmed Wargames Scenarios: Broken Ground

Been a while since I've played with my 18th-Century Wofuns or CS Grant's solo mechanisms. I'd like to work my way through all of them eventually, so it's the turn of Scenario 2: Broken Ground. I found playing the Blue defender rather boring last time, so this time I'll play Red. I start by randomly selecting the table layout:

Hills before the green cloth drops. You can see lots of 
fantasy roleplaying stuff here.

Then I select my army from the available options. It might not be best for moving quickly across the board, but I'm going with overwhelming force: seven infantry regiments, one light infantry, four cavalry and two guns.

Next I roll to see if my recon troops did their job, and they did. This means I can determine and deploy the Blue defenders before deploying my own army. I'll select randomly, and the Blues have five line infantry, two light, three cavalry, and a gun. Both sides also have a general.

15% of the Blues are a reserve in the center. That's a job for the cavalry. The rest, randomly, are arranged 20-60-20 on flank, center and flank, and all must be in forests or on heights. Well, I've a gun and eight regiments aside from the light infantry (concealed in the woods. So the three cavalry regiments are reserve, three infantry units in center with the gun, and one infantry unit on each flank.

I am using here the D3 Horse and Musket rules from Grid-Based Wargaming But Not Always. There is an activation mechanic that is more difficult as a unit loses hit points, but it won't be a problem until taking two hits (you roll higher than the hits on 2d6).

It's just occurred to me that, given I significantly outnumber the enemy, there should maybe be a time limit. In the Grant scenarios, objectives are quite vague - in this case, the winner simply holds the heights. Probably has something to do with them being rules-agnostic. I've noticed in the past scenarios like this (get to the other side of the table) being one and a half or twice as many turns as it would normally take a unit to cross. In line, infantry would cross the table in eight turns, so perhaps a 12-turn game? But then there are quite a lot of cavalry, who move twice as fast, and infantry can also move faster in column. Movement is not reduced by terrain in these rules - you just can't enter certain categories.

Another option is a casualty limit, of, say, half the units on one side eliminated. Might not be fair to the French here, but could work.

I welcome suggestions!

Here's the deployment. I'm concentrating on the flanks in hope of splitting the opponent - not knowing the programmed defender orders yet, I'm interested to see how they react to my intentions.

Rear: One French unit to right flank, three and gun center,
one to left. Three horse regiments center, rear line, but able to
come out in either direction to provide quick assistance.
Front: My infantry is on my left and center, guns moving up on
a hill, four horse regiments to my far right hoping to sweep around.

Once I have committed to my attack, I examine the Blue instructions. "Committing" is tricky, as I haven't any written orders, but my intent is to attack Blue's flanks. Blue's orders, given its central position position, is to hold the center of the feature, without giving up any ground or counter-attacking with the units on it (!). The flanks may be given up if necessary, while the reserve and flank units may counter-attack. "You should use cavalry and light troops boldly on the flanks to harass the enemy."

As for Blue's response, I roll on a chart according to Red's (my) plan. "Red attack against weak Blue flank" seems to be it, though I'm actually aiming for both flanks. The Blue response is "Negative," meaning no overally change of plan and a lack of initiative.

Under the circumstances, I feel I am constrained to stick with my initial plan, rather than, say, racing my cavalry to the left and joining the attack on the flank there. I must attempt a double envelopment.

Now to the battle. I've just moved onto the table, so it's Blue's turn. Given a lack of initiative, their reserve will not move until needed, and their gun is the only thing in range. They hit one of my grenadier units for two wounds (of nine).

Turn 1: My grenadiers (left) march onto the left hill to tackle the one
French regiment there, one unit losing three more HP as it comes up.
At center, my infantry spreads out while my guns find their position
and unlimber. My cavalry sweeps forward to hit the French right.

Guns may not move after unlimbering, and with a 45-degree field of fire will not be firing on the plucky French to their left. I expect my grenadiers can handle it. Though the two-page rules don't say, I assume I must deploy my own infantry to fire, so no shooting at all from me yet.

Turn 2:

The battered grenadiers fail to activate. That's OK since only two
can get into position to fire, though the right one takes casualties.

The light infantry head for the central forest, screening the infantry
columns. My guns fire, but I must remember that the green paper
(representing forest) would block their view of the central hill.
They instead target the French left, to ease the job of my cavalry.

Cavalry cannot enter woods, so the French are safe as my Horse
sweep some more. They take musket fire, though.

Turn 3: 

The French outpost is driven off, as the British infantry form into
line and some of the French cavalry arrives to hold them off.

Concentrated fire destroys one of my cavalry regiments.
Since I can't enter the forest, it's safe, if isolated.

Turn 4: Just some back and forth charges. The French left flank is isolated but safe, sniping at the cavalry, and the infantry on the British right is "closing up," ready to close the door if the French outposts can't hold them off.

Turn 5: Since there is no move-and-shoot, I hold my infantry still to blast the French right flanks. Two of my cavalry fail their activation rolls and stall, but the third makes a charge into the back of an infantry regiment. Light infantry aren't doing much at all, and casualties are starting to make activation more difficult. I do manage to eliminate a French cavalry with fire, meaning that there are no French at all in front of my left flank. In exchange, I lose an infantry regiment to a charge, and a cav regiment is down to its last hit.

The cavalry unit at top center, front line, is French. It just charged
The British one at front. It did the max damage, but not enough
to kill, so fell back to its present position; which means it's about to
be charged in the side and back by my units to rear and left.

Turn 6: The beleaguered French cavalry survived when both my advantaged units failed their activations. Instead it charged and retreated. The French left flank is in good hands now, with only two reduced Brit cavalry units to menace it. The French right, on the other hand, is just gone, and the only reason I haven't poured over the hill and pounced on the center is that I can't shoot and move in the same turn.

Turn 7: Except for the gun and those units "sheltering in place" in the forested zones, the French are gone. I'll stop here.

Most units are intact, as I tend to concentrate on damaged units until they're dead. And once a unit has taken enough hits, its survival in the next turn is deterministic, because hits are automatic. There is nothing to stop cavalry from spinning on its axis and charging, for example, and it WILL score at least two hits, or one if going up a hill, or four if charging from the side or rear. If the charged unit has that many left, it just gets deleted. The forests where the last of the French infantry are sheltering are like that too - no one can get IN, because cavalry can't go in and infantry can't enter melee. It would take too much time to focus fire on them, so I've been ignoring them. By the end of this turn, there's nothing else left, and it's obvious there's nowhere for my side to go but over the broken ground and off the table.

An okay game, but maybe not best for the purposes of these scenarios - which do seem to rely especially on terrain and unit maneuverabilty, neither of which is really part of the D3 rules. I like the simplicity, but at the same time I understand the frustration of people who don't like simplicity. Something more middling, like some versions of Charge!, may work better. We'll see in future. Thanks for reading.