It can't have escaped your notice that there have been some events in commemoration of the United States' Declaration of Independence from Britain 250 years ago. In the spirit of such self-evident truths as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (and now it seems, cheating at soccer), I thought it might be fun to mark the anniversary with some sort of gaming. I remembered what I think was the first board wargame I ever bought - Avalon Hill's 1776, and I am glad to say I still have my copy, which I'm almost certain will have been acquired by the teenage me in, of course, 1976.
Here is the suitably lightly scuffed box,
and the contents - a little yellowing of paper here and there, but not bad condition for 50 years old, large stretches of which were spent in various lofts.
The mapboard is rather splendid, measuring 16 by 44 inches, rather nicely depicting the wooded and mountainous terrain in a sort of 'relief map' style, at a scale of 1 hex = 18.6 miles.
The rulebook contains rules for three levels of game; a very simple Basic Game with a single, simple scenario; an Advanced Game (plus optional rules) which allows the playing of four larger campaign scenarios (such as the invasion of Canada, or the Saratoga campaign); and the Campaign Simulation Game which 'provides the framework for re-creating the entire Revolutionary War starting in January, 1776' - I suspect this latter would involve a fairly large commitment of time to play to completion.
Fortunately the Basic Game is very basic indeed, covering only the Northern half of the map and depicting the situation in mid 1776 during the British build-up. Units are restricted to British Regulars and Continental Army, they have only Combat Strength Points ( 1 CSP = approx 500 men ) and movement allowances. CSPs are interchangeable ( so a 10 CSP unit can be split into 2 x 5CSP, etc ) and combat is decided between opposing units occupying the same hex, by calculating the attacker:defender CSP ratio and rolling a single D6 against a simple Combat Results Table - just like many contemporary SPI games I can remember. The Brits win by occupying enough of the main cities (each has a 'Control Points' value) with no Continentals disputing them, and the Americans win by preventing the British from doing so, after seven (monthly) turns from June to December 1776. There are only about 4 pages of rules and the turn sequence is Player 1 move then combat, Player 2 move then combat, simple as that! So let's give it a go..
Here's the initial setup :
Fairly obviously, red counters are British units, and blue are American. Something of a 'central position' for the Americans, with a fairly large force of 17 SP at Morristown, New Jersey, and an overall total of 32 SP. The British have a total of 36 SP, with 20SP of those in New York and 10 SP at St. Johns. It looks fairly even, but there are large British reinforcements coming..
Turn One represents June 1776 and the Brits go first - they advance with 18 SP from New York towards West Point ( which is occupied by 6 SP of Continentals), being careful not to allow the Morristown force to get behind them and attack New York. Meanwhile in the North, 11 SP of British advance from Canada along the shores of Lake Champlain, heading for Fort Ticonderoga ( held by just 3 SP of Americans ).
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| Turn 1 : British New York army threatens West Point |
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| ..while a large force from Canada descends on Ticonderoga |
The Yankee response is to split the large Morristown force, sending 7 SP to reinforce Philadelphia ( which is worth a substantial 15 victory points ) and 10 SP to strengthen their force at West Point to a total of 16 SP. (this split may have been a mistake.). No fighting yet, but the Americans could not reinforce Ticonderoga, which looks vulnerable. .
On Turn Two ( July 1776), the British get a substantial reinforcement of 19 SP landed at New York - pretty much doubling their strength in that area! The British forces coming down from Canada attack Ticonderoga with with 12 to 3, so 4:1 odds, rolling only a '2' but that gets a '1/2DE' result - half (rounded up) of the defender's units are lost, so 2 out of 3 US SPs are lost. One solitary SP of Americans face 12 times their numbers.. Meanwhile in New York, the British reinforcements go straight into action, allowing a total of 30 SP of Redcoats to attack the 10 SP of Americans at West Point. 3:1 odds, and rolled a six! That is a 'DE' result, and all 10 SPs of Yankees flee the field. That is a major blow for the Continental army - more than a third of their total forces lost in one move!
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| Turn 2: Scary Redcoats at West Point threaten Morristown.. |
In their turn, the USA raises 6 SP at Albany, to add to the 1 SP already there and these are supplemented by the survivors (1 SP) from Ticonderoga beating a hasty retreat. After the disaster at West Point, the Americans at Morristown (8SP) retreat to Philadelphia, making a fairly formidable 15 SP available there. But they are still quite badly outnumbered by 40+ SP of Redcoats around New York.
Turn Three - August 1776 - piles the pressure on, as the British get another 21 SPs of Redcoats which can land at any port. They choose New Bedford, Massachussetts and immediately march no less than 19 SP to attack the small American force (2 SP) at Boston, an important objective. With more odds of 5:1 or more, they roll a '3' which only gives '1/2 DE', so not a total wipeout but leaves 1 SP of plucky Continentals facing 19 times their number of redcoats! The British are also able to send 2 SP to secure Newport, Rhode Island (worth some victory points ).
