We Meet on the Plain of Attica - 'Alala!' written by Simon MacDowall.

The background to this game was when I was reading my copy of Wargames Illustrated issue 436, I came across an article called 'Alala!'.

https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/product/wi436-april-2024/

This was a light bulb moment, as I have a reasonable sized Hoplite force which has been waiting for a set of rules.

 

'Alala!' written by Simon MacDowall are a set of rules specifically designed for a Hoplite warfare. They have taken the essence of the battles from that period and set them out into a set of rules that are easy to pick up. This was ideal for a club game which could take six players.

Set up of game.

On the day the players split into two groups of three and four, with Stephen, Nathan and Mike B taking the Spartans and Allies, by Vince, John R, Mark, Vince and Paul who took the Thebans and Allies.

Basically the Spartans and Thebans were “A class “elites and Allies were not so good.

Each player would be given a phalanx of Hoplites, consisting of two or three units plus light troops in support. Vince and Paul shared a command. They then threw a dice for their command action level.

It was now time to place the figures on the table. This was done by using a deck of cards, with black cards were for deploying Thebans  and red for Spartans. For some freakish reason the Thebans had

deployed most of their forces before the Spartans. (note to umpire shuffle cards next time). The effect of this was that the Spartans piled all there good stuff against the weaker Theban flank and the skirmishers were massed against the elite Theban deep phalanx. 

It was now time for both sides to make their plans and enjoy looking at an 8' x 4' table full of figures; no terrain, but that would just get in the way.

Game Begins.

This is where these rules start to capture the period. The first phase of the game is taken up by winding up your Hoplites, each commander spends his actions, to Control units (stop them running forward), 'Encouraging' (raising the units aggression) and Invoking the Gods (picking a random card some give an advantage, some don't... Needless to say there are not always enough actions to do all these things and “C Class” troops are expensive to encourage and can loose control). Both sides had units which broke ranks.

In addition while this was going on, the light troops are doing their job trying to get through the opponents lights and then taking out hoplites.

Hoplites Attack.

Both sides now give orders for the real battle to commences and the Phalanxes start to advance. Before this order is given only uncontrolled eager hoplites may move. The Spartan right and centre are the first to give this order. They have been goaded by some better than expected hits from the Theban lights.

As expected both forces collide in the middle of the table, however things are not as clear on the Spartans left, this had been refused it did not advance. The Phalanx Commander Stephen had the rump of the Spartan force and was in no hurry to take on the Theban elites under Vince and Paul. He therefore used his considerable force of lights and cavalry to slow down the elite Thebans while he slowly came in support of the centre.

Back on the other flank and centre both sides were now locked in combat, this was a game of attrition. Victory in each turns melee was down to throwing lots of dice, based on number of troops, eagerness, support, who won last time and where the commander was. Needless to say victory went to the player with the luck. The breakthrough eventually happened when John's Theban Allies started to break the Spartan Allies under Nathan.

By this time the game had been going for nearly five hours and it was time to pack up and call it a day. 

So victory was given to the Thebans. Although Mike with his elite Spartans on the right flank had been fought to a standstill (his commander was killed so they lost out on command action) by Marks Allied Thebans, it was agreed that they would have been able to retire safely and fight another day.

Wash Up.

That was a game which we all enjoyed. It was not without some fierce discussions as to rule interpretations. Recommend that the game has an umpire, however the rules stood up well. They gave

the flavour of the warfare in the Peloponnesian War, simple to pick up, well laid out and a good QRS.

It was the first time that any of us had played the game and at the end it was agreed that everyone made tactical errors which would not be repeated. This I think made the game even more interesting as the game went on. Unfortunately some of the errors from early in the game laid the seeds of defeat later on. Those pesky lights weakened some hoplite units so there performance in the main battle was not as good.

If you want to put on a multi player club game give these rules a go. They can be bought from the Society of Ancients Publication and I received them by return of post. Great service.

https://www.soa.org.uk/joomla/games2/233-alala

Well done all those who took part and to Simon MacDowall for his cracking set of rules.

Battle of Monmouth June 28th 1778 - Maurice

Steve M brought along his AWI collection to club this weekend for another set-to with Maurice from Sam Mustafa, to recreate the action at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, this following his and my playthrough of a Scenarios for Wargamers action back in May, see link below. 

 

Devon Wargames - Maurice/Scenarios for Wargamers

Due to some short-notice game rearrangements for this month's meeting the club rose to the challenge and reorganised player slots around the games planned and I offered along with Steve M to step back on our game and facilitate the play of newbies to the delights of Maurice, namely Mark, Mathew, Paul, Lawrence and Sam for our new line up of players.

American rear-guard action at the Battle of Monmouth

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Monmouth_-_American_rearguard.png

The game represented the critical point in the Battle of Monmouth where having not exactly covered himself in glory in his pursuit of the British rear-guard, General Lee's pursuit force are in a perilous state falling back from a rapidly formed British counterattack and pursuit, falling back behind the Spotswood Middle Brook, with Perrine's Hill to their rear and rallied and reorganised by the arrival of General Washington, as the British forward elements arrive before their position.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben c 1780 - Charles Willson Peale

In our game, I took the role of Baron von Steuben advising our American command of Lawrence and Sam on potential use of their cards and the general play involved in a game of Maurice, which is quite unique in many ways, as Steve M did for the British under Paul, Mark and Mathew.

