Battle of Germantown October 1777 Part 1 : The fight for the Chew House

Back to our AWI campaign yesterday with the first part of the battle of Germantown. Given the rules we are using and the challenges of remote gaming I felt it sensible to split Germantown into two smaller battles and I was keen to see if we could have a skirmish focussing just in the fight for the Chew House.

A painting of the fighting around the Chew house.

The overview of the battle histprically. This part ‘one’ would effectively cover the highlighted area.

A second map of the battle from a wargame scenario perspective. The battle for the Chew is quite hard to balance as the British really are completely outnumbered. So the scenario sees a delaying action by the British with units of Pickets and the Light battalion trying to inflict as much damage as possible before the 40th Foot with Colonel Thomas Musgrave will try to hold the house. We had a number of specific scenario details. The battle starts in fog so range is limited until the fog lifts. We extended the movement rates for the first few turns as with R&P it could take a long time to get to the House itself. The British are all veterans. The Americans fire cant effect the troops in the house itself, effectively this reflects history as  even though they brought up cannons they had no impact. We also had a slightly amended combat result so the British even if they lost a combat wouldn’t flee the house until they actually failed a test. Col Musgrave who is in the house would also provide a plus 2 leadership, making the 40th Foot pretty tough to shift.

Our setup at the start of the battle

General Sullivan with his force march through the fog up the main Germantown road.

With an early lifting of the fog the British pickets open fire and start to pull back. They have little effect but the British light infantry use their First fire to knock the leading skirmishers back, the Americans are pushing forward their artillery along the road. Sullivan is slow to get moving.

Quickly the Americans drive forward and a sharp fight occurs around the church

The Americans are able to open up with their light cannons and this cause a real problem for the British light infantry

After an initial wobble the external portion of the 40th move forward to contest the advance knowing that every casualty caused before the Americans reach the house will help.

Ouch despite the fog lifting some Americans friendly fire into the rear of their own infantry. Sullivan is lucky the damage is not too great

The pickets are pretty much wiped out now, but the British infantry outside the house open up, they will be a tougher nut to crack

On the American right, the British light infantry are still holding just and causing casualties 

The 40th form into line they are not going to give ground !

Some tough fighting across the front, as you can see the British defenders are almost lost, but just clinging on, every minute will count

Finally the external defenders are driven back and Sullivan advances towards the House knowing that it can only be taken in hand to hand combat.

The Americans surround the house and charge in…….

Given that Musgrave had been given a key role in the defence with a 2 plus leadership, I was not too happy when in the first round of combat, with only one casualty caused Musgrave was killed ! Suddenly it was far more likely the British would fail a morale check and be forced to withdraw.

The Americans charge in again and again are driven back …..

But with Musgrave dead the inevitable happens and the British defenders finally fail a morale check forcing them to flee the building…. An American win arrghhhhhh

So despite the casualties a win for the Americans as they have forced the house, musgrave’s leadership might have made all the difference, but he died a hero much too early in the fighting. A fun battle full of twists and turns and challenge for both sides. Everything worked well and balanced apart from the Colonels untimely death. Were we to replay I might reduce this risk and give the occupants in the house the 2 plus so they can’t lose it so quickly. Nice of course to get my Chew house on the table 🙂

Next up I have been thinking about terrain for my Greek/Italian 1940 project. Much of the fighting took place in the mountains and in winter in quite desolate areas. Specifically I felt I needed more rocky terrain and more winter-looking trees. First up the trees…..

I picked up a packet of these railway type trees off eBay

These were then stuck to heavier bases to make them more stable and painted before I set about twisting the branches into suitable shapes, I then cover the base in some leaf type debris which I had in my terrain box.

The results are quite pleasing and give a sense of ‘winter’ trees obviously these can be used in other theatres eg the ACW when we fight battles in winter. I didn’t want snow as this makes them just a little too specific. In total I have about 20 of these and plan to make the  other slightly smaller trees into olive/fruit trees as I need some more of these.

As a final thought I put some autumn type lichen on the armatures and I guess they could also be used like this?

Well that’s it for now, we played a CoC battle down at George’s this morning but I’ll let him tell the tale before I share a couple of photos.

Thanks as always for passing through, you are most welcome

Matt ❤️

Finally some painting 🙂

Just seem to have been really busy recently so not achieved much painting, but I have been plodding on with the ACW cavalry.

Here the next Union regiment completed. Perry figures which were picked up at a show, based but unpainted. Hence the slightly thicker bases than normal but not very noticeable. That leaves me with 12 or so more to do. I now have a target to get them all finished for the end of May !

I also completed the windmill for our recent battle, the new Rendra model, very simple to put together, I added a little extra detailing so it matches in with my other buildings.

Finally for those that like them another shot from last week of the Lakeland fells looking south.

That’s all for now folks, thanks for popping by Matt ❤️

More 15mm Painting

On the back of completing the 15mm Sicilian/Iberian terrain I pushed on to complete some other ‘European’ buildings which I had ordered ages ago and had sat in the box. Wanting the terrain to match in I had ordered some more Hovels Battleground buildings. I really like the slightly rough casting of the resin which gives them a more natural look than mdf. You can buy them painted but I wanted to match them in as best as I could.