Having large forces at both West Point and Ticonderoga, the British now turn to deal with Albany. From Ticonderoga, 10 SP advance but can't quite reach Albany owing to a couple of river crossings slowing them down; but 24 SP from West Point can easily get their, and attack the American 8 SP at 3:1 odds - the dice are with the British, a '5' gives 'DE' and the entire American force is scattered! This is another disaster for the Yankees, they have only 17 SP remaining ( 15 at Philadelphia and a puny 1 each at Ft. Stanwix and Boston ) against the British with well over 60 SP. In their turn, they recruit 4 SP around Albany, who promptly retire up the Mohawk valley to Stanwix.
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| Turn 3 (August 1776) : Redcoats everywhere! |
Turn Four (September) saw the British victors of Albany sending no less than 20 SP to attack Fort Stanwix, and detaching 10 SP to West Point, to be joined by 8 SP coming from New York. A further 15 SP marched from Boston across Massachussetts, reaching Hartford, Connecticut - that left 4 SP to deal with the last Yankees at Boston - which they duly did, wiping them out. At Stanwix, the British has 4:1 odds and rolled a mediocre '3' , but that still gave '1/2DE', killing 3 SP of Americans (and leaving the survivors outnumbered by 10 to 1 !). The Americans gained reinforcements of 4 SP at Philadelphia, making a respectable 19 SP there, and the remaining 2SP from Ft. Stanwix began a cross-country retreat across the New York back country, reaching Owego - the British probably won't bother to pursue.
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| Turn 4 ( Sept 1776) : all over bar some shouting in Philadelphia.. |
And at that point, I'm calling it, a solid British victory. The Americans hold only Philadelphia, with only a few more reinforcements coming ( including 1 lone SP at Albany - that won't last long!), and the British can just keep them bottled up there, even if they don't actually attack. With all the other objective cities and forts held, the British will have an overwhelming victory point score (96 to 15!). Looks like the American dream was squelched at the very start...
Interesting - although the armies were fairly evenly matched at the start, the British had 40 SPs more coming in July and August, more than doubling their force! The Americans had only 18 SPs of reinforcements, in small packets from July to November, so they were at a real disadvantage after the first three turns. I wonder if it was a mistake for the Americans to divide their large Morristown force early on to reinforce Philadelphia - perhaps they should have combined with their troops at West Point and attacked the British army which had marched out of New York. This would have given the USA 23 SP vs. the British 18 SP - which would only be a 1:1 attack ratio, so still quite risky and at best would kill half the British force, with quite a high chance of losing half (or even all) of their own army. Or perhaps just combining and standing on the defensive at West Point - with 20+ SP there, the Brits would have struggled to mount a 2:1 attack, even with their reinforcements, which could have made any assault quite costly. As it was, once the big British reinforcements arrived, it was quite easy for them to build up 3:1 or 4:1 attack forces, and I'll admit the dice went their way - if they had rolled a '1' at West Point, 15 SP of Redcoats would have evaporated as well as the 10 SP of Continentals!
Anyway, quite a good fun game, thankfully simple for my heatwave-frazzled brains (we are forecast 34C / 93F today!). and I am interested to read the Advanced Rules and give them a go soon - I do like the map, I have to say, and it cries out for using as a basis for a figures-gaming campaign!
What with the heat and some fairly onerous 'real life' stuff, I'll admit there has been a shortage of both time and inclination for hobby activity, but I can report the next step in the great re-basing project: Russians! Here are some vintage Minifigs Russian 7YW musketeers and Hussars going for a nice paddle in cool water ( lucky them!) to loosen up their old bases:
I have also been enjoying catching up with other blogs, and will admit that my decision to dig out a very old game was partly inspired by the prolific Martin Rapier of The Games We Play blog, who has clearly lost his senses in the heat and is grappling with the veteran SPI complexathon that is Air War : I had that one myself, and from reading Martin's valiant attempts I wonder if I ever even scratched the surface of it back in the day!
Also great to see Postie's Rejects Richard's (My Wargaming Habit) excellent 1796 Battle of Caldiero report, supplemented by Ray and Big Lee's accounts of the same game from opposing sides, and Jon at Palouse Wargaming Journal with his Samurai 'Battle of the Tombs' (featuring Postie's Rejects again!) games, even though I can;t keep up with the Japanese names and unit types, so it is to some extent 'all Japanese to me'! Still, well worth a read. And finally not to forget Alan 'Kingdom of Wittenburg' with his glorious-looking 18th Century armies fighting the 'Battle of Vierstrasse' ( loosely based on Quatre Bras?) - quite an inspiration for what I'd like to achieve with my old Minifigs collection!
More on the Minifigs next time, I hope (if we haven't all melted) with basing and painting progress, and I have gleaned some more interesting snippets of information about them. Until then, keep cool, everyone.
