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