The Corlears Hook Fencibles played a game of the 1818 battle of Maipo, using the simple rules in the Liberators supplement. We didn't have any Latin American figures for this period, so Napoleonic French stood in for Patriots and 1815 Prussians for Royalists. Be warned. A die roll determined that Bill led the outnumbered Royalists (4,000) and Tom was San Martin of the Patriots (5,000). I umpired.
The Royalist infantry was mostly regular with one elite unit. The Patriots had a mix of regulars and militia, with a lot of cavalry, some elite. They also had 12 artillery sections in 3 batteries against the 4 Royalist sections in two batteries. Bill had his work cut out for him.
He went straight forward into the attack. His guns were shot up but the Patriot artillery – a case of poor umpiring by yours truly. I didn't use the long range artillery modifiers until most of the Royalist guns were gone. The up side of this was his poor commanding general Mariano fled the field when the first battery routed and was replaced by the much more competent Colonel Ordonez. Bill made a mad rush at the Patriot left center.
We broke for dinner. An hour later we resumed. Tom began shifting his cavalry and some infantry to the left to back up his front lines.
The Patriot line opened fire and shot down attacking troops. On the right center, a unit of Chilean Cazadores rode down off the ridge and prepared to attack along the flank of the Royalist attack. When they did charge, the targeted battalion formed square and drove them off.
Meanwhile a unit of Royalist dragoons went up the ridge and drove the Patriot battery back, over-running a section. The dragoons then drove off a count-attack by the elite Patriot cavalry, the Granderos a Cabllo. The Patriots were hard-pressed right there, but the flanks of the attack were giving way and the losses were heavy. One Royalist battalion had marched right past the scrum around the square and mounted the ridge. The Chilean Cazadores reformed and hit them in the rear while Patriot militia infantry attacked them in front. They failed to form square and were captured.
By now we had played 8 or 9 turns and it looked like the Royalist goose was cooked. Bill threw in the towel. My usual assumption for games with heavy losses is that for each figure hors de combat, another has decided to call it a day and will show up later around the camp fire at dinner time. (translation: I count half the forces removed as permanent losses.)
Royalist losses were 650 infantry and another 150 taken prisoner, 130 cavalry and all their artillery (8 guns) routed for a total of at least 1,010 casualties. Patriot losses were 250 infantry, 130 cavalry and 4 gun crews routed for a total of 420 or so. The Patriots won, as they did in the actual battle. Santiago was safe.
The rules went along quite well. Each unit is defined by three numbers, fire, melee and morale. There are modifiers to firing and melee but none for moral. Since there are a lot of single die morale tests this makes the game flow without recourse to charts. I'm sure I made mistakes other than the artillery modifiers (which punished Bill). We found the melee system a tad arbitrary. Who causes the most loss has not effect on who wins the fight. I have some ideas to make melee more decisive and faster. But if you're looking for simple tactical Napoleonic rules these are worth a check.
I just got a response from the designer John Fletcher to some rules questions and will look them over.
