Monongahela, the TSA French Indian War big battle

The past saturday TSA organised it's first of the bigger daylong battle events of 2018, and the war of choice was the French Indian War (or Seven Years War).

The battle that would be recreated was Monongahela, a disasterous expedition for the British forces in the Thirteen Colonies...

Historical

The British where en route to a french fort in a heavily forrested area.  In order to bring up their baggage train, including their cannons, they had to hack themselves a road through the woods.  However, about halfway to their destination, the British force was ambushed by Native Americans and annihilated, making it an immense defeat for the forces of the crown.

Set up

The table recreated the feel of woods, by limiting the movement of the troops in wooded areas.  The whole british force started on one side of the stream, that could only be crossed by a single bridge.  On the other side of this bridge, a small outpost manned by French marines guarded the crossing.

Along the length of the table, various markers (represented by canoes and wounded counters) contained french troops in the form of native american troops and coureur de bois, all pretty elite forces.

The british had mostly line infantry regiments, but also a few native american allies, provincial forces, a small squad of rangers, and a regiment of grenadiers.

The rules we would use where the Ganeesha Games "Song of... tomahawks".

The Battle

And so the forces faced each other, 6 british officers facing off against 5 french ones.  We knew that actually reaching the fort on the day itself was sheer impossible, as that would mean 19 turns of 3 action movement, without any delays.  However, if we could defeat over half the french forces, a minor victory would be scored, so that was our aim.

My own regiment, 24 strong, was bringing up the rear of the army to mop up any stragglers and guard against encirclement moves.  Lord Basil von Blaffington the Second as such patiently waited at the head of his regiment until all the other troops crossed the bridge.

Which, due to French delaying actions, took a very long time (5 actual hours that resulted in moving a full 18 inch) as not only did the french marines hold out wonderfully, their native allies fought a delaying action to prevent the british to bring their numbers to bear.

This worked well, but eventually, as unit after unit got off the bridge, the defenders where overwhelmed and the fort fell to the rangers, mohicans and line troops.  Now the british could bring up their forces... and create a new bottle up on the flank as the front regiment managed to get no actions at all 4 turns in a row.

In the meantime, Coureurs and more natives arrived to try and delay the british more, fighting out firing duels with the front regiments.

My own regiment then decided to no longer hold their place in the bottled up line, moving over to the flank of the Grenadiers and highlanders instead.  While they arrived just to late to actually participate in the action, they did manage to get into a fighting position by the time the game ended.

The british now kept pressuring both the center of the french line by their overwhelming numbers, and the grenadiers kept pushing away the native forces on our right flank, opening the line towards the fort... though that was still a loooooong march away as we where at about 1/3rd of the distance by then, but the french had revealed all their reinforcements and ambushes... and lost quite a few.

The british now formed a solid frontline from left to right over the table, and had suffered minor losses.  Opposing them where shattered and decimated french units, as they had lost over half their fighting strenght already, and the units that where underway would be arriving piecemeal, ready to be blasted to pieces.

It was decided then to call it a day, and the british claimed the minor victory on number of casualties.

Conclusion

Although my own role was very, very limited and I didn`t fire a shot, this was a great event as a lot of laughs where had.  The rules might need some tweaking to accomodate for the large numbers of players and figures in what is essantially a skirmish ruleset, but all in all it went rather smoothly.

Thanks Patrick and Eddy for putting this together!

But also...

With the event, the club was also open for the members to do other stuff, and some took this opportunity.

Two other games where played, in the form of a Team Yankee game, and an AWI game with papercraft models and scenery.

The "fantasy division" used the time to start airbrushing a large amount of the terrain for the 40k big battle in may, as Noshi was assembling even more buildings for that event.

And of course, the inner person was strengthened as well...

Well, that`s it for the first of the big battles of the year.  The next one is in march, with the large annual two-day Naval game (if you want to join in, go to the TSA facebook page on how to register, there are still spots available) of which I`ll be reporting as well when the time comes.