AWI Bemis Heights AAR

[Rogerc]

Had a great AWI game today using Black Powder with amendments, including fire then move and brigade morals. Worked really well and a great game. Full AAR here;

http://gapagnw.blogspot.co.uk/

[juergen c. olk]

Great job..love this campaign ,visited all the battle sites in 1998 ,you nailed it. Oddly Hubbardton was my favorite visit ..I was only guy there .

[Rogerc]

Cheers for that, it did play really well, the rating for the Grenadiers did make them a little too hard to shift but other than that it seemed not far off.

[armchairgeneral]

An impressive looking game 

I use BP for AWI though not had a game for a while. We used it unamended and it seemed to work okay.

I have heard other gamers complain about firing and moving. E.g. So if you get a good command role and can move twice. You should be able to allocate this to say one move and one volley. I guess that's one of your amendments?

[Rogerc]

Hi Armchair general.

That wasn't really how we amended this.

Our concern was that if you got a good role in the original rules you could march three moves up to your enemy from outside musket range, fire a volley at close range and potentially destroy a unit before it could fire back. This seemed completely in-realistic.

Moving firing to first rather than last takes this out of the equation. You might get to march three moves up to short range but you are going to get hit with a volley at short range before you are able to fire and then charge in. So the Militia at Cowpens will always get their w 2 shots (one with the closing fire) before beign over run or will have the chance to fire once and retire as happened historically. We have found this works really well.

The other amend is to Brigade morales. We wont always use this. For one night 2 hour games you need a quick result, for an all day game Brigades may need to be more robust. So once a Brigade exceeds 50% of its Battalions destroyed or shaken it takes a morale. It gets a -1 for each unit broken or shaken and then has a simple pass or break using the break tests table (anything but a break is a pass) if it passes it doesn't test again until another unit is broken or shaken, however it operates with a -1 to command rolls for each broken or shaken unit. Again this worked really well.

[armchairgeneral]

Hi Roger,

I like that idea about firing first.

Never seemed to have the problem of units leaping forward and firing at close range but I suppose it could happen. My understanding of the rules is you are supposed to say what your units do before you role? If you take a chance on them getting 3 moves and you don't get the role maybe the penalty should be they don't move at all?

[Rogerc]

I actually like that you give a specific order not knowing if it will turn out or not.

You have to be really specific so for instance you want to move a unit from column into line and then advance. If you only get one order then they change formation but don't move. If you do your order sequence other way around you move nearer the enemy but are still in column so may end up quite exposed. Makes you think a bit more.