Battle of Germantown October 1777 Part 1 : The fight for the Chew House

Back to our AWI campaign yesterday with the first part of the battle of Germantown. Given the rules we are using and the challenges of remote gaming I felt it sensible to split Germantown into two smaller battles and I was keen to see if we could have a skirmish focussing just in the fight for the Chew House.

A painting of the fighting around the Chew house.

The overview of the battle histprically. This part ‘one’ would effectively cover the highlighted area.

A second map of the battle from a wargame scenario perspective. The battle for the Chew is quite hard to balance as the British really are completely outnumbered. So the scenario sees a delaying action by the British with units of Pickets and the Light battalion trying to inflict as much damage as possible before the 40th Foot with Colonel Thomas Musgrave will try to hold the house. We had a number of specific scenario details. The battle starts in fog so range is limited until the fog lifts. We extended the movement rates for the first few turns as with R&P it could take a long time to get to the House itself. The British are all veterans. The Americans fire cant effect the troops in the house itself, effectively this reflects history as  even though they brought up cannons they had no impact. We also had a slightly amended combat result so the British even if they lost a combat wouldn’t flee the house until they actually failed a test. Col Musgrave who is in the house would also provide a plus 2 leadership, making the 40th Foot pretty tough to shift.

Our setup at the start of the battle

General Sullivan with his force march through the fog up the main Germantown road.

With an early lifting of the fog the British pickets open fire and start to pull back. They have little effect but the British light infantry use their First fire to knock the leading skirmishers back, the Americans are pushing forward their artillery along the road. Sullivan is slow to get moving.

Quickly the Americans drive forward and a sharp fight occurs around the church

The Americans are able to open up with their light cannons and this cause a real problem for the British light infantry

After an initial wobble the external portion of the 40th move forward to contest the advance knowing that every casualty caused before the Americans reach the house will help.

Ouch despite the fog lifting some Americans friendly fire into the rear of their own infantry. Sullivan is lucky the damage is not too great

The pickets are pretty much wiped out now, but the British infantry outside the house open up, they will be a tougher nut to crack

On the American right, the British light infantry are still holding just and causing casualties 

The 40th form into line they are not going to give ground !

Some tough fighting across the front, as you can see the British defenders are almost lost, but just clinging on, every minute will count

Finally the external defenders are driven back and Sullivan advances towards the House knowing that it can only be taken in hand to hand combat.

The Americans surround the house and charge in…….

Given that Musgrave had been given a key role in the defence with a 2 plus leadership, I was not too happy when in the first round of combat, with only one casualty caused Musgrave was killed ! Suddenly it was far more likely the British would fail a morale check and be forced to withdraw.

The Americans charge in again and again are driven back …..

But with Musgrave dead the inevitable happens and the British defenders finally fail a morale check forcing them to flee the building…. An American win arrghhhhhh

So despite the casualties a win for the Americans as they have forced the house, musgrave’s leadership might have made all the difference, but he died a hero much too early in the fighting. A fun battle full of twists and turns and challenge for both sides. Everything worked well and balanced apart from the Colonels untimely death. Were we to replay I might reduce this risk and give the occupants in the house the 2 plus so they can’t lose it so quickly. Nice of course to get my Chew house on the table 🙂

Next up I have been thinking about terrain for my Greek/Italian 1940 project. Much of the fighting took place in the mountains and in winter in quite desolate areas. Specifically I felt I needed more rocky terrain and more winter-looking trees. First up the trees…..

I picked up a packet of these railway type trees off eBay

These were then stuck to heavier bases to make them more stable and painted before I set about twisting the branches into suitable shapes, I then cover the base in some leaf type debris which I had in my terrain box.

The results are quite pleasing and give a sense of ‘winter’ trees obviously these can be used in other theatres eg the ACW when we fight battles in winter. I didn’t want snow as this makes them just a little too specific. In total I have about 20 of these and plan to make the  other slightly smaller trees into olive/fruit trees as I need some more of these.

As a final thought I put some autumn type lichen on the armatures and I guess they could also be used like this?

Well that’s it for now, we played a CoC battle down at George’s this morning but I’ll let him tell the tale before I share a couple of photos.

Thanks as always for passing through, you are most welcome

Matt ❤️