Thursday, 29 May 2025

Battle of Brandywine Part 2 : Birmingham Hill

We played our next instalment of our AWI campaign on Tuesday, the second part of Brandywine September 1777. This is the flank attack by Cornwallis at Birmingham Hill.

Essentially the larger of the three green squares covers the area for this battle, the British are the cream of the British army, Guards, grenadiers and light troops, the American must hold the high ground
A couple of shots form the Battlefield back in March
Part of the preserved Battlefield looking from the behind the American Artillery position

As always we are playing R&Patriots and remotely so I have amended things to make things practical. 

The British get first turn and all their second wave will arrive by turn two, they are also all veterans giving them higher morale, the Americans are more restricted, Sullivan is not on the table and their reserves are phased to give the British a chance ?
The British advance guard of light troops moving towards Birmingham meeting house
The American defence line, back left you can see reserves but these haven’t arrived yet
The British advance quickly, forcing the defenders of the Meeting house to pull back, Cornwallis has now arrived with his second wave of grenadiers and the British Guards
The light infantry lead the way, but some of the grenadiers fail to activate causing a worrying delay in the second wave, Cornwallis doesn’t want to attack piecemeal !
The defenders open up a very effect fire
Despite one unit being chased off the rest remain solid even though Sullivan hasn’t yet arrived
All is not lost, but the British are taking some heavy fire 
Eventually Sullivan arrives to provide his extra leadership to the American morale.
The British are now moving too slowly for my liking and the rest of the American reserves arrive and are put into the line
The advancing line staggers a bit 🙁
and then stalls …..
Another American unit is pushed back out of the line but Sullivan is again able to plug the gaps
On the British right flank the Hessian Grenadiers have been wiped out, the British dragoons who gallantly pushed across the battlefield have been driven of and the British grenadiers have been badly battered
Cornwallis must call off the attack as it is clear his force is not going to make any progress against the American defence line. 

A fun battle despite the poor showing of the British, I blame the general. I of course knew it would be tough and had built in several scenario tweaks to try and even things up, Sullivan starting off table and the delay built into the reserves. Fair to say the British die rolling was very poor with multiple failed activations early on…..just how many 1’s and 2’s can you roll with two dice ! This delayed the second wave and allowed the Americans to concentrate their fire. The British artillery also failed to activate multiple times whereas the American guns just kept pounding away. Of course it’s not the winning and great to play a scenario from a recently visited battlefield.

A bit of painting this week
I needed a few British Peninsular skirmishers so picked up a packet at Salute, they can play as a detachment or more likely act as skirmishers markers.
This limber had been floating about for ages so I stuck it on a base as a bit of scatter terrain.

That’s it for now thanks for checking by, we played our Brandy Station cavalry battle yesterday oh what tremendous fun we had, my luck seriously swung the other way and despite using the very same dice barely failed a test all day 😂

Matt ❤️


Tuesday, 27 May 2025

A RCW adventure

We rolled out my RCW collection this weekend, after some careful thought I ended up basically getting everything out that is painted. I did discover I have a few units in the lead pile. The Reds and Whites would be fighting over three objectives. The Reds have some tribal mercenaries will arrive randomly potentially ambushing the Whites, but they mercenaries run the risk of changing sides given fairly limited provocation.

The White force starts to arrive and wouldn’t you just credit it,  the first Tribal mercenaries pop up in their rear ! Luckily the White officer Regiment is on hand to help sort them out
From the East end of the table the fuel dump is one of the hard objectives to reach
Both sides have air support the Reds have already knocked out the enemy Tchanka which can be seen burning
Massed Revolutionary infantry surge into the table, the water tower is a second objective
The officer Regiment finish off the first mercenaries
The third objective is the central workshop building, the Whites manage to capture it first
The reds strengthen their defence of the water tower
The rocky hills provide cover for the White infantry, a unit of Cossacks allied to the whites seem uncertain what to do and spend several turns galloping about
Bombing the defenders of the water tower
The reds have managed to get an old British tank into service which makes for the cross roads
The defenders of the water tower are pinned down and eventually forced back
The whites are uncertain how to manage the Reds armoured car as their rifle shots have no effect on its armour
But some fluke both biplanes are shot down in the same turn 😢
Defence in force at the water tower, some Red cavalry has cleared the nearby hill, whilst the Whites have trundled a Whippet tank forward
The whites consolidate around the workshop. In the distance the final tribal mercenaries are really uncommitted to any action, eventually changing sides but even then they don’t get into the fight
Finally the white cavalry finds some thing to charge chasing down the enemy with their sabres
Reds have brought on their reserves a Black Sea Sailor unit, but they get caught in cross fire and get pinned down
The Reds suffer some friendly fire. And the Cossacks make the most by charging recklessly at the defenders of the water tower
They throw their lives away but defeat the enemy in the process
But thats as far as the Whites can get when the battle draws to a close.

In the end a minor white victory, as they held the fuel dump outright (I just forgot to take a photo) fighting was still going on at the other two. A fun battle with lots of little incidents, both sides had some artillery and I’m not sure they hit anything in the whole game. The Tanks are really only armoured machine guns. Slightly disappointed the Tchanka got blown up again really early in the battle 🙁

That’s it for now two more games coming up this week and some more painting to share soon.

Thanks for checking in Matt 😀



Thursday, 22 May 2025

Italians for Sicily

Enthused by Partizan I have been getting some painting done, working on a collection of support weapons for my Italian Sicily force. All are Warlord figures a mix of metal and resin from their support weapon pack and command pack.

Breda Machine gun and elefantino anti-tank gun
Mortar team
Anti-tank rifle, sniper and mortar team
Artillery 100/17 Modello 14 gun with crew
Command  squad with Enrico Francisci who is the special figure with the Italian campaign book
The command and support weapons ready for battle

The wet hare has been spectacular over the last few weeks so I have had a few trips out into the Lakes, hard not to take nice photos 
The Langdales
Crummock Water in the west
Finally on one day there was what I believe to be a US C-17 flying around on training flights, most entertaining as it circled around for about and hour.

That’s it for now some more gaming over the next few days 

Thanks Matt ❤️







Sunday, 18 May 2025

A trip to Partizan 😀

I had planned our Scottish holiday to free up a trip down to Partizan, so this weekend I made the journey down. The benefit of the van is being able to stay free making it a bit more economical and avoiding six hours of driving in one day !

Firstly it is a great show to catch up with lots of friends and acquaintances and to make a few new ones.

Secondly the quality of the games of display is really inspirational, others will share lots of photos so here are just a few of the games which caught my eye. (I didn’t jot down any details so just from memory) Top of the list for me was the Perry’s Pennisular game mainly because they had a Spanish army on show which was great inspiration for me.

Peninsular loveliness

Spanish cavalry 🤔
Chain of command
More Chain of command
Germantown
Massive SYW
British in India
Massive ACW
ACW 1st Corps
More SYW
A grand scale medieval skirmish
Can’t remember
Al andalus ….lovely
WoTR …….definately on the list

I’m not really in the mood for purchasing at the moment having picked up the Spanish at salute, but we need to support those traders at shows so I picked up a couple of bits, Cof C 2 so looking forward to getting a look at this.

That’s it for now hopefully a bit more painting this evening 👍

Matt