247th anniversary Battle of Brooklyn prep & AAR - updated Sept. 6

[Mad Guru]

Baron,

Many thanks for posting that link!  I wish it included more detailed Army Lists but still awesome to read!

Fifteens,

As usual you sound very busy indeed, and as usual in that same diminutive scale!  I've been known to play and enjoy most any/all games of any/all periods (as long as they're no smaller than 25mm and preferably 28mm!) but it's true I don't usually go this nuts on stuff that isn't c.19th Anglo-Afghan War related -- or 14th-15th Century Medievals in the prior epoch before I built my Maiwand terrain boards for the 130th anniversary of that battle, back in 2010.  But since I grew up on the battlefield for this one, it's always been on my to-do list.  I only contributed the water features and marshland for this version.  Some day, maybe I'll really go nuts and build an entirely new set of temperate green boards with an epoxy resin East River, Gowanus Bay, The Narrows, & the edge of the coast from The Narrows/present-day Fort Hamilton to Gravesend, to refight the Battle of Brooklyn on... but until then, this version was pretty dang awesome -- even for a terrain snob like me -- and that's not even touching on the great game we played, the results of which were somewhat in doubt until the very last turn.  Speaking of which...

It took a while but here's a link to the whole tricorne hat of an AAR, so to speak:

https://maiwandday.blogspot.com/2023/09/1776-battle-of-brooklyn-aar-direct-to.html

It did not turn out exactly like the original battle in 1776... nor as Baron von Wreckedoften's version did in 2008.  I just spent way too many hours on the blog post, which no thanks to Blogger was a rather frustrating experience.  It worked out in the end but I really have to go to bed right now, so I shall leave the details on my blog, which if anyone is interested I invite you to click on the link above and come visit, and thanks in advance if you do!

[CapnJim]

Well that was quite the fight!  Huzzah to the Americans!  And, wow...Grant's Brigade really took it in the shorts, didn't they?   

[FifteensAway]

Took some time to go through the blog reports - but, unless I missed it, I didn't find what the final conclusion was (other than the casualty recap).  Or is there another report pending?  Was kind of hard to read with all those "[" inserted into the text - probably from converting the PDF to blog text.  I get the frustration - takes a lot of time, effort, and PATIENCE to put together such a post.  I did take a look at the PDF version which, though took a long time to populate, was much clearer with the text without the ']' all over the place.

Very nice table and the maps gave me a better perspective on the layout than I've had previously. 

Like the use of the 'underscale' ships - someone stole a page out of my pirate book with some mantle piece ships methinks! 

One small bit in the photos I found pretty cool was the mini-coffin as the container for the casualty caps, just fun.

Not sure if I should encourage you to do the battle to the same degree as you did Maiwand but I'd love to see it if you do.  Kind of depends on your household situation and if the other members of the house would tolerate either a second board or a replacement board. 

[Mad Guru]

Thanks for the compliment, Fifteens!  Not sure if all those brackets “[]” you refer to were the occasional standard parenthesis “()” used for some die roll results & explanatory rule notes, or if it’s maybe an issue with the computer or phone or tablet you were reading it on.  TBH I don’t think there are that many parentheticals and certainly no more than are included in the PDF -- but of course that’s a matter of individual subjective judgement, & there are certainly enough for a person who doesn’t like parentheticals to find their presence annoying, which if that's the case for you, my apologies!

Re: the final result, I think it’s stated pretty clearly on TURN 15: "British C-in-C concedes," (but without the glow!) though it's true I didn’t elaborate on it much, as seen in this screenshot of that section, which comes just before the "Casualty Recap":



Yes, re: me possibly building a full set of temperate "green" terrain boards equal in quality to my arid Afghan ones and tailored for a 250th Anniversary refight of the Battle of Brooklyn just under 3 years from now... storage is the number one thing weighing against it.

If I can somehow clean out AKA: throw out (Aiyeee!!!) enough stuff to make room for them, it might be possible, but that will be a tall order for a sentimental packrat like me.

A slightly easier alternative would be to make the boards truly "bespoke" for the battle, rather than interchangeable and reusable for myriad scenarios.  More like Duke Siegfried's old mega game terrain boards, that always went together the same way to refight the same "big battle" just at different convention venues.

Hahah -- at this point the only other full-time member of the household is my wife... so adding another set of full-blown boards covering 12' x 6' -- or for the 1776 battle of Brooklyn/Long Island maybe covering 7' or 7.5' (the size of the table we played this version on) will be... an interesting process.  In this case "interesting" is my own subtle code for "potentially problematic"!

[Mad Guru]

@CapnJim: Thanks for the kinds words!  Indeed Grant's brigade did suffer a lot, but overall the Americans took heavier casualties with their significantly smaller army… in the process of earning their hard-fought victory. (Had to add that last bit since I was one of the 2 American players!)

A friend of mine who played the Hessian commander in the game & who is a great photographer with very good camera just posted the photos he took.  I think they're worth checking out even if you've seen the full AAR, as his pics are in a different league quality wise from my own humble iPhone efforts.  If interested, here's a LINK...

https://rigdon.myportfolio.com/battle-of-brooklyn

...and a handful of his pics to give you a sense of the highly-saturated tableaus which await you there:

[Freddy]

Impressive photos, this surely was a great battle!

[FifteensAway]

Oi!  Completely missed that turn 15 comment!  Very much my bad.  All hail the mighty Rebels! 

I was gently alluding to the "interesting" element with the potential wife situation - which I can relate to!  If I tried to keep something set up in our living room for too long - oh, would there be some issues!   . And forget the family room, that is where she watches television.

Your friends additional photos - and lots of them! - look good.

An iPhone can, supposedly, take great photos but I have yet to master doing so.  I did notice the nicer camera in one of your photos on a back table.

[Stryder]

MadGuru, Great job on the detail and terrain. I have an interest in AWI as well and hope to some day build my collection of 28mm up for games here in Sunny Arizona. Keep up the good work!

[Mad Guru]

Thanks for the very kind words, Freddy!

Happy you also enjoyed my friend Matthew’s pics, Fifteens!

Javier, your comment made me smile!  Thanks for the compliments!  Was hoping to see you next month here in California at Mini-Wars but heard from Harmon that you won't be there.  That's a bummer as I was looking forward to getting a chance to talk with you for 5 minutes while neither of us was running an event!  Maybe at the next Sand Wars in your neck of the South-Western woods, if you have any break-time built into your schedule.  Meanwhile I wish you all the best in growing your AWI collection, be it by big brigades or crunchy little skirmish units!

[giorgio]

Mad Guru, great battle! Amazing scenario! Your skillful talented genius spread from Afghanistan to one century before! We continue to fight in pashtun territories, as implacable and relentless enemies, but I have to grant you my best congrats for this outstanding work!

[JBaumal]

Great AAR! Another beautiful table and fun looking game. What a perfect report and blog posts to read yesterday on our American Independence Day.

[MaleGriffin]

Great looking game and fantastic AAR!