28mm AWI MAURICE CAMPAIGN 2 GAME 1 – ACTION AT WOODED RIDGE

On Friday Dave Paterson and I played the first game in our second Maurice AWI campaign – the Action at Wooded Ridge.   Here are the forces for this game.  We both picked the same initial troop mix but with different national characteristics.

Patriots await British jumping over the fence line - and they did

 BOTH ARMIES
8 TRAINED REGULAR INFANTRY
4 CONSCRIPT REGULAR INFANTRY
2 TRAINED REGULAR CAVALRY
3 ARTILLERY
2 IRREGULAR CAVALRY
2 IRREG INFANTRY

PATRIOT

National advantages - OBLIQUE ORDER, SKIRMISH, PROFESSIONAL TRAIN
Notables – Chaffee, Katzenov

BRITISH

National advantages - OBLIQUE ORDER, RALLY TO THE COLOURS
Notables – De Vique, Kershaw

Advanced Rules in use – Oblique Order, Light artillery, All Guns bombard, Honours of War

We used a pre-battle setup system developed by Michael Schneider of the SESWC to try to give a greater variety to the games with special events, weather, terrain and additional troops.  This gave me 2 elite units and Dave an elite unit, a mercenary infantry unit and an artillery battery. 

Dave won the scouting role and decided to be the attacker.  We both deployed our 4 units of irregulars on our right flank and massed our infantry and artillery in multiple ranks in the centre.

At the start of the game I moved my Patriot irregulars thru the woods on my right flank to engage the end of Dave’s line whilst he tried to do the same on his right.   However neither of our irregular forces got into action as Dave advanced quickly in the centre and that brought both our main forces quickly into action.

Boris Katzenov leads the Irregulars forward - he retired after this action

I moved into musket range and used a First Fire card to gain an advantage by shooting before Dave.  This first volley was the high point of my game as I wiped out 3 of Dave’s 4 guns and scored lots of other hits.  After that my firing was very poor and the British gained steady successes in the fire fight with their advantage of Rallying to the Colours.  I broke a few units with heroic charges but Dave broke more of mine by firing and charging.

When my army broke it had lost 8 units and Dave had lost 6 units including all 4 of his guns.  It was a decisive British victory with 3 epic points won.  Once again it was a hard fought enjoyable game.   My notable James Chaffee was KIA while Boris Katzenov retired after the battle.  However I was joined by Laurent Van Hussen.

A few photos from this battle with descriptions are on flickr at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bill26048/sets/72157638222458633/

On the previous evening I played Angus Konstam in a one-off Maurice AWI game.  Angus has written a very thorough description of the game at his blog - here is the link
http://www.edinburghwargames.com/Journal%2088.htm