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Friday, August 13, 2021

Shoemaker's Bridge: Game 3

For the final Shoemaker's Bridge battle in the three game series, we see two U.K. players face off against each other.  Phil (News From the Front) commands the Americans while Matt (wargamesinthedungeon) commands the British.  Each provides his own impression of the game at the blog links embedded above.  With this battle account being the third of three, the scenario and situation ought to be familiar to regular readers.  If not or a refresher is needed, past posts can be found at:

Shoemaker's Bridge Scenario

Shoemaker's Bridge: Game 1

Shoemaker's Bridge: Game 2

Was this game any different from the previous two?  Let's see.

Americans deploy to cover both hill and bridge.
British come on in the same way with the
exception that one brigade goes wide right.
In the opening artillery fire, the 22nd foot,
 caught in column of march, disintegrates.
As the British approach the stream,
 Americans reinforce the hill.
Rebel reinforcements reach the battlefield
and immediately deploy into line astride the road.
Shocked by the dispersal of the 22nd foot,
Lord Percy reconsiders his options. 
The decision? ADVANCE!
Battlefield view from SE.
The British left closes to within musketry and
begins skirmishing with the Rebels in the field.
 The British center seeks cover in the dead zone of the hill.
Notice the Rebels deploying to defend in depth.
The British advance on the left
The British flanking brigade arrives across
the stream on the right.
The British left presses on while the
 center and right prepares for action.
On the left, Rebels are driven back through the field.
They retire and form up around the farm. 
 Falling back upon supports, Rebels prepare to stand.
The British center assaults the heights while the brigade
 on the right attempts to turn the American position.
Rebels reinforce the heights by exchanging lines
as waves of redcoats crest the hill.
Redcoats assault Shoemaker's Farm from below.
The defenders hold.
The situation on the American left
as the left flank is threatened.
The 28th and 35th assault the farm a second time.
The second effort pays off.  The farm falls!
On the American right,
Rebels brace for an assault by the guard. 
Overhead shot of the hard fighting at Shoemaker's Farm.
With Shoemaker Farm lost and the right crumbling,
the Americans begin to withdraw.
Before the guns can limber up and retire,
they are overrun by a mad dash by Redcoats. 
 The guns are lost.
At this point, the American commander declared that he would withdraw to salvage what he could from his army.  The situation looks like a British victory but what will the Butcher's Bill and Victory Points Totals show?

Butcher's Bill:
Butcher's Bill
The British lost only two regiments to the American's seven regiments.  Game 3 resulted in a much more uneven loss than either Games 1 or 2.  Still a very bloody battle.  What about Victory Point tally?

For Victory Points, the count was British 27 to American 12.  A convincing tactical British victory.  Congratulations to Matt for the win!  Matt's Redcoats had five units that were one hit away from elimination so dispersing a few of these badly damaged units would have skewed the result towards a more even result.  I thought Phil put up a very measured and prudent defense but fate did not smile down upon the Rebels this day.  On balance, my recollection is that the British Army passed more Morale Tests than its foe.  Of course, British morale quality rating was generally higher than the Rebels as one expects.  This could have made a difference in the outcome.  A deciding difference?  We may never know.

As in the other two games, Game 3 was fought to a conclusion in about three hours.  Time passed quickly and (I thought) play was smooth and without confusion.  

Another fast-paced, enjoyable action that was engaging for me as umpire and figure-pusher.  Both Matt and Phil acclimated to a new set of rules and play effortlessly.  They made my task easy.  Perhaps, we can visit some more AWI battlefields using these rules?  I hope so.  This was great fun.

Thanks guys!

Having wrapped up all three games, a retrospective might be interesting.  What did I learn from the scenario, rules, and play while playing the scenario three times with three different groups of players?  Are the Americans destined to lose this scenario (hint: I don't think so!)?  Are there facets of play that could be improved?  What did I think worked well?  What could be improved to enhance the player experience?  While these topics may be of interest only to me, it provides some motivation for reflection.  I would enjoy hearing from the players on these topics too.

39 comments:

  1. Great looking game and a well taken victory to the British. After their success in the last game it seems the Rebellious gunners got their comeuppance.

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    1. Thank you, Paul! Yes, the British took revenge on the gunners in this contest.