A small three building block

Damaged shops

Even more damaged shops, I actually bought two of these

A small rural church , which also comes with a spire

After painting I fixed them onto small pavement sections as this makes them easier to quickly place on the table and set up a shot of the complete village. The houses on the right are from a different manufacturer but no idea where I got them from.

Whilst setting up the above I was playing about with stuff and discovered the Sicilian buildings are fortuitously the same size for the roof sections from the hovels buildings. So I have ordered some extra roofs which are in the post, this will give me the option for another 6 smaller buildings as above which blend in really well.

I have also completed some very quick and simple paint jobs on a stack of German Tanks which came from the boxed set I picked up a while ago. 

I kept the scheme very simple so they can play across a number of theatres and just about blend in with my existing Germans

Oh and a couple of Matilda’s for the Western Desert. Think I might have weathered these a little too much ?

Finally the sky cleared for a couple of hours the weather having been particularly grim for quite a while.

On a final note and I know a couple of people had asked, my Father passed away last week having lasted less than three weeks in the home. To be honest this was fine and expected as he had deteriorated in the last week or so. Whilst we are all sad we are celebrating his 90 year life which included two wives, seven sons and twelve grandchildren. I will be more than happy to reach 80 and still have my marbles !

That’s it for now the Napoleonics are setup on the table and ready for action when the Russians arrive 😀

Thanks as always Matt

Mediterranean Terrain and the Dungeon of shame !

Regular viewers will have seen my previous building conversions to save on storage space using a couple of my Russian buildings and stopping the thatched roof for tiles. When I purchased the tiles I picked up 3 sheets so have a few more. This time I picked out the easy candidates from my generic ‘arabic/desert’ buildings.

Mainly smaller buildings with flattish roofs, the water tower I thought would make and interesting feature

After a few (not too many) hours with glue here are the results. The top of the tower just sits inside.the water tower thing was a pain as it is hard to cut the sheet obliquely across the tiles. I also built the little roadside shrine. All painted to match the other buildings. This is a big saving on terrain storage and it has me thinking about other possibilities

Here they are set up on the table for our next CoC battle (played yesterday) very happy with the effect, I think all I need now is a ‘gateway’ to match the tiled walls and a few smaller lean-to type buildings.

Following other’s example the dungeon of shame, First thing i notice is I don’t have as much stuff as some others ! Anyway

By the dungeon window, figure storage and the lead pile (not quite all of it 🙂)

The table is 8x4 underneath mainly figure storage, file boxes and 15mm,10mm collections

From the other side more figures, there isn’t any space under the table as boxes and double stacked, terrain overflowing around the edge of the table 😢

Books are vaguely separated into rules, uniform/painting guides, campaigns /history….but I’m not really that organised. It is insanely difficult to keep the surfaces tidy 

More general books , battlefield guides etc

Terrain and more terrain, in RUB so they can be moved about fairly easily when I want a bigger battlefield space. It looks much tidier when the green curtains are pulled across !

Terrain mainly trees, some games and magazines although I am clearing these out slowly. There is more stuff I can get rid of to create more space for figures when needed 😃 No sagging shelves and no figure boxes piled to the ceiling yet !

Finally as my leg gradually improves and the weather while cold has been nice as well as cycling we managed to get out for a short walk on the edge of the hills. My muse is well wrapped up as even the gentle breeze was pretty cold.

Thanks as always for checking in, we played the next CoC Sicily game which I will post in a day or so

Matt 🙂

The Joy of Hex ?

The last couple of years has seen the development of remote gaming for many of us. I don’t think it will ever replace face to face but it doesn’t feel like a short term blip, it has opened the opportunity for a wider circle of gaming in a wide range of genres. Regular followers will have followed our AWI campaigns and others. One of the challenges of remote gaming is the approach to measuring and gauging distances etc. One of the answers of course is to consider hex based games. Having played a couple with Jonathan over in the states and enjoyed them immensely, I thought I would develop a hex based terrain system. This will allow similar remote games in the dungeon across a wide range.

After a LOT of pondering I am finally in a position to give it a run out this weekend.

I had an used base cloth, see below, so the plan was to build terrain up on hexes here are a few of the Hills to show the basic process.

A view of the terrain I have so far set up, as you can see I can varry the size of the table from the size of a C&C board up to 6x4 foot table and I can use the black edging to delineate the edge of the battlefield as required.

A closer view of the hills, as needed I can build more terrain, but I have enough to get me started.

A couple of shots with figures, I plan to use the set up at a range of different scales above multi based 28mm late Romans 

My SYW collection, flexibility as always is the aim so I can use much of the same terrain as in normal battles

Here is our first battle set up the Battle of Bairen, El Cid taking on the Almoravids, thinking ahead I think almost all of my collections could be adapted to play on this style of terrain, I quite like the idea of some WW2 at some stage as 15mm would quite effective on a ‘grand’ scale ?

I know this won’t be to everybody’s liking but don’t worry hexes won’t take over the dungeon just yet 😀