"Balanced Battle of the The '45?" Topic

My friends and I played a fast and furious game of Falkirk Muir today. In fact we played it twice. The first game the Jacobites steamrollered the Hanoverians, as was historic. The second game we tweaked the rules (TMWWBK) to allow the British line to inflict a few casualties before it was swept away. We prefer to fight historic battles and are wondering if there were any battles of The '45 that would make a more balanced game. Certainly not Prestonpans or Culloden. Perhaps we need to come up with our own scenarios based on a What If? Jacobite advance further south into England.

Clifton Moor was only a skirmish but offers possibilities as do some of the clashes between Jacobite and Government highland forces. There are both minor skirmishes and what if possibilities with the Hessian forces that were sent to highlands. Christopher Duffy's books are the best accounts I know of for these.

There's no such thing as a "balanced" historical wargame scenario.
Play it twice swapping sides. See who can do better than the historical outcome.

I remember reading a historical scenario for the Jacobite Rebellion where the government units had to roll a die to determine troop quality the first time they interacted with a Jacobite unit.

This mechanic was introduced to create uncertainty in the Government plan since the player wouldn't know how his units would react to a highland charge. I think this also captures some historical flavor since units did have a high variance of reaction in real life.

The small battle of Inverurie makes for a nice little game.

But in general, wargaming the '45 with miniatures is best suited for hypothetical skirmishes and battles, in my view and experience. You can craft dozens and dozens of those, at all levels.

Army commanders usually try everything in their power to avoid a "balanced scenario". Generals gave battle in two circumstances, they thought they had an advantage, or they had been forced to fight.

The battles of the '45 tended to be pretty one sided affairs. If you want more balanced large battles you will be fighting what if. It is possible to have a more closely balanced battle at Culloden, but you need to make different choices on deployment and pre battle maneuver, especially for the Jacobites.

Smaller skirmishes are more likely to be balanced scenarios while remaining plausible.

This what-if campaign of The '45 presented on YouTube by the Battle of Prestonpans (1745) Heritage Trust is a great example of generated battles and uneven fights that still matter. (It's also just a fun thing to watch.)

It is rarely satisfying to play a totally uneven fight as a one-off wargame. Lopsided scenarios start to make a lot more sense when they are part of a larger operation, and the goals of each side are often orthogonal to a clear tactical battlefield victory.

- Ix

Apart from Culloden, then most of the bigger battles of the Jacobite Rebellions in Britain are 'unbalanced' because of the assumptions that one makes about unit performance. It is perfectly possible to make Falkirk, Prestonpans and Killiecrankie entirely balanced, if one doesn't have any assumptions about Highland-clansmen superiority over the Government forces in those battles.

Balance these battles yourself by adjusting the victory conditions or introducing scenario rules to balance the game. You don't need to win the battle to win the game.