Games Day - 12-07-2019

We did another Historical's Games Day at Gigabytes in Marietta. I ran a game of Sharp Practice based on the War of Jenkin's Ear scenarios that I had written. This particular battle was the Spanish Attack on Fort William in July 1742. The Spanish were in retreat having been driven off of St Simons Island they engaged in a campaign of burning on Jekyll Island and Cumberland Island. They found Fort St Andrews abandoned on Cumberland Island but Fort William was occupied.

Sharp Practice - War of Jenkin's Ear

In a last ditch effort to gain some glory from their failed campaign, they assaulted the fortifications of Fort William. Historically, this battle was a win for the British as the Spanish failed again to take the fort by force. The Spanish left the island and returned to St Augustine, Florida.

Fort William was constructed with a ditch and a wooden palisade surrounding a block house and other buildings. The Spanish assaulted several sides of the structure. This scenario simulates part of that force attacking a corner of the fort. The actual scenario calls for the British force to be made up of Oglethorpe's 42nd Regiment of Foot. I didn't have time to finish painting my Khurasan miniatures for the 42nd, so I had the brave Scots of Darien be the defenders of the fort. These are AWI militia figures led by a Scotsman wielding a large sword.

The layout of the table had the corner of the fort dominating the bottom of the table. If I were to run this again, I will paint up more palisade sections and create a ditch that will go in front of the fort. Without the ditch, it was too easy for the Spanish to scale the walls.

The buildings represented the small town that existed outside of the fort. The scenario called for the Indians to pass a looting test if they ended a phase within 4" of any of the buildings, else they spent time looting said building until brought back under control. When the incident would first be applicable in the game, I forgot about the rule and the Indians ran merrily along to some small woods and proceeded to shoot the defenders on the wall. That was a mistake.

Below is the Spanish and Indian force. The Yamassee Indians had an initial group of 2 groups of 6 and a reserve group of 2 groups of 6. Each force had a scaling ladder with them. The Spanish had two separate forces. The first was the command of Spanish Regulars from Havana. This consisted of three groups of 8 men. They were accompanied by a force of Spanish Militia from St Augustine, Florida. The two Spanish forces detested one another and ideally should not support one another due to the animosity between the sides. This is tough to model in a game where players want to win.

The Spanish and Indians were ably commanded by Kris and Sebastian. Each took a Spanish force and one of the Indian forces. Each had a reserve element that they could bring in after 2 turns of the blank card. The blank card came up very quickly in the game, allowing the Spanish to get their full force on the table much quicker than anticipated.

I spent some time making markers for the game. I only managed Unloaded Markers (polyfilla on tongue depressors), Present markers and Uncontrolled markers. To show what unit had activated, I was placing pennies behind the units. I also had a number of shock dials from both Warbases and Charlie Foxtrot.

I had anticipated more players but it was an early game and many of the potential players had yet to show up. So I ended up running the British forces. I had a swivel gun with three crew and a leader, two groups of Darien Scots (8 men each) with leader and a single group of 6 skirmishers with a leader. This proved to be just too few troops to hold the day.

The whole day started a bit rough as I realized that I left my ground cloth at home which was over an hour away from the venue. Fortunately, Mark lent me his from his Maylay game. The game began with the swivel gun deployed on the fort walls. I have both a large fort corner and a blockhouse that I could add to expand the British space up considerably in the future.

The Yamassee and the Florida Militia deployed from the left hand side of the table. Here is where I forgot to make the Indians pass a looting test. That would have greatly helped me out if they had taken the test.

The Spanish Regulars deployed from the right in column formation. They advanced quickly but became a great target for the swivel gun and took some shock from the first blast.

After this, I was able to deploy my other troops to the walls in the hopes of driving off the Spanish. This never happened. While the Spanish Regulars took losses, they didn't accumulate much shock. They were able to deploy in line and lay fire against the swivel gun and Darien Scots. With both the Militia and Regulars in formation, they were able to move their attack forward without loosing too many men or getting loaded with crippling shock. I treated the palisade as light cover and as the Spanish and Indians advanced, they were able to kill a number of the British defenders off of the walls. Surprisingly, they took almost no shock.

Soon enough, the Spanish reached the walls. They were in good shape over all and able to press home the attack.

With both the skirmishers and the swivel gun team killed to a man, the fort was doomed. The leader of the skirmishers was wounded and knocked off the wall. He would then end up with a random event that saw him with a sprained ankle. The leader of the swivel gun was wounded and knocked out. When the Spanish poured over the walls, the knocked out skirmisher was captured. The Scots attempted to fight off the troops scaling the wall. They did win a round of fisticuffs before being shot to bits by the next group to scale the fort.

In the end, the fort fell. *Sigh* It was still a good game and with some tweaks will be a really good game. This is the second version of the layout for the game and I enjoyed it much more than the initial version. I just need to get to painting more terrain to round it out.

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Chain of Command - Normandy Game

William ran a Normandy game in the afternoon. It was a six player game with William as umpire. I played a reduced American paratrooper platoon. I was joined by Sebastian as the Armor commander and Rick as the second infantry commander. The Germans were played by John, Rodger and Stephen.

It was a great but slow moving game. The American's were the defenders and we were tasked with holding the town square. I held the right side of the table while Rick held the left. I actually didn't do terribly but managed to loose my only anti-armor asset (a bazooka team) early on. With two Panzer IVs parked near me and nothing to counter them, a squad was forced to break off and fall back off the table. I attempted to drive off one tank with MMG fire but to no avail. Part of the issue was terrible dice rolling. I took little shock and few casualties (lost the bazooka team). My force morale was in good shape (8) but just had no where to maneuver that made sense without it being a suicidal charge. In the end, the Germans gained a tactical victory as the US armor suffered 3 lost tanks out of 5. I don't think the Germans lost any armor. They did take some infantry casualties from Rick.

It was a great day all around. I was supposed to run an Infamy, Infamy game but by the time the Chain of Command game ended, it was too late.