State of Play: Commands and Colors: Tricorne – Bennis Heights

    

 

Monday we played at T’s place. “What do you want to play,” he said. “Surprise me,” I said. When I got there, he’d just finished placing the last block of Commands & Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution (Compass Games, 2017), Bennis Heights scenario. I’ve got a feeling we’ve played this at least once before – when I first got hold of C&C Tricorne we went pretty hard on it for a while, but I don’t think we played through all the scenarios. Still, a game is a game, and there’s almost always something new to learn from a C&C game.

Opening state (the Hessians and light cannon were brought up
to full strength before we started).

Bennis Heights is a six-banner scenario. Normally I would expect any other six-point Commands and Colors game to resolve itself in around forty-five minutes to an hour. That was not to be the case in this instance.

Every iteration of the Commands and Colors system from Battle Cry (Avalon Hill, 1999) on is its own thing. They all share the same DNA, but they’re closer to cousins than siblings. Commands and Colors: Tricorne has traits not carried over into the other games, and that’s what makes it sometimes frustrating, but always interesting.

C&C Tricorne’s closest cousin it Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010); they are set in historically and technologically adjacent eras, and share some similarities between unit profiles. The American soldiery was trained and structured broadly on the British model, and many of the Colonial officers had fought in the French and Indian War alongside the very British officers they were now facing in battle. After the close of hostilities in North America it would barely be fifteen years before British troops were battling the French Revolutionary Army under General Napoleon in Egypt and Syria.

The Hessian attempt to roll up my Right flank was blunted, then reversed.

The central difference between C&C Napoleonics and C&C Tricorne is one of scale. While it’s never really spelt out in such terms, a unit of infantry in C&C Napoleonics is usually in the ballpark of a brigade or division, whereas the unit size in C&C Tricorne is much smaller. This is reflected in the differences in ranged combat. In both games, combat with a unit in an adjacent hex is considered melee of close combat. Ranged combat takes place between regular infantry at two hexes distance in C&C Napoleonics (with the notable exception of the British Rifle Light). In C&C Tricorne, the standard maximum rage for musketry is three hexes, while the American Rifle units can reach four hexes, though at extreme ranges the quality of fire is reduced.

Which brings us to the second difference in C&C Tricorne (which is an artefact of the first), the dice available in combat are effectively halved. A Regular four-block unit engaging an enemy unit in melee or at two-hex range will roll two combat dice. The results are the same as in other C&C flavours, hits on symbols and, in melee, on crossed sabres. This is where it gets interesting though, A flag result will force a retreat, unless the defender can produce a reason to ignore said retreat (say, leader proximity, or being supported on to sides). If the unit takes the retreat, however, the owing layer must roll a number of dice equal to the blocks remaining in the unit (an intact unit gets one extra die to roll). This is a Rally roll, a check to find out whether the unit’s commanders managed to maintain order and cohesion in the face of said retreat. If the owning player doesn’t roll at least one Flag symbol (“rally around the flag, boys!”), then the unit is lost, assumed to have made for the rear, broken. That’s work a Victory Banner for the opponent as assuredly as if the unit was pulverised in combat.

All this has been by way of explanation for why last night’s game took nearly two hours. Bennis Heights was a qualified win for the Colonials historically. The British troops and Hessian mercenaries tried to turn the Colonial forces (superior in numbers but thin on experienced professional soldiers), but could not better the determined American forces.

This general result played out last night. After an ineffectual opening cannonade and some minor manoeuvring on both sides, T’s British forces began to move up unevenly, pausing to take pot-shots at my American regulars (the ones not tucked safely into forest groves), until a Line Command card allowed him to get his Hessians all adjacent to my Right and Centre-Right troops, hoping to turn my flank and roll up my line. Much of the fire thus far had been ineffectual; T had taken first blood with a lucky shot at one of my Regular units at the left of my Centre in the third round, but it was the sixth before anyone – also T, as it happened – managed to actually score a Banner. This wasn’t for lack of trying. With Every ranged fire I managed to push units either at back with withering fire (rolling a flag or two) but every time, even at reduced rolls of to or three dice, T seemed unable to not produce a rallying flag to keep the unit on the board.

Around turn ten or eleven. Colonials 4 to British 3.

The game began to shift in my favour around about turn 8. T was up three Banners to my one. With the play of a Line Volley order I was able to hold my ground (remain in position) and fire at range. It took some tricksy shooting but I was able to reduce the Hessian Grenadiers to one block and push back a reduced (three-block) Hessian Regular formation, forcing the first Rally check of the game that T failed.

Even though T managed to gain a block (Reform combat card), for his Hessian Grenadiers, I was able to destroy what cohesion remained with an Inspired Leader order, and – most embarrassingly for T – with my one engaged Militia unit (Revenge came wiftly when the Militia were run off the board on the next card play with three Retreat results from the avenging Hessian cannons). That was the last unit loss in combat on either side. Due to some remarkable Rally rolls, mostly from T, many units managed to stay in the game when they would likely have been destroyed outright with the higher damage rolling of a C&C Napoleonics game. This is why a what we thought would be a one-hour game ran to nearly two-and-a-quarter. But this isn’t a complaint, though; aside from the distraction of a couple of work calls, we were both fully engaged in the action and the unfolding narrative on the board. You can’t really ask for more than that from a game.

Of the six banner I won, only two were for units destroyed in battle, and only one of T‘s three. The rest on both sides were the result of failed Rally rolls, and most of those, only when the unit had taken hits over two or more combat actions and had been reduced to one or two blocks.

End state: a hard lesson for the British.

By the end of the battle, Bennis Heights was strewn with dead and wounded Hessians and Colonials. While the exchange’s victory went to the Colonials, the British did manage to preserve his cannon and some of their national forces in good order, with no loss of leaders. Some small comfort for the officer required to explain the lack of success against the insurrectionists.