FIRE ON THE FRONTIER and THE NEXT BIG LITTLE THING

The third battle of Rebels and Patriots was the Bullets and Beans Scenario. This saw a group of Loyalists defending their wagons from a patrolling band of Continentals. This was played by a couple of returning gamers and a few new players. The game was played on July 5th, the day after the 247th Birthday of the United States of America. 

The Opening of the Battle. Loyalists in Their Wagon Lager as the Continentals Come Pouring in from Three Sides. 

New York Continental Line Milling About Trying to Get Their Berrings in the Early Morning Light. 

As the Full Light of Day Arrived so did The Rest of the Loyalist Forces. The Continental's Fire had a Very Limited Effect on the Garrison Troops. So Little in Fact They Felt Cocky Enough to Bring up Their Unengaged Troops to Support the Firing Line. 

While the Fire Had Begun to Have a Telling Effect on the Defenders, There Own Return Fire had Reduced One of the Attackers Key Line Units to Half. Meanwhile the Defenders Reinforcements Where Now Close Enough to Influence the Battle.

On the Other Flank the Continentals Militia Who are Protected by Woods Were Having an Effect on the Defenders. They had Also Cause a Bottleneck for the Follow Up Regular Forces Delaying Their Needed Firepower. 

The Delay had Been Costly as by the Time the Regulars got to the Fight a Quarter of Their Unit was Lost. Meanwhile Luck was with the Loyalist as an Extra Line Unit had Joined the Battle. 

With Over a Third of Their Force Lost and Now Heavily Outnumbered the Continentals Gave Up the Fight and Headed Back to Their Homes. 

This was a complete disaster for the Attackers. Poor initial placement had kept half their firepower out of the fight. More importantly the Loyalist never missed an activation roll, and scored at least one hit, and more often multiple hits on every fire action. While the Continentals suffered from a number of low ammunition Special Action results, the Loyalists were rewarded with extra troops. On my last post I said that to gain an overwhelming victory you needed to have a lot go your way, or your opponent needed to have things go wrong. In this game both of those things occurred to give the Loyalists a decisive 4-to-0 victory. 

On to the next project, which is making Command & Colors: Napoleonic into a full miniature game. To address the hardest part for me, the painted miniature, I have decided to use the printed flats from WoFun. With this little preamble...Behold. 

Front View of the French.

A More Typical View of the French. 
Cavalry on the Flanks, Line Infantry and Artillery in the Center, Light Infantry with Skirmishers. 

A Closer View of the French Infantry. 
Line Across the Center, Artillery in the Middle, Light Infantry Right Foreground with Skirmishers.  

This is just the start as there are lots more French for me to edge paint and whole armies of Austrians and Russians to oppose them. 

I am off to Gen Con for the next few weeks. When I return, I will be working on the next batch of these troops, along with more buildings. I hope to complete enough to get a game in before mid-August.