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 ❤️