The American line takes up position before Perrine's Hill and just forward of the Spotswood Middle Brook. 

Given the efforts of von Steuben over the winter, the American army that took the field in the summer of 1778 was a different animal to the one that got chased off at Brandywine and Germantown the previous summer, and so were accorded the attributes that favour the British including the echelon or oblique march technique as opposed to having to wheel, to reflect their much improved drill, with the British really only having an advantage with their bayonets to simulate their preferred tactics of avoiding a prolonged firefight and closing with the steel.

Steve prepared the table as seen above with the British Guards and Grenadiers out on the British left with some 16th Light Dragoons in support and the British 3rd Brigade out on the right, and given the challenges of attacking with medium or heavy guns, the British were supporting their attack with light guns attached that could move with the formations and add their cannister and round shot as required whilst keeping up with the advance.

British Guards, Grenadiers and some 16th Light Dragoons on the British left

To reflect the stress of their rapid withdrawal to the pursuit of the British and their rallying by Washington, Steve had the American Continentals carrying disorder on their set-up positions represented by the mini-dice to their rear, with some of the early American card play focussed on removing said disorder from their forward units with some much needed rallying as the British pressed forward with an initial push by the British Guards.

Washington's efforts did the trick and the American line held firm giving as good if not better than they got in the early exchanges of musketry and taking full advantage of the fence line cover to face off the Guards with a bit of bayonet work that saw the redcoats reel back from their first charge, and turn to the Grenadiers to come up in support.

Another attack soon followed the first with similar results although this time a Guards battalion was dispersed as it fell back but seeing the Grenadiers able to resist the American attacks more robustly with their elite status making them much more of a handful in the close combat exchanges.

The British were at this stage only pressing with the Guards and Grenadiers and to stretch the American card play opted to bring forward the 'hatmen' battalions of the 3rd Brigade. However this continual pressure was also taking its toll on the cards held in the British hand, whereas the Americans, able to rest on the defence and wait for their reserves, including Knox's and his guns to come up, took full advantage of the pauses between British assaults to rally and pass thus filling the hand with cards as well.

In addition to improving the hand, the continual withdrawal of two and three cards a go by the Americans from the deck was rapidly bring forward the second deck of cards and a reshuffle card, Maurice's clever way of bringing the time element into a game, and in our case being used to indicate by the third deck of cards when American reinforcements would appear to secure Perrine's Hill and an American victory.

With a second British assault by the 3rd brigade repulsed by the American line and the loss of a British gun, the British hand of cards was reduced to no cards whilst the Americans through their use of rally and pass moves had ten which drastically reduced the chances of any British success in breaching the forward American lines

The situation only marginally improved as the British sought to copy the American tactics only too-little too-late, in that in their efforts to avoid musketry and close combat, whilst rallying off disorders and trying to accumulate cards, the Americans with plenty of cards to choose from were finding ones to compel the British to shoot or cross bayonets, whilst throwing down hidden bad terrain in the way of units trying to come up to relieve their more hard pressed comrades.

The 'Firefight' card comes in handy for forcing a firefight
situation on a side that would prefer to avoid such an exchange

With the grinding battle that was developing on the fence lines, the British felt compelled to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at the looming disaster by barrelling in with an all out attack by the 3rd brigade in the hope that the cards they had accumulated together with fortuitous dice might pull their coals from out of the fire.

Sadly for the British it ended in tears, as two battalions and a gun were dispersed together with a Grenadier battalion on the other flank in the ensuing battles, and only producing the dispersal of an American gun as the third card deck was assembled, only to see the British Army Morale reduced to zero and the withdrawal of the the remaining British units, as von Steuben's no doubt tired  and exhausted boys waved their hats in the boiling heat of the day in celebration of their victory.

 

Our new Maurice players produced a very interesting game for a couple of Maurice grognards such as Steve and I, getting our game into a third deck of cards, something Steve and I rarely do in our games, but also illustrating the need to take pauses in attacks in Maurice if one side or the other is to avoid the situation we had in our game with one side running out of cards and the other having a full hand of ten and effectively running the game.

That for me is what makes Maurice quite unique in simulating that effect seen in real battles and offering a mechanism to penalise the wargamer in all of us that will happily blaze away with everything that can shoot and charge in with anything holding a pointy stick in a blithe devil-may-care approach that an historical commander would have been unable to contemplate, knowing the exhaustion it would have caused to his army.

In Maurice you have to continually monitor your hand of cards versus your opponents to avoid such a disparity as well a trying to anticipate the enemy's next response or move in reaction or response to your own.

Thankyou to Steve for getting the troops back out on the table and for a very interesting scenario as neither of us had fought Monmouth before, so one more AWI set-to added to the list, and thanks to  Mark, Mathew, Paul, Lawrence and Sam for providing the entertainment.

JJ