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  2. Well another British victory, but almost another bloody one with so many units close to breaking. Well played once again by all involved and I'm sure the hex approach make it easier for the remote players.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts on the game, plus what the players thought could be improved, if anything at all. One thing I did wonder is did the players of the 2nd and 3rd games learn anything from reading the AARs of the previous games? Did they for example influence their tactics or approach to the game?

    In out post game chats when FtF gaming was possible, we always talked about what went well, what didn't where the game turned etc, which was as much fun as the game itself. Especially true of historical actions where we'd read about the battles before hand.

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    1. Yes the hex worked really well at this scale of battle. See below for some minor thoughts on improvements. As to learning we had no knowledge to the previous games so that wasn’t an influence although Jon hit me at the start that the British had already won two putting extra pressure on me 😢 luckily my grenadiers were up for it

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    2. The hexes make translating player commands through my ears to brain to hand. It works well to speed up the game if nothing else.

      As Matt notes, all of the battles were fought before I produced any of the battle reports. I wanted to minimize player adaptation form previous games. I wanted everyone going with much the same information set.

      Matt already weighed in with some thoughts. I will add to them after I have had sufficient pondering time. Perhaps, I will even get another game or two in before I put these thoughts down?

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    3. Matt, your guards performed very well! One British player from Game 1 stated that had he known he would be so successful with the Guard, he would have used them more aggressively.

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  3. Fantastic looking game Jonathan & com.!

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  4. Thanks Jon a splendid write up of the action. Lots to discuss and think about. The rules work well from my point of view and gave a reasonable representation of the combat. One would have expected the British to drive the rebels away historically as this is nor a fully entrenched position and the American morale would have been lower. I like the simplicity of the rules and agree with comments above that for this scale game the hex makes remote gaming easier. I am already planning something 👍 I did have the tech problem at the start no idea why but I think I might have stopped between cameras more often if I had been able to access it, I suspect this was my end rather than yours. We discussed the compass point on the set to help everybody orientate as left and right doesn’t work when you are all looking form a different position. A couple of suggestions on the wound markers etc the first fire markers you used couldn’t really be differentiated, didn’t make a big difference but from the camera the white of the unit name, the wound and the first fire all blended into one. One option might be for the wound markers to swop to a colour code system, with 3 effective wound each unit a 1” round marker painted bright Orange on one side for 1 wound and bright red on the other for 2 ? Worth trying these through the camera. Ideally this would have a white boundary as well ? These are very minor points to what in my view worked well as a remote game 😀

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    1. Thanks, Matt, for weighing in on a retrospective. You offer up some useful comments and suggestions.

      As for first Fire markers, the small, white cotton balls may be difficult to see from the camera especially when viewed from the skycams. I need to use something with better visibility. I considered adding a checkbox on the OB that could be checked upon First Fire but figured an on-table visual might be a better option. I went with the on-table visual but I need a better visual!

      Putting a direction arrow on the table was an excellent idea. One I will put into practice for the next game.

      For Strength Markers, I used white counters with black lettering in Games 1 and 2. They seemed to be visible from the skycams but I tried to improve upon this method in your game (Game 3). In Game 3, I used counters again but swapped to a color code system. This time, the '2' marker is black on a yellow background and the '1' is white on a yellow background. I thought this solution worked well at least from my vantage point and in my handheld photos. Did you have trouble seeing these colored markers from the skycams? If so, I will consider another method to track SPs.

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  5. Yay - another British victory - well done Matt! I agree with you that given the situation, you would expect the Brits to win....as I said in one of the previous post match discussions, they often won the pitched battles in the AWI, the problem was, as in this game, the victories were costly and the British forces in N America were pretty limited, so heavy casualties were a big problem. So it seems the rules represent the period pretty well, as all three games provided a result that one might anticipate.....although perhaps Jon does not fully agree?!

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    1. Keith, thanks for your comments. The rules seemed to work well for this type of game. For multi-player games in general and remote games in particular, clear rules without a lot of complication are the way forward, I think.

      These battle result are historically plausible and perhaps even the most likely outcome but the Rebels are not without options. In none of these three battles did the American player try a hit and run strategy. I suspect that inflicting some damage upon the British attackers early and then conducting a fighting withdrawal off map may just score enough points to eke out a victory. That is just theory, for now, though...

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    2. I think the answer is a fourth game, with you playing the Americans Jon.....we can test your theory!

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    3. Interested in commanding the opposition?

