Freemans Farm September 1777 : AWI

Our AWI campaign has reached mid September 1777 so fighting is taking place in more than one location across the country. Whilst Washington is retreating from Brandywine, Burgoyne is in the thick of the Saratoga campaign.

The Battle of Freemans Farm is fairly well known as it pits too fairly equal armies against each other in what is effectively a ‘meeting engagement’

The scenario which I have used previously is taken from Black Powder rule book 1st Edition.

The table setup, I have enough figures now to provide all the relevant units and to increase the size of all the regular/militia units up to 16 man units which for rebels and Patriots means they only reach half strength at 8 rather than 6 men and therefore have greater resilience. It does mean the table/battle is a little bigger than our normal AWI battles. Hamilton and Morgan’s Brigades will start on the table, both sides have a further two brigades to bring on at their discretion. The only limitation for the Americans is they must come on on one of the two roads as the area is quite thickly wooded. So onto the action…..

Hamilton starts his brigade towards the stream and opens up with his artillery.

Morgan’s sends out his Rifle armed skirmishers and awaits support 

From turn two it starts to arrive with Poor and Learned’s Brigades, now for the Americans they had a choice where to enter but Benedict Arnold decided to feed both reserve brigades down the same road towards Freemans Farm itself. Whilst the Rebel skirmishers can be seen exchanging shots with the advancing British the road is also getting quite congested. In fact the Americans suffered a number of early activation failures which put them on the back foot and threw their reserves into a bit of a mess.

The British continue to advance and with the Americans seeming hesitant they use the cover of the word and the extra time to drive over the bridge whilst their is no opposition

British reserves with Fraser’s mixed brigade arrives along the road, with nothing in front of them they advance as quickly as possible, looking to outflank the American position

The final British reserves Von Breymann’s brigade of Hessians arrive and advance towards the bridge.

Already the American position is looking slightly precarious they are spending time reorganising their brigades which have become entangled.

Given the extra time Hamilton forms his leading regiments into line and advances upto the edge of the wood 

The British reserves are a long way form the action but already their light troops are crossing the stream

The hessians continue to demonstrate at the bridge, they need do little more than tie down the Americans around the Farm as the weight of the British attack is going to hit further to their right.

The American regiments at the T junction on the road get their first volleys away, but the British are looking ominous firmed into line.

Still the Americans are struggling to get their troops into order, they actually break one of the British regiments who are driven off the battlefield, but the British artillery now has a clear view of the Rebels and they open up across the open ground. The Americans have little answer to this pounding and suffer on the road.

Finally the Americans are in something of a defensive position along the road but the British have concentrated at the T junction and the Americans are struggling to hold.

The British are beginning to outflank the Americans, and in this part of the field have numerical advanced age as well.

Eventually the pressure breaks the front American unit, and the weakness of the American defensive position is revealed with the next regiments in line weaker Milita !

Learned’s brigade has taken up a strong position around Freemen’s Farm, but they are matched by the Hessians who exchange fire across the bridge.

In a bold move the American charge into the wood to drive off British skirmishers, but the remaining elements of Poor’s Brigade are driven back, in a single turn three American Regiments are forced to flee the field and the American left wing is collapsing.

Suddenly the American centre is gone as well and their position is untenable as the British bring more and more numbers upto the road. Arnold decides to save his army and orders a full retreat from the field. Hoorah Burgoyne has won a famous victory.

Well that didn’t play out as expected, the attempt by the Americans to concentrate backfired and they ended up caught in a poor position the tables turned and they had little choice but to give up the field to the British who really were flying today. A fun battle which we will revisit again at some point. Particularly pleasing to see the British manage to get into line and give the Rebels some volley fire which apparently they don’t like one bit !

Between gaming I have kept up the painting although these are the only figures to be photographed

Again bought at the show last week, amongst my ECW haul we’re a fairly random bag of Musketeers. They are pretty old sculpts Essex perhaps and slightly bulky but I wanted to use these as first fire markers. So have have quickly painted them up and put them on single bases.

Here are a couple performing in front of a unit. Once the unit has fired they will be removed. These will look aesthetically better than the white cotton blobs previously used. At a push they might get used as a couple of troops of Musketeers if I don’t have enough.

Finally I have been  testing out/ refreshing my knowledge of my Zombie Walking Dead rules in anticipation of a game over Christmas. The plan will be something that looks the part but I used the paper sheet for the test.

That’s it for now but another game set up for tomorrow where we are back to Sicily 1943 with the Americans advancing against the Italians again !

