Sunday, October 3, 2010

Trenton and Trenton again (1776 version)

Last week the club I've been playing with in Toronto (current name is "The Napoleonic Brigade - Toronto") had its big annual weekend of games in 6mm. This year was the Battle of Trenton, played thrice on Saturday and twice on Sunday (some test games earlier made it 7 games total). The third game Saturday followed a quick end to the second game, after the Hessian commander's boldness didn't pay off).

I was only there Sunday, playing in both games. To make the game fair to the outnumbered and surrounded Hessians, there was a 3 hour time limit on each game. The first game got to a late start, which made my job easier as I was the Hessian commander (Rall). I traded space for time and we slowly got pushed further into the middle, doing more damage than we took, and when the clock struck we were ahead. As we had to wait for lunch to finish cooking, we played a few more turns and the Hessians also got cooked as their perimeter collapsed.

In game 2 I was one of the American commanders (Greene), looking after two forces coming in from the north west (to the right of the American battery on the hill). The Hessian strategy in this game was to try to escape to the east, using their free set up of a half battalion of skirmishers to harass one American unit from the rear, holding the door open while the rest tried to scamper out. The skirmishers did a good job the whole game, and one wing of Hessian infantry ultimately escaped (with guns).

However, once the Hessians in Trenton itself got turned around to mosey on out, my forces got across the river and threatened them from the rear, so they had to turn around yet again, and this allowed additional converging forces from the northeast and south to hit them from all directions, and everything in the centre was destroyed.

All in all, a good time was had by all. Playing the Hessians was challenging, but fun. I seem to have a talent for delaying actions...

Here's the table set-up before the gaming began. The Hessians occupy the centre area, under fire from American guns on the hill, and basically threatened on all four sides.



More pictures from another attendee (Andy) are available here:
Game 1 and here: Game 2

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