State of Play: Commands and Colors: Tricorne - Bunker Hill

 

Ah, the best laid plans. When I declared last week that we would get to the sixth game of Napoleon 1806 (Shakos, 2019) this week, I’d forgotten I had a prior Monday night commitment that meant I wouldn’t be home to set up. The prior commitment was a public lecture on space archaeology and the legacy of the various moon programs, presented by the History of Science, Ideas and Technology Group (HSITG), on which committee I sit (I contain multitudes).

Given this commitment, I asked T is he’d mind hosting the game that night, after the talk, and told him to surprise me. When I arrived, T had set up a game that, oddly enough, I’d been thinking about just recently; the Bunker Hill scenario of Commands and Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution (Compass Games, 2017). I’ve had my interest in that war rekindled recently with the receipt of Maurice Suckling’s Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington Publishing, 2019), a sparse, clever, and fast-playing game I suspect I’ll have to write about very soon. Anyway, if we couldn’t close off another 6x6 game with the final run at Napoleon 1806, this was a welcome distraction.

If you know any Command and Colors game, Tricorne will look familiar, with the same stickered blocks, mounted hex-grid map, terrain tiles, and fancy symbol-faced dice. There are a few changes under the hood, though. The block cluster generally represent much smaller bands of fighters. This is reflected in the hit dice and the range; most units will at best roll two dice in melee and the elite ones will do that at a two-hex range. All units have a maximum range of three hexes, though at that distance, you’ll only be throwing a single die, so it will usually take several tries to reduce a unit to nothing. The points don’t come quite so easily in Tricorne.

Another change to the system is the Rally rule. When a unit is forced to retreat, it must roll dice equal to its block count (intact units get a one-die bonus). This is called the Rally roll, and you’re needing to roll a flag, just one, on your handful of dice; if not, that unit leaves the battlefield, and your adversary receives a victory banner for your trouble.

That's a lot of Redcoats.

Bunker Hill is historically the first force-on-force battle of the Revolutionary War, and it is the second scenario in the game. Like most C&C early scenarios, it is more or less designed to introduce or reinforce the key concepts of the game, and to highlight the differences form, say Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010). It seems one-sided, but so did the actual battle. The British forces are a mixture of Regulars and elite forces, while the Colonials are Militia in the main, with a couple of Rifle units peppered in. Historically the British numbered around 6,000 men, while the Colonials probably had between 150 and 250 souls, but they held the advantages of high ground looking over a fairly clear, gently undulating field before them. General Gage ordered a frontal assault, probably thinking a strong show of force would put fear into the hearts of the rebels and they would be less inclined to engage a numerically superior force. The hopelessly outnumbered militia nonetheless held their nerve, under orders not to fire until they saw “the whites of their eyes.” The British attacked in waves, but the hereto untested militia held their ground, inflicting heavy loses on their assailants, before pulling back, if not in good order, at least not in complete disarray. The Redcoats claimed victory, but were in no fit state to press their advantage.

In our reconstruction, T took command of the British attackers, who have the initiative in the Bunker Hill scenario. He immediately pressed froward in his centre-left, bringing a line of Regular troops under the command of Pigot, up the rise toward the forward redoubts manned by my Militia, using the wooded hex as meagre cove for his soldiers. T’s troops held their fire; at that range (three hexes) each could roll a single die, but behind their fieldworks, the Militia could shake off a single ranged hit.

British main assault (round 1), Colonial centre-right. A stout defence.

There was no way I was bringing my Militia out to confront the redcoat onslaught, so I satisfied myself with sniping from cover. All my musket and rifle units were at extreme range (three hexes) for the full first half of the game, but I managed to get a couple of singles on different on T’s Light troops on his right (my left) and pushed a couple of his centre regulars back as they tried to probe forward. My first banner came when T tried to rush his Light troops on my left; both were pushed back (forced to Retreat), and one failed their Rally roll and dispersed. Nearly half of the casualties I inflicted were the result of failed Rally rolls, as well as one of my own losses. It’s a good rule that reflects the brittleness of the formations involved (though I can already hear some people complaining about it before they’ve ever played a game).

