Battle of Brownville

Thursday night game resumed in earnest this evening with a little break from the routine of WW2 and fictional not-so-cold war battles. I busted out my Seven Years War toys and got John to bring his over and we did battle! Gary also showed up and took command of the right wing of John’s forces.

It was a motley collection of units I had two British, four French, and one militia. John had a mix of Swedes and Danes.

We used Bob Barnetson’s Two for Tea rules – a Warmaster-ish variant for the American War of Independence.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

On my right, in the foreground, I had three battalions of French under the command of Le Marquis (who is just out of the picture off to the left and rightly so – he was shamefully mounted on an UNFINISHED BASE!! The HORROR!!). Beyond the 1st French Brigade are the militia and another French Battalion – both attached to the British Brigade on my right – the British battalions are hiding behind Brownville.


There’s the entire British Brigade commanded by General Wolfe.


Swedes and maybe Swiss(?) under General Bertolini (why the Swedes and Swiss were commanded by an Italian I’ll never know…).


Here is Gary’s Brigade…. or at least what I THOUGHT was Garry’s brigade. It made sense to me – they’re all in red and on the same side of the river… Well apparently the unit on the right of the picture was Swiss and therefore part of John’s Brigade…? Gary’s three units – on the left of the picture – were all Danes. I think…


By about turn three The Marquis had driven his three brigades straight out to the middle of the table to secure the crossroads – one of the victory locations. John had gotten his brigade – or at least the portion that started on the north side of the river – moving and a regiment of Swedes had made it across, though they weren’t able to deploy before French musketry started ripping into them from the flank! HUZZAH!


General Wolfe got the British moving once around turn two or three then stopped to think about what he was doing for a few turns… Apparently he thought he was a general as he kept rolling nines (unfortunately his Command Value was only an eight… dooooh!)


John finally got the Swedish Grenadiers turned about and even got a few shots off. A second battalion (of Swiss?) made it across the river they even got to deploy before john rolled his command blunder which had the both of them retire back to the woods out of range – strangely it was the last die roll that made any of his troops move for many turns…!


Gary finally decided to join the game around turn six or seven. He had just been formulating a clever plan and issuing intricate orders which he insisted all ranks study carefully – because when they did move…. WHOOSH – they were around my flank and threatening the stalled British still in column at the edge of Brownville.


General Wolfe was apparently doing the same thing – formulating an intricate and cunning plan. The British finally did deploy just in time to exchange a FIERCE series of volleys with Gary’s Danes. When the smoke cleared the French and British battalions were both gone and the Danes had each lost one stand. Things looked grim on my right! Wolfe had gotten the second battalion of British deployed out of range and had started moving the French under his command through Brownville to come out the other side and hopefully threaten the Danes flank. Could he pull it off?!


Well he did! The French came around the Danes flank forcing them to fall back. Meanwhile Gary has gotten his other battalion moving around to try and threaten the remaining French under Le Marquis…


The French and British battalions met and gave the Danes a sound thrashing! When the dust had settled after this second fierce exchange the two Danish battalions were gone and the British had lost only one stand! One of the French battalions under Le Marquis had wheeled back slightly to meet the third battalion of Danes. I had recovered from the near disaster on my right – but thing were still up in the air – if John could only get his units moving…


Well he didn’t really… The last of the Danes and a battalion of French exchanged a number of deadly volleys, which wiped out the last of the Danes and knocked out a stand of French. Even the militia got moving.

John decided to play out one last turn and finally got that last unit of Swiss that had been sitting at the table edge all game moving… but failed to move any others so he conceded defeat.

Good fun was had by all! I’m getting even more excited about working on a SYW project this year. We will have to tweak the rules a bit for continental battles – come up with rules for assorted cavalry types, mostly. Maybe some minor tweaking due to the scale of the figures we are using, too.…

The figures we used were 25mm. Most were modeled and cast by John Bertolini. The only exceptions being a few Rafm French mixed in with a couple of my French units and the Old Glory Militia which refused to participate in this action.

Both sides had just two commanders, all with Command Values of eight. We probably could have done with a General on each side with a Command Value of nine, but we just didn’t have the figures… next time we play I’ll have the rest of my Mounted Colonels pack painted up! (and Le Marquis’ base finished!?)