So my second Friday back at the club, now with added face masks, saw a 28mm AWI game with a scenario cobbled together from a few sources.
The american forces had located a Hessian encampment and decided to attack with the element of surprise afforded by foggy conditions with the aim to do as much damage as possible before reinforcements from a nearby British encampment could be brought to bear.
My Hessian jaeger picket at the crossroads would roll to detect the enemy and fire off a warning shot to alert the camp, failing that a shot would be fired as they were overrun.
My artillery would not be visible to the Americans until they got closer.
My picket seemed to be suffering from an excess of sauerkraut and the rebels got in two turns of movement before they were spotted and a warning shot was fired to alert the camp.
My line battalions roused from their tents and hastily fell in towards the edge of the camp nearest the village. The jaeger, being of higher quality, started to form a skirmish screen to the right of the camp. Unseen by the Americans my artillery started to manhandle their guns into position.
Taking advantage of their surprise appearance the colonials advanced to the edge of the camp, deploying their artillery at the crossroads, and started to poor fire into the reforming Hessian units, the centre unit of fusiliers suffering particularly from these guns.
My jaegers' soon started to take a toll on the approaching opposing rifles as did my artillery when in opened up on this flank.
My line battalions soon began trading musketry with the enemy and it was at this point that the British reinforcements began to arrive to my rear.
With the Americans getting the better of the firefight and the British continuing to arrive the Hessian line battalions decided enough was enough and so marched off, bayonets glistening in the weak early morning sunshine, towards the enemy to their front, trampling tents before them as they went.
However at this point I goofed. Overestimating the distances I only charged in one battalion, believing in error that the other was out of range, a fatal mistake as it turned out.
A large battalion of trained Hessian regulars should have beaten militia and colonials but poor dice rolls from me as opposed to the exceedingly good rolls from my opponent saw my battalion falling back in rout. As my other battalion was not in melee, due to my distance estimating error, they had to take a morale test for a friendly unit routing, and yes, promptly failed it too. The jaegers seeing this also rolled and got a retreat result, so not as bad.
With the Hessians either in rout or retreat and the British beginning to form up in strength, the Americans decided their work was done and prepared to withdraw. As time was also getting on the game was called at this point as a win for the upstart colonials.
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