Fall In - Part 1 - Battle of Aughrim

So back from Fall-In which was last weekend, thought I would put up a few blog post about the games I played in with a few battle reports, and toss in a few pictures at the end of each of games I thought were interesting somehow but didn't get to play in for whatever reason. Had a great time at the convention and now major problems were encountered.

Battle of Aughrim
Rules - Carnage and Glory 2
Scale - 28mm
Period - Pike and Shot - Jacobite Rebellion

So the first game I played in at the convention was the Battle of Aughrim, all 3 of us played in this game. I wasn't aware of it when we signed up, but this is one of the computer assisted games where instead of rolling the dice the guy running the game feeds certain information into a computer and then tells you what would happen, this allows allot more factors to be modeled but slows things down a bit. All the units are tagged by number number so you just call out who is shooting who, or fighting who, or who does something that causes disruption or fatigue.

So for example Calvary units tend to be not very effective after one or 2 fights, despite not all that many people really dieing, the results are returned as a number of casualties as well. In addition you don't really know the quality of your troops so things can be a bit of a surprise.

Duncan and I played on the Jacobite side, fighting to support James, and Chris and another couple of guys were on the Williamite side. I was the commander of the Irish cavalry on the Right flank, and Duncan had the infantry all along the table deployed in cover with a bog between the opposing
troops. We basically had to hold.

It was not allowed to charge across the river except at the ford where the road crosses, so my plan was to dismount dragoons all along the river to prevent a cross and put down some fire, and use my shock cavalry to charge anyone who dared to enter my ford, I had 4 units of fighting cav and the rest were dragoons. The small wood thing was a cannon but I was not allowed to shoot it ever so don't know the point of that.

First charge into the ford, and dragoons starting to defend the river and get into some fire fights.

Tons more enemy cav show up, good thing they are trapped in that tiny strip and can't do anything. My cav won the first charge and force back 1 unit.

On the other side of the table the Williamites enter the bog and cannon fire begins.

After a few turns we have this, a second unit of enemy cav has pushed out my first unit, and I am charging in with number 2 to push them back, some of the dragoons and taking allot of fire and becoming unhappy, notably #125 across the ford with the white puff.

Along the infantry line things start to get close and the action begins, but after crossing the bog they now have to fight our units which are in cover.

Here we are a bit further on, various Cavalry units are still battling it out in the ford, and dragoon blasting accross the ford. My dragoons on either side of the ford are about to break, #130 unexpectedly by me, but I have another unit to put in the hill, and unit 125 with a regimental commander and the wing commander trying to rally them. I had a few close calls with my commander and they lost 3 horses and had a few minor wounds but no big deal.

The enemy cav started to retreat and try to go around so I pushed across the river. Two new units now fighting in the ford, must be allot of dead stuff in there by this time.

Fire raging all down the infantry position.

Here we have the ford a bit later on, both sides have many units retreating by this point, one of my dragoon units has been pushed back across the river after a devastating close combat in which they lost like 80 killed to 0, they had about 240 to start. But they refuse to break. Basically down to 1 unit each in the ford now. I moved my small unit of cav, the Lifguards (so best cav I had most likely), so they are going to have a chat with any enemy that crosses my river.

Here we have the state at the end of the battle, the Lifeguards sent one unit packing in quick order, but the Dutch mercenaries are caving in that end of our infantry line. A few units have broken along the rest of the infantry line but nothing major on either side. On the Cav side thing have been much fiercer, allot of units are dispersed or retreating on both sides, and on of my commander has been captured. However every single one of the Williamite commanders has been wounded or killed in action, including the wing commander, so they only general they have left is a captured Jacobite. So they will have to withdraw most likely pulling the infantry with them as they are not keen to stick around with half the army withdrawing.

The computer declares it to be a Major Jacobite Victory, with 4800 casualties on the Williamite side and 2400 on the Jacobite side, the Jacobites hold the terrain. So history has been reversed as we should have lost.

It was a pretty interesting game, but I found the computer slowed things down way to much, and sometimes it was frustrating. So I would not be super keen to play those rules again. Great job they did with the models thou.

Thanks;
Mike