Thanks as always for thanking the time to check what I have been upto.

Matt ♥️KBO

Norway 1940 : Defence of Tretten

Looking for a quick setup battle this weekend I dug back into my Norway Skirmish scenarios book. This battle is loosely based on the Defense of Trenton. The Germans are forcing the allies back, after the collapse at Lillehammer. We played the scenario with the basic ‘breakthrough’ scenario from the Bolt Action rule book (yes I’m still playing version 1).

Elements of the 163rd Infantry Division are supported by Gebirgsjager and some suitable armoured support. Their objective is to break through the defence line held by the 15th Infantry Brigade and the Norwegian Torkildsen Battalion. The river is only crossable on foot and the woods will slow movement. I didn’t take too many photos as we were having too much fun.

The start of the battle, the Norwegians and British dug in on the right, the German preliminary bombardment pinned nearly every unit and killed one of the 2LB gunners by the small White House. The green markers indicate the location of a hidden Norwegian sniper team. Which would only be revealed when it was overrun.

German infantry Gebirgsjager  come on through the woods using the high ground as cover.

A second 7nit heads for the bridge again using cover, German tanks can be seen advancing slowly through the woods in the distance.

First ‘blood’ to the Norwegian though when their medium mortar hits a German MG first shot behind the logs completely knocking it out. The infantry push on up the hill

Elite Norwegian ski troops come on in reserve and look to cover the bridge. In the distance a lone antitank rifle team and machine gun team are left to cover the woods but are dismayed to see the advancing German armour !

British infantry also moves up to cover the bridge, the second ski unit can be seen heading off into the woods where they got into heavy hand to hand combat driving the Germans in that area back.

 The Gebirgsjager make a bid to cross the bridge and take heavy fire they hit the deck, but they may have only been a diversion for the main assault.

Which is coming over the high ground.

The Norwegians batter away at the attackers but they are out numbered with too many of their troops cover their right flank. The German armour chooses to sweep through in the distance and with the infantry on this flank reaching the stream the battle is over. A good win for the Germans who cleverly kept their armour away form the British artillery.

A fun battle played in fine spirits. Hopefully we can return to Norway again soon, it reminds me I have a couple of french units I need to get painted and some Germans I was going to do in greatcoats.

Keith I think mentioned on one of my previous posts how many trains I have for the model railway, so I thought I would come clean, here is the current train storage case. I doubt very much this will be the end of collecting so I’m going to need to build some more shelves soon….and yes I have quite a lot of stock for them to pull :)

More games planned next week and likely some painting, well why not !

Thanks for popping in

Matt♥️

More painting this week from the Dungeon…….

Unfortunately a couple of games postponed this week due to some illness (not mine) although I’m hoping to get at least one battle this weekend, I also managed to negotiate my wife’s birthday, and gain some browny points to get some hobby painting done.

First up some ECW baggage/objectives, as part of the haul from Battleground I picked up loads of ECW bits and pieces. In fact as they were a job lot, really more than I need. The wagons are from their generic wagon range, I have about six more ! The figures are mainly an Engineering team all are by Hallmark Figures who I believe are no longer trading. The barrels are OO railway bits I had in a box.

I mentioned previously that I wanted to improve the wound counters for ECW, after a lot of thought on these I picked up the relevant bits from Pendraken. Took quite a longer time to put these together (I have about 40 done now) but happy with the outcome. I have kept them fairly generic so they can also be used to tidy up our Ancient games using Kings of War as well. Green dice so I hope they will be slightly less obvious on photos ?

Finally for this post and also secondhand from the Battleground show a nice addition to my Italian collection. This came as a resin kit with metals wheels etc. 1/56 scale by CompanyB. I really don’t need anymore Italians……but you never know.

That’s it for now, I’m on with both painting and fiddling about with the railway this afternoon, and then hopefully a game this evening.

Thanks for checking in Matt ♥️

The Battle of the Nile , Battleground Show and more

Well another busy week on the hobby front. First up I have been searching out a suitable set of rules for my 1/3000 sailing ships. Many I have looked at involve record keeping for damage for each ship and a level of complexity which isn’t really appropriate for my little ships. I have looked at quite a few rules and  having played many of the ‘Osprey’ rulesets thought these were worth a try.

Turns out they are pretty much exactly what I was after, they still have the fun of potentially changing weather and wind conditions, gunnery and discipline favouring the British but are fairly quick to pick up and importantly you can manage without any record keeping even at my tiny 1/3000 scale, all the damage etc been marked on the table. So after a couple of mini test battles and with the table in the dungeon clear I  set up the Battle of the Nile to see how Nelson would fair.

