Monmouth Courthouse Lee Attacks! scenario - Electronic Brigadier

Next month at the upcoming Huzzah! 2018 convention I will be running a Monmouth Courthouse AWI scenario I've titled 'Lee Attacks!'. The scenario is a hypothetical re-match of the historical forces asking the question, 'What if General Lee had convinced Washington to allow him to attack with volunteer regiments instead of limiting him to only volunteer soldiers?'. The battle uses the historical order of battle, but when soldiers from a particular regiment were present, I instead give Lee the entire regiment (or brigade as the case may be). To make this a fair fight, I've brought an appropriate amount of the British column back to aid in the rear guard.

This and the Huzzah! game use my computer moderated rules, The Electronic Brigadier. While I've been happy with the system for AWI for about a year now, I'm always looking to improve thing as I work on the other periods. In order to give the convention gamers the best experience possible, I prefer to play test my scenarios with friends from my club when possible. This game was the dress rehearsal for the upcoming Huzzah! game. With a good mix of Electronic Brigadier veterans as well as less experienced players, I'm pretty sure this game gave the rules a good run through. I had my video camera running, so there are some short videos of the game interspersed in this report. Below, a quick view of the table.

Below left photo left to right the Americans: Earl, George, Mike and Rob. Right photo left to right the Britsh: Bob, Ralph, Kevin and Byron. In the background you can see I've only managed to get part of my collections into my new cabinets featured in the previous blog post.

This scenario is a meeting engagement with the British strung out in column of march on the road past the Courthouse (represented by the shabby shack in the middle of the table). The British rear guard has just managed to react to Lee's approaching attack from table left (south west). The British column is under the most pressure from the rear by Scott's, Grayson's and Wane's detachments, but further up the local New Jersey brigade bolstered by local militia approaches through the west ravine.

Both sides chose to attack on their respective right flanks. The photos above show Scott's detachment commanded by Earl, pressing Byron's rear guard ad-hoc brigade on the southern end of the battle. Earl's continentals took early advantage of Byrone's over-aggressive Hessian grenadiers, focusing fire on them eventually pushing them out of the British line. Byron's elite light infantry held the flank from collapsing while Kevin filled the void with fresh British grenadiers.

On the north flank, seen in the distance of this photo, Bob and Ralphs' troops pressed Rob's New Jersey brigade hoping to drive off Rob's two militia brigades. The British failed to close due to very effective fire from the militia on several attempts thanks to support from the New Jersey battery and a bad case of the jitters from one British regiment. The one British attack that did close with the militia sent the bayonet-less locals running to the rear.

As the battle continued the British suffered higher losses than the Americans, and as we called the game, the state of morale for the American army had a slight edge over the British.

The end of battle statistics were as follows:

British Rear Guard Army cohesion: 83.3% Total Casualties: 389 / 6240 (6.2%) 3 units shaken, 1 battery abandoned guns Honors to: 123 - 64th Foot

American Advance Guard Army cohesion: 84.3% Total Casualties: 309 / 7420 (4.2%) 2 units shaken, 1 battery abandoned guns Honors to: 233 - 3rd & 4th New Jersey

Both sides played competently. Although there were successes and failures on both sides, I think most were 'in the dice' that Electronic Brigadier rolls during combat and morale. Well fought game by all. I had great fun hosting it. Thanks to everyone for helping me play test the game.

Electronic Brigadier Extras

For those interested in the Electronic Brigadier rules in general, I was also able to get a nice video of Byron's move while Earl entered his information into one of the tablets. This gives a neat window into what goes on during a typical Electronic Brigadier turn for two opposing players. For more videos on Electronic Brigadier, you can view my YouTube playlist for Electronic brigadier. If you're interested in following the progress of Electronic Brigadier, you can join or view The Electronic Brigadier Google Community.