South American war of liberation - Chile 1817 - Sharp Practice

[seldon]

So we've been trying Sharp Prctice 2 and we really like it.

This is report is based on an action in Chile around 1817 where Argentine patriots are facing Royalist defending a ruined mission not far from Santiago.

My armies are based two 18mm guys on a base with 20mm frontage so I can treat each base as if it was a figure in SP2. So an 8 man group in SP in my armies is an 8 base group or 16 figures.

For organizational purposes I treat each group as a company of infantry or a squadron of cavalry.

With that in mind you will see that in this battle the forces were:

Royalist defenders..

Basically the Don Carlos battalion with some uspport:
3 companies of fusiliers
1 light company deployed in skirmish order
1 company of grenadiers

supported by a squadron of Carabineros de Abascal ( light cav ) and a 4pdr light gun.

The Patriot attackers had about half a battalion of infantry supported by light infantry formed in close order and some support
2 companies of fusiliers
1 light company deployed in skirmish
2 formed companies of Cazadores de los Andes

all this supported by a 6pdr medium gun and a squadron of elite impact cavalry, horse grenadiers


Looking at the initial moves you can see how the patriots tried a two pronged attack around the woods while the royalists concentrated on defending their right flank while holding the left



The patriot plan was to support their attack by doing a flanking action with their elite cavarly and positioning their gun on a commanding position on a hill. Here the Cazadores de los Andes initiatie firefights with the royalist fusileros.



In the meantime the royalists had a plan of their own. They wanted to pour fire on the advancing patriot line to soften them up for a charge by the light cavalry. The problem is that now the patriots had an enfilade fire position for their artillery that would prove critical.



Here you can see from the other side... Royalist and Patriot cavalry attempting their flanking action... But you can see that the patriot cavalry on the top left are getting too close to deployed infantry in the fields



As a result they received critical volleys from that would quickly result in mounting amounts of shock, and that prevented the successof the flanking action.



On the other side the royalist cavalry charged the infantry at the canter. The infantry had suffered greatly from musket and artillery fire and they were in no condition to resist the cavalry attack.. the formation was broken... However the patriots had a silver lining, the royalist cavalry leader was wounded in the action !!  This meant that the royalist cav would loose their momentum and fail to finish of their brilliant initial action..







At this point things started to turn for the royalists...  The royalist had taken their chance but failed to fully break through and now the hammer was about to strike on their left flank. The companies of cazadores de los andes supported by the 6pdr were starting to overwhelm the defenders.



On a last desperate action the Royalist Commander took control of the Granaderos and charged the patriot infantry progressing through the field. Although he manged to break them it was too little too late and when the shock on the other fusilier companies made them break the game was over 4-0 for the patriots ( a game that had been 10-5 for the royalists after their initial success !!! )...

Excellent game, fun set of rules. I've been looking for a set of rules that I can use to represent actions at a scale where your maneuver element is the company of infantry or squadron of cav ( rather than battalion and regiment ) and SP2 is proving to be a winner.

cheers
Francisco

[Shipka]

A great report, great to see other theatres and periods getting covered

[jambo1]

Great theatre to wargame and looked a cracking game too!!