T’s attack was concentrated on the centre for the majority of the game. This was at least in part due to the cards he was dealt, judging by what he played. One complaint about the Commands and Colors system I’ve heard and read fairly often over the years, nearly as often as how unbalanced many of the scenarios are (but’s that’s a discussion for another time), is the lack of player agency, or more precisely the imposition of the order cards on player agency. It’s usually couched in terms of the cards limiting a player’s opportunities to exploit an opening or a favourable situation. Anyone who has played a good number of C&C family games will have met with the situation of simply not having the cards to hand to activate their troops in one or the other flank for a significant portion of a game. It can be frustrating to have massed French cavalry within striking distance of plump Spanish line formations but lack any orders to spark their attack. But this is just how commanders would historically face a real battle; inadequate or misleading intelligence, intercepted orders, officers misinterpreting or straight-out ignoring orders, these were all part of what made the execution of a battle so difficult, and this is what is mimicked by the vagaries of the card-draw order system. I think it’s actually a strength of the system; I believe it forces me to be bring my best game, having to compensate for the unforeseen difficulties that fate hurls in my way. That's it; sermon over.

Grenadiers under Howe pushed back.

Anyway, it remained a mystery to me why T didn’t activate his Grenadiers under the command of Abercrombie, preferring to lead the attack on his right with the light infantry at his extreme right (except may that bringing the Grenadiers forward would potentially put them under fire from three separate redoubts). They ignore the first flag rolled against them, and get an extra die to their Rally rolls, and they are devastating in melee. In the end, it seems to have come down to Abercrombie’s desultory leadership, that the Grenadiers didn’t get into the fight, until Howe himself rode over the take command of one of the units.

The Militia and Rifles of my left-most defences held their nerve under cannon fire and repeated attacks by the T’s probing Light Infantry. Play of Coordinated Advance, Assault Center, and Leadership (Center Section) orders in swift succession allowed Pigot to send forward a line of Regulars up to striking distance for melee combat, but my militia and single cannon battery held firm. In their return fire, the Colonials chewed though the British ranks, pouring withering fire down upon them, and and causing several units to break and flee.

It was another round or two before T could bring Pigot's remaining forces back up to line; I used this time to try to whittle away the Redcoats’ resolve. Remarkably the Militia on the Colonial right, under the steadying hand of Prescott, held firm in the face of a battle-hardened enemy.

Game-state, roughly mid-game (Americans four banners up). Pigot reroups.

By roughly the middle of the action, I was up four banners, having lost none. I was fortunate in that T’s card draws never revealed a Bayonet Charge or Line Command. As it was, I don’t think my hard-pressed citizen soldiers would have held up against repeated melee attacks, regardless of their superior breastworks. The bulk of the work in thinning the ranks of the British came down t the superior marksmanship of my Rifles, which had earlier in the action made short work of T’s left-probing Light infantry.

The spoils of victory? Pigot's second thrust.

While Pigot was still dressing his line, Howe had become so disillusioned with Abercrombie’s performance – or rather the lack thereof – that he personally took command of a unit of Grenadiers and pushed them up toward my centre-left works, but they were (thankfully) pushed back.

When the end came, it came quickly and like a hammer-fall. Pigot brought his men up to the breastworks and no quarter was given. One Militia unit broke after sustaining heavy losses but managed to Rally after retreating. The remaining rifles and cannon took a heavy toll on Pigot’s brave men, with one troop annihilated, and another two sustaining losses and being forced to retreat. One of these did not manage to Rally and were lost to command.

Sniping rifles reduced the British further, but the survivors now had a taste for blood. Pigot led a charge on the reduced cannon position and destroyed that unit, while another pushed the Militia out of the centre fortifications. Clearing the breastworks, they were in a fine position to sweep up my remaining Militia, were it not for Prescott’s indominable verve; he seized the moment, leading the remaining armed citizenry to the task of seeing off the hated Lobsters. In the fray that ensued, brave Pigot fell prey to an anonymous musket ball. The retreating survivors were allowed to carry their leader away from the carnage to the victorious cheers of the surviving Militia. The day was theirs.

The final score for the game was Americans 7 to British 4, for a six-banner scenario. The seventh came with the failure of Pigot to successfully roll for his survival in the action with Prescott. 

End-state. Comprehensive American victory, and a boost the the nation's morale..