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  6. Splendid gaming once again, Jonathan! The photos really capture the ebb and flow on the battlefield.

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    1. Thank you, Dean! I am pleased the storytelling and photos illustrate the nature of the game. It was great fun.

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  7. Another superb battle report. Been a great series of battles

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  8. One more interesting game, Jonathan. My congrats! If you think that rebels defeat in this scenario isn’t predefined how would you act?

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    1. Thank you, Dmitry! To put my hypothesis into practice, I need a willing opponent.

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  9. Great round up of the unfolding a most enjoyable action. Concur with Matt on the compass point, I actually printed off a map with the compass points marked on and forgot all about it until after the game. I thought that the un-obvious markers added to the fog of war actually.
    Has for the battle on reflection I should have pulled back the militia units sooner and replaced them with uncommitted Continental units. Not sure it would have altered the final outcome but would certainly have reduced the margin of loss.

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    1. Good to see that I remembered the general flow of battle, Phil. I had the compass rose on the printed game map but did not plop one down onto the table. Next time, I will do that. That is a good suggestion by both your and Matt. Did you have difficulty seeing the SP markers too?

      There is an easy way to test your reflective thoughts. Do you want a rematch of this battle with Matt?

      Thanks again for playing. I really enjoyed the game and found the play very interesting. You are a good commander. When I saw your Rebels arriving onto the table and calmly deploying for battle straight-away and in depth, I thought, "that's the way to do it!"

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    2. I don't think I would like a rematch of the battle. I think with our own experience of the fight and now having intelligence of the other two fights it would detract from the challenge presented by the scenario. But I am certainly up for another game if you are willing to host one.

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    3. I understand. Willing to host, for sure. I need to research and develop another scenario that can offer a challenge to both players.

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  10. An interesting series of games.

    I've played the same scenario with different rules before for a comparison but never intentionally with different players except when playing a test of a game to be played at a convention, or very rarely, running the same game twice within a convention to save on the amount of figures and terrain to be carted there.

    A good series!

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    1. Pleased to see that these exercises piqued your interest, Ross!

      Being somewhat of an experimental and enjoying simulation, I am a bit of a repeated trials person, myself. I enjoy fighting the same scenario multiple times. Not for everyone, though. I agree that fighting the same scenario under different rules provides insight and depth into both scenario and rules.

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  11. I take Steve’s point that several British units were close to collapse.

    Accepting that a few might have actually collapsed and then that some British morale rolls might have fallen less favourably, it becomes easy to see how a closer result was tantalisingly attainable.

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    1. Oh so, tantalizingly close...One reason I think the Rebels have a fair shot at victory.

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  12. A very enjoyable series of games Jonathan.

    The results are interesting and it would have been close had the other British units collapsed as well, but would it have been enough?

    Cheers, Ross

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    1. Thank you! Even if all five of the British 1SP regiments had dispersed, the totals would still not be enough to see an American victory. It would have been much closer, though. To win, the Americans need to retire badly damaged regiments and get them off board for victory points.

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  13. That did seem like it was going to be a more convincing victory to the British than the other battles. Overrunning the American guns looks like it may have made a difference in this game.

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    1. It was a more lopsided result than the previous two battles. Overrunning the guns was the last straw for the Rebels.

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  14. Another great battle. Similar but different perhaps. Similar British units on the verge of collapse, unlucky Americans in defense, an expensive butcher's bill ...and probably the British attack axes that I would have loved to pull off in our game, but it somehow vanished on me. A great set piece there.

    The strength of the rules simply that the players can focus on the battle. Great stuff.

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    1. Yes, similar but different and another great game to watch unfold. All players participating in these games tended to focus on strategy and tactics without having the worry of the rules or computations. removing this overhead improved play, I think.

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  15. That's a very nice historical looking British victory. Thank you for your fine report.

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  16. Marvellous and quite different again. Perhaps informed by games one and two the players both seemed more 'circumspect', even with a tactical withdrawal by the Continentals, but it ended up being a more decisive loss/victory than the others, if I am reading and understanding correctly?!
    Marvellous again Jonathan.
    Regards, James

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    1. Thank you very much, James! I did not publish any of first three battle reports until the first three games were in the books. Players in later games were not aware of what happened in earlier battles. As you see, Game 3 was a very decisive British victory but the British were still badly beaten up in victory. This was another fine battle to watch develop.

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