As one of Nelson’s famous victories there is plenty of info on the battle and maps etc.

Also lots of elegant paintings of the battle to give it a heroic feel ?

Brace the mainsail and all that !

One of the benefits of the scale is it fits pretty neatly onto a 6x4 seascape, the French are ‘anchored’ in the bay the rules have a convenient way of representing this. The British fleet is tracking in the distance to pass around the headland and catch the French by surprise. I was playing solo for a change which allowed me to fiddle the scenario as I went along. The french would be unable to move until they could see the first British ship around the headland. The wind at the start is coming across the British in the distance putting the French at a real disadvantage.

But the British get a little ragged in their haste to get at the French

And just as they turn the corner the wind drops, changes in the wind are governed by the initiative roll each turn. This really broke up the British fleet just at the point the French can start to get underway.

The French open up at long range but to no effect

But soon the British fleet drives forward into the french 

The first french ship is blown to pieces immediately. Blue markers indicate destruction, yellow markers are actual damage, you can remove these but if you get more than 4 you strike your colours or sink.

The two fleets get stuck into each other and the French have some lucky rolls ! Pretty soon a couple of British ships are burning too.

The wind changed again but both fleets are desperately trying to get into the best firing position. The victory goes to the fleet which can drive the enemy’s morale rating to zero. This neatly balances the fact that fleets may not be quite the same size, although at the Nile they were pretty close. Initially the french get the better of the fighting and the British morale drops quite quickly. But thanks to some fortunate initiative rolls when they were needed the British slowly pull the battle back, in the end it was remarkably close with both fleets within a couple of ‘ships’ of their morale failure.

But the British held out, their slightly better gunnery winning through. Nelson wins another victory, hoorah ! Although I think they lost roughly half their fleet. A very enjoyable battle played out over a couple of days, the benefit of having it setup I could play through a turn then come back to it later etc. I will certainly be playing some more. For larger battles I have bases to allow the fleet to be combined into groups or divisions to bring the number of active elements to a manageable number.

Next up some painting ….

A couple more ECW cavalry regiments. These are Peter Pig castings, helpfully some of which are single casts so less fiddly. Nice figures although it is hard to look at them and not think cowboys ? On closer inspection they are definitely ECW cavaliers.

As mentioned previously we visited Battleground show at the weekend. A very enjoyable days, catching up with a few folk, checking out some excellent games and squandering my retirement fund ! First some of the battles which caught my eye

Martin was putting on a  lovely Barbarossa battle in 10mm all Pendraken figures

A Sicily Bolt action game, well I was bound to have a close look at this one. I like the vineyards the hills are nice but challenging for storage.

I was particularly taken by this Waterloo battle ( there were a couple) using preprinted 6mm figures etc, it looked excellent to my eye and something to think about for the future, very nicely done

Another small scale C17th  battle. Do I need one of these forts I wonder ?

Teddy bear fur in abundance on this Little Round top battle, I did feel the setup here slightly odd as the battle effectively is only in about 1/4 of the table ?

A modern Afghan battlefield very nicely turned out, another interesting idea for the future as I wouldn’t need any terrain and only limited numbers of figures ?

An air battle which I have seen at a couple of shows I think, the main draw being the map/mat, I would like something similar for my 6mm WW2 planes but in a different scale I guess as these were much bigger.

Finally a massive flats battle, I think SYW , old school but still looks very effective.

The shopping was excellent with a very busy and active bring and buy. I had a taken a list of things to look out for and nearly all of them came up. Dash it I couldn’t help myself  !!!

Lots of ECW stuff but mainly because it was all being sold in job lots, a harbour for Cruel seas, tanks for the railway, some kit to build better wound markers and I couldn’t resist the castle. I came back so excited  I’ve already been working on some of this stuff 

By popular demand I have been trying to take some photographs of the railway but it is proving very difficult due to adequate access and lighting. Anyway here is a shot of a GWR Dean goods 0-6-0 pulling a small mix freight load.

I have also tried with perhaps only moderate success to take a couple of videos of action on the track, if you are interested in railways click the link, if not just go back and look at the lovely Wargames above.

Once gain thats it for now, sadly my game with George has had to be postponed , but I should be gaming at the weekend.

Thanks as always for checking in, please let me know if people are interested in more train photos it is a whole interesting new challenge for me?

Thanks again Matt ♥️