Charlie Wesencraft-memorial,

A fitting memorial for Charlie will be held at his old place of residence,on 28th June at 3.00 pm,the address is Linskill Park,Linskill terrace,North Shields,NE30 2BF-I hope to see a good turnout,to say farewell to this Wargames Legend .

AWI Battle Report

Entertaining evening in Steve Shann’s basement using his own rules which are progressing nicely.

We each have three “brigades”. I’m defending with the Americans. I have:

1st brigade: a good quality, large light infantry battalion with 2 standard battalions and some riflemen

2nd brigade: a good quality Continental battalion backed up by 2 standard battalions and a light gun

3rd brigade: 2 groups of quality Morgan’s Rifles

The 1st and 3rd brigade are on table, right and left flank respectively, with the 2nd just arriving. As American forces go, this is a darn good army!

Steve is attacking with his 3 brigades:

1st brigade: 2 standard Loyalist battalions with some British “Light Bobs”, who are the best quality, and some militia skirmishers, who are the worst quality!

2nd brigade: a very large battalion of British regulars who are good quality and a highest quality battalion of Scots

3rd brigade: Hessians! 2 standard quality musketeer battalions, a good quality grenadier battalion, some good jägers and a field gun

The Hessians are almost finished deploying on the British left whilst the Loyalists start just crossing the ford and the British regulars are behind them down the road.

The first photo above shows the majority of the table. You can see the head of the British column crossing the ford and the head of my 2nd brigade column bottom centre. Just at the left are half of the Morgan’s Rifles with the rest off screen to the left skulking in the woods, and off screen top right are the Hessians.

The aerial shots are a bit of an experiment. I needed to get higher really, but short-arsed and all that…

End of first turn. I’ve hopefully surprised Steve by advancing with my 1st brigade, taking the fight to the Hessians. My 2nd brigade and Steve’s 3rd have advanced to meet one another. Out of shot to the left his Light Bobs and militia are exchanging pleasantries with Morgan's Rifles.

Morgan’s Rifles are causing great consternation! The Loyalist militia skirmishers have been forced to retire (yes, yes, I’m sure it is good to be retired). The green coated Loyalist Rangers are quickly reduced in numbers due to enemy rifle fire!

Note though that the very large battalion of British regulars has already lined out alongside the Rangers.

 The Scots are making slow progress!

There’s a fair smattering of musketry between the Hessians and my 1st brigade.

The Light Bobs have lost a base from rifle fire (and the Loyalist militia skirmishers fled without having fired a shot). Steve looks to bring matters to a swift conclusion and charges the group of rebel riflemen causing them grief. The Loyalist battalion is breathing down everyone’s necks, but not involved in the melee.

The Light Bobs lose! It does leave the victorious American riflemen in an uncomfortable position…

End of turn 2. All of the British brigades have advanced and most of the units are fighting. The American 2nd brigade continues to advance and take up positions. I’m perhaps a little ambitious expecting this brigade to face two thirds of the enemy AND make sure the light battalion’s flank isn’t so exposed!

I put the 2nd brigade in harm’s way! I’ve pushed the best battalion forward…

It’s going quite well against the Hessians, but they’ve deployed their pesky field gun. Steve doesn’t have the best dice with it fortunately.

Although Morgan’s Rifles performed magnificently, this group weren't above failing to reload their rifles four times…!

The British regulars bayonet charge my Continental battalion, destroying them!

My light piece has some great dice shooting up the Scottish battalion slowly wending its merry way across the battlefield. I’ve sent the 1st brigade skirmishers to also intercept the Scots!

I’m sort of in position with the 2nd brigade. I’ve retired one group of Morgan’s Rifles and the second group is about to be forced to evade some charging Loyalists!

So the bird’s eye view at the end of turn 3. The British 2nd brigade is in danger of winning this battle! The large battalion has charged and destroyed a full battalion. The top quality Scottish battalion is aimed right at the flank of my light infantry battalion!

I push forward another battalion from my 2nd battalion. And those rude British bayonet charge them to oblivion as well! They’re at least severely depleted now.

That leaves the surviving battalion of the 2nd brigade with a lot to do. That’s some of Morgan’s Rifles catching their breath after scarpering to their rear.

I’ve charged away the Hessian gunners before they could do much damage to my precious light infantry battalion. I’m getting the better of these foreign mercenaries!

The Hessian grenadiers try a bit of this charging malarkey. Not quite as successful. My lads have been forced to retire, but the grenadiers are almost spent as a fighting unit.

The aerial view of most of the table at the end of turn 4. This shows the major movements, mostly charges. There is this one column though…

The Scots weathered more good artillery fire dice from me, marched to the flank of my light infantry battalion… and failed to deploy into line to charge home! It would have genuinely been the winning move of the game!

We’d run out of time (we had allowed chat, biscuits and a brew to eat away our gaming time!), but curiosity got the better of us. It all hung in the balance. How would the brigade activation cards come out if we’d played another turn? The red cards are British brigades and the blue cards are American brigades.

Inconsequential that the Hessians would activate first. Then all three of my brigades would have activated! That might have allowed me to punish the Scottish battalion some more and my light infantry battalion would fire and charge at the Hessians to their front before them there Scots did whatever nastiness they might do.

Nothing is certain.

Though my 2nd brigade was badly damaged, Steve’s forces had equally suffered. Still anyone’s game and too close to call 😁

I do love gaming AWI. What a privilege to play with such nice minis and terrain. My FIW collection is my AAWI collection! Almost American War of Independence!

Steve’s rules give a really enjoyable game. The morale tests are nervous moments. There’s that elation when the dice are right and your troops manoeuvre expertly or fire, reload and fire again to devastating effect. And there are those moments when you can’t roll above a 2 and it all goes Pete Tong. Great stuff! 

Cheers for reading!

Chris

WWG in Exile 

Carronade Trophy 2025

Once again a big thank you to the Falkirk Wargames Club for choosing our game as best  show participation game.

Much appreciated