I thought I would share with you pictures of the Gentlemen Pensioners Germantown fight on the day after Phalanx.
The game was played with a version of Will McNally's free AWI rules (which you can find at Freewargamesrules .. scroll down the page a bit) … These have been a round for a while, and I first encountered them years ago, running on a computer (which you can also get through the above page).
(1777:The Americans converged on a sleeping British outpost at Germantown, confusion guaranteed by early morning fog. All the roads seemed full of American patriots.)
Some of us were familiar with the battle, some less so … The axes of arrival were fixed, the orders for the players were relatively open.
(After initial skirmishes, British bring up more forces.)
(A fierce fight breaks out for the centre, where the roads converge)
The rules proved very robust given they were designed some while back, and not for armies exactly organised the way Steve has built and based his burgeoning AWI collection.
Will has more to say (Will's AWI blog)
The rules use a system of degradable values which reduce as the unit takes hits and which make morale failures more likely (until troops have all their value levels wiped away, in which case they will be lost beyond recovery).
We did that analogue by means of tab on the back of one of the stands in a unit, on which the status level were crossed off. It worked well enough and was not at all complex.
I came into the action on the British right, and needed to thwart a plucky outflanking march by what turned out to be American militia.
(the Americans look very martial, but didn't stand up to a volley and a charge)
I had no idea what to do with a unit of Light Dragoons who seemed trapped in amongst all the lines of infantry – then I spied the Americans leaving one of the roads unguarded and made a dash for the fields beyond them where I might wreak havoc (I hoped)
Wargames Amateur has an American view of all this …
(as the American position collapses, British regiments surge forward to chase them off …)
On the American left, a number of units got caught between the victorious infantry to their front and the marauding Light Dragoons bxing them in. Their withdrawal was hurried, shall we say …
Given the steady attrition of their right and centre and the failure of the left hook, a general retreat ensued and the positions around Germantown were all left to the British.
Not quite 1777 – but not way off the mark.
A very enjoyable game. I had initially thought we might do this with Black Powder, but I'm rather glad we did something different (so different that it was only as we got going I remembered times past …)… These rules are still entirely serviceable and gave us a good and fairly well paced game.
If you like trying things out, you might well find them worthwhile.
As for the rest of the weekend, have a look at my Phalanx report on the SoA Shows blog.
paints brigs for the British fleet.
