Battle of Long Island 1776

 Moving our campaign forward, after the skirmishes of late 1775 and the inevitable slowing in activity over winter the next significant battle was at Long Island. I’m not going to cover the detailed history here it is well covered on Wiki. This was I believe the largest (numerically) battle during the whole of the AWI so given my collection at the moment our virtual gaming we have broken the battle into 2 or 3 separate scenarios. Jon has covered the details of the scenario on his blog here http://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/

For this first scenario we are picking up the Diversionary attack by Grant on the British left flank.

The overall map of the battle our battle covering the British left flank

Alexander (Lord Stirling) defending the high ground a mixture of Militia and Continental units, they are outnumbered but have the advantage of high ground and cover due to the undulating terrain. 

With some Riflemen in the woods the British choose to focus their advance on the left.

They advance quickly to gain cover from the slope of the hill, although the Grenadiers pause presumably to sharpen their bayonets ?

Realising the danger of being out flanked the Americans rapidly reorganise to form a solid but thin line of defence

The first volleys ring out but the red coats hardly break step !

general Grant orders the 34th into Close Order Line preparing to make the most of their firepower. In the distance a diversionary attack within a diversionary attack occupies the riflemen in the woods

The leading British regiment is pushed back to be replaced by the advancing grenadiers, surely this time they will get stuck into the enemy, the 34th let out a withering volley at a Delaware Regiment

British artillery begins to open up but are ineffective, perhaps due to the lie of the land ?

An exchange of fire all down the line now

And despite a brief pause the Grenadiers are thrown into combat

The front Militia are pushed back as are the second American Line

But they haven’t been driven off and they hold a defensive line

Meanwhile on their left the Delaware unit has had enough and under fire turns and runs !

In the distance the British can’t make any headway but they are holding the enemy in position the break through will be here on the right

CRASH ! a massive volley right into the face of the Grenadiers and they come under fire from the flank as well

Under this pressure they break and somehow the American units hold

But it isn’t over they come under repeated volley fire from the 34th who are on the edge of the hill at one point two regiments are broken and the third disordered

But again they manage to reform a line

At this point the game ended, we had a random finish point.

Again a clear American victory, but it felt very close it would only have taken a single unit to break to cause a domino effect down the American line, but this just didn’t happen they held on. A couple more turns might have done it as all but most of the American regiments are well below half strength. Luckily this was only ever a diversionary attack.

Another excellent engagement, yet another though scenario for the British. Who cares about balance it was fun to play and could have gone easily the other way it certainly looked that way for a while. I now need to get on with painting some Hessians for part two 😀