Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge

OK, it wasn't Napoleonic - it was AWI. Specifically, Moore's Creek, February 27, 1776, fought between Loyalist Scottish highlanders and Patriot militia. This time, the rules were Mark's Firelock, as seen here.

The field of battle,with the titular bridge at center
and a redoubt to its south. Behind the redoubt in the gap
will be placed a "camp;" these are the three objectives.

Closeup on the center; I'm tempted now to convert 
a canvas roof for Paperboys log cabins!

The Patriots (my side) could place at any side on the south of the river, defending the objectives. After that, the Loyalists could place anywhere on the north side. Wider river strips, incidentally, took longer to ford. After a bit of analysis paralysis again on my part, we settled on roughly the center, splitting our forces in the hope that one could support the other once we knew where the opposing main effort lay. The Loyalists immediately took the east (our right).

Swarms of highlanders, with mounted commanders dotted around.

Patriot militia, an infantry gun, a few detachments of rifles,
and a small cavalry reserve.

The blue-green swamp patches, incidentally, are impassable, but do not block Line of Sight.

Closeups of the troops engaged. All 15mm, a broad mix of manufacturers. Each base represents a company-sized formation; yellow tabs indicate commanders with a two-hex command radius (flags are good for ten hexes).

On turn 1, the Highlanders crossed the river (well, creek) to the northeast and swept down on the line of Patriots. The Patriots hastily shifted to the right to cover their advance. Closest were our gun and rifle companies, but these had bad luck on their rolls and failed to slow the Loyalists. On they came.

Here's the problem: Which way are they going -
left or right of the forest?

The other cautionary part was that in this scenario, the Loyalists can declare a highland charge. This is akin to a Waagh! in 40K rules - everyone gets to move towards the enemy, and they lose any morale markers! AND, as it turned out, they could also do this every turn. Granted, they had to pass a leadership check to do it - but in these rules, any adjoining bases roll once for all. This is useful when you are limited to so many actions per turn, but unuseful when your opponent does it and has bonuses in CC...

Standoff fire is effective, but not enough, and not for long.

As we hasten to extend the line.

The highlanders are closing, and we're not really slowing them down!

We tried a cavalry charge to stem the flank, but it got countercharged
and did little good. We also lost its commander, though in these rules cav
are more independent and can be controlled at distance.

Charge goes in on the right - as you can see from the morale
"caps", it's going badly for the Patriots.

Devolving into a general melee, which is worse.

The northern end of the line holds its own - barely.

By the ninth turn the Patriots were still barely winning on points, only because we still held the objectives. Shades of the previous game at Guantanamo! But ultimately we were ground down to the point at which Loyalist horse were able to get through the line, capture our HQ unit and advance on the objectives behind us, and at that point it was over.

We had tried a similar end-around, tackling enemy command units at the back with what remained of our fast cavalry. (Infantry moves four hexes, cavalry twelve.) Mark pointed out that we could have reach the very far north of the line and maybe picked up a few points by picking on Loyalist stragglers along the river, but it would have been iffy. Our units would have been isolated, and mutual support from other units and commanders is big in this game.

Not happy with how it went. Mark says in his playthrus the wins have been about fifty-fifty (and dependent on the success of the Highland charge), which is a) a sign of a balanced scenario and b) a sign that the players are the ones in control, which means that as a commander I did a really bad job. But then, I usually do, which is one reason, I think, that I like solo play as well. I'm a better GM and solo player than conventional player, though there is also the fact that I'm very slow to get used to the rules that are now most widely played in the club.

Jeff is increasingly eager to run Picacho Pass with me (he has been doing research and has all the minis we'll need) so I will start work on that. I am hoping to go to Hurricon at the end of this month and participate in one of his NW Frontier games.

Speaking of Highlanders, I recently watched the entire wargames campaign run by Arran Johnston of the Prestonpans Trust, a refight of the '45 Jacobite Rising from after Prestonpans. He's now on a second runthru, this one starting from the beginning at Glenfinnan, with the viewers on Facebook taking the role of the British this time instead of the rebels. The second video has just come out and I will be following this one and participating to the end.