"1776 Battle of Brooklyn AAR" Topic

Took me a while but here's the whole tricorne hat, so to speak:

link

If you click & visit my blog, I hope you enjoy!

Wonderful AAR. Thanks so much for posting. You have inspired me to game this!

Very intense game. Exciting right to the end. I may have to play this battle with my group. Thanks for posting.

Great looking game. Thanks for posting.

Marvelous! What wargames should aspire too.

Excellent!

Thanks for the kind comments!

Durban Gamer, if you do play your own version of Brooklyn/Long Island 1776, please post about it here!

cavcrazy, same for you and your group!

Yes, the result was truly at issue. Actually, after I made the bad call for 1st Delaware to stay and fight on Battle Hill instead of falling back towards Gowanus before the British made contact -- which resulted in them being wiped out by the Royal Marines -- it seemed like us Americans were probably going to lose, maybe worse than at the real battle.

Luckily we managed to recover and turn the tables on the enemy, but not for many turns.

I think my delay in falling back was our only misstep of the game. Later, faced with a similar decision RE: the Marylanders & 17th Continentals who I'd had occupy the Old Stone House, I withdrew in time for them to cross the bridge over Gowanus Creek intact. Part of me wanted to stay and defend the place, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be worth it.

Though the game is balanced in favor of the British, I think it's easier to play for the Americans, since a chunk of their troops occupy the fort(s) & defensive works at Brooklyn Heights from the start, leaving fewer forces to command "out in the field." I guess a super-aggressive American player could choose to abandon those fortifications and advance to meet the British farther inland, but that seems like a formula for disaster.

At some point I will do another post on my blog with more of the research we compiled while preparing the game. A surprising amount of useful older reference material (from c.1870 & c.1910) is available online in digital editions, and there's also a good amount of info on some of the historic spots from the battlefield in modern Brooklyn. When that's done I'll come back and post a link to it here.

Many thanks for posting this report, which has also inspired me to look at trying out this scenario. One question, please, you mention that a D6 roll was made for the British night march, what were the possible outcomes from this roll?

Thanks,

Ezza

D(6) roll = number of moves up the road, using Road March category for troop type movement distance, ie: infantry move in road column 12" per turn, so roll of 4 = 48" long Night March for the Inf, 64" for cav, all in column.

Great, many thanks for setting out the D6 roll results.

Ezza

My pleasure, ezza123! If you do pursue the scenario, I hope you post about it here on TMP. Meanwhile, a friend of mine who played the Hessian commander and is a great photographer with a very good camera, posted the pics he took at the game, which IMHO are worth checking out even if you've already seen the full AAR with my pics, as his photos are in an entirely different league.

If interested, here's a LINK…

link

…and a handful of samples to whet your whistle:

Most of the Rebels were on Gowanus Heights during the battle. The main fortifications played almost no role in the battle.

Grant pinned them from the front and Cornwallis' flanking column rolled up the line.

It's not the easiest battle to game as a lot of the flanking column doesn't really get into the fight.

Virginia Tory, thanks for weighing in and bringing this thread back to life!

I am forced to both agree and disagree. What follows is just my own humble take…

"Gowanus Heights" referred to a long ridge of high ground that stretched all the way from Martense Lane Pass to present day Greenwood Cemetery (where the portion that became known to history as "Battle Hill" was located and where my wife and I will some day be buried), through all of Prospect Park (the 2nd largest park in all of NYC) to Jamaica Road and the modern-day borough of Queens. I'm not certain but it must have been at least 8 miles long, maybe 10 or more. As a terrain feature it was not equivalent to Bunker or Breed's Hill, and as far as I know the Continental forces were not mostly concentrated on one section of it.

You're right to say the main fortifications at Brooklyn Heights played almost no part in the fighting that day -- other than providing artillery support for some of the Continental troops who retreated to them from Gowanus. However, they did play a vital role in convincing the British to halt their victorious advance, which enabled the Continental Army -- which despite having faired rather badly remained largely intact -- to withdraw across the East River to Manhattan that same night.

8K to 9K of the 10K Americans present escaped and lived to fight another day.

It seems unlikely that General Howe's great reluctance to press home his attack and capture or destroy a much larger portion of Washington's Army -- thereby striking a potentially fatal blow to the cause of American independence -- would have been as strong if the Americans had not had those elaborate prepared defenses, which included artillery, to fall back to. This reluctance on Howe's part caused great controversy on the day with his subordinates, and when he later testified in his own defense to parliament the reason he gave for not pressing the attack was the tremendous casualties he would have incurred in the course of overcoming those same fortifications. So I do think they played a significant role in the battle, or at the very least in its final results.

Most games I play are historical refights, but once the terrain is accurately laid out and the armies deployed, what follows is in the hands of the players and the dice. Sometimes they result in a near exact recreation of the historical record. Other times -- like this one -- the historical record is turned upside down (AWI pun intended). Either type of result is good with me.

I ran this battle for my group a couple of weeks ago, using an almost identical table as Mad Guru's & scenario info he graciously provided, here & on his blog. The rules were Live Free or Die.
I agree it isn't the easiest battle to game, particularly when one includes British naval power, as we did. I tried to balance the game by crafting a set of graduated victory conditions involving control of the gaps in the Brooklyn Heights, followed by the "second line" of the Red Lion Inn, Old stone house & Bedford. The 3rd set included the forts & Brooklyn town. To offset the British ships in in the harbor, forts sterling & Defiance were added, studded with cannon.

This produced a tense, close game with the British gaining a minor victory (by taking the gaps & the Red Lion Inn). As did historically, the major fighting occured on battle Hill. Just as Mad Guru stated, the cannon in Fort Putman helped keep the British flanking maneuver somewhat at bay.
We had an most enjoyable time & I an indebted to Mad Guru & his associates for their efforts.

Tiger73, you are very welcome indeed. It's great to hear you went ahead with your game and it was a success. Thanks for sharing that info! Knowing you and your friends played a similar game of your own and had fun doing it is a perfect reminder why it's worth the time and effort to post detailed hobby related info on blogs and sites like TMP. Your added element of naval action between the RN and Continental guns at Ft. Stirling & Ft. Defiance sounds very cool! Reading your comment made my day and I shared it with the GM and all the other gamers who were involved.