Chacabuco And Maipo For 'Dominion of Napoleon Bonaparte'

I put together these two scenarios for 'Dominion of Napoleon Bonaparte' last year, but they'd lingered, forgotten, in my drafts until now. They cover what are probably the two key battles in the struggle for Chilean independence.

Chacabuco (February 12th 1817)

Following the 'Reconquista', Spanish forces had re-established a harsh grip on Chile, forcing patriots to flee to Argentina. It was there that General José de San Martín, alongside Chilean leader Bernardo O’Higgins, conceived the audacious Crossing of the Andes.

Rather than a direct assault, San Martín led the Army of the Andes - roughly 5,000 men - through treacherous, high-altitude passes. This served as a massive feint, confusing the Spanish authorities about where the actual invasion would emerge. As the time the weary but determined Patriot forces descended from the peaks, the Royalists were scrambled and forced to make a stand at Chacabuco.

Patriots: 3 x Column Infantry, 1 x Elite Disciplined Heavy Cavalry (Horse Grenadiers), 1 x unreliable Column Infantry (Soler), 1 x unreliable Light Dragoons (Soler)

Royalists: 1 x Light Infantry, 2 x Fortified Line Infantry, 1 x Light Dragoons, 1 x unreliable Artillery, 1 x unreliable Line Infantry (Reinforcements from Santiago)

Patriots (Attackers)

Horse Grenadiers (ED), Column Infantry (U), Light Dragoons (U)
Column	Column	Column
Line (D)	Line (D)	Light Infantry
Light Dragoons, Artillery (U), Line (U)

Royalists (Defenders)

The battle began with a pincer movement. San Martín divided his forces into two divisions: one under General Soler and the other under O’Higgins. While Soler was tasked with a long flanking maneuver to encircle the Royalist rear, O’Higgins - driven by characteristic fervour - turned a distracting demonstration into a premature frontal assault against the Spanish lines.

The Royalists, led by Rafael Maroto, held a strong defensive position and initially pushed O’Higgins back. However, San Martín’s tactical patience paid off. Just as the Patriot centre wavered, Soler’s division appeared on the Spanish flank. A decisive cavalry charge shattered the Royalist infantry, turning a disciplined defence into a panicked rout.

The Royalists suffered over 500 dead and 600 captured, while Patriot losses were remarkably low. Two days later, San Martín and O’Higgins entered Santiago to a heroes' welcome. While the war for independence would continue for several more years, Chacabuco was the death knell for Spanish colonial prestige in the region

Maipo (5th April 1818)

The Battle of Maipo (or Maipú) was the decisive engagement in the Chilean War of Independence, effectively ending major Spanish control over the heart of Chile and securing the nation’s sovereignty.
Following the Patriot victory at the Battle of Chacabuco in 1817, the Royalists retreated to the south. However, the Spanish launched a counter-offensive under General Mariano Osorio, who successfully ambushed Patriot forces at Cancha Rayada in March 1818. This surprise defeat sparked panic in Santiago, as the Patriot army suffered heavy losses and retreated in disarray. Despite the chaos, General José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins managed to regroup the remnants of the Army of the Andes and the Army of Chile. By early April, they positioned themselves on the Maipo plains, just south of the capital, determined to make a final stand against Osorio’s advancing Royalist troops.

On April 5, 1818, the two armies met. San Martín deployed his forces on a ridge, utilizing a strong defensive position.

 
Patriots: 4 x Column Infantry, 1 x Disciplined Heavy Cavalry (Horse Grenadiers), 1 x unreliable Artillery
Royalists: 1 x Column Infantry (Lights & Grenadiers), 2 x Line Infantry, 1 x Disciplined Line Infantry (Burgos), 1 x Light Dragoons, 1 x  unreliable Artillery

Patriots (Attackers)

Column, Horse Grenadiers (D), Artillery (U)
Column	Column	Column
Column	Line	Line
Line (D), Light Dragoons, Artillery (U)

Royalists (Defenders)

The engagement began with a heavy Patriot artillery barrage, followed by a fierce infantry struggle. The Royalist centre held firm initially, putting immense pressure on the Patriot lines. The turning point occurred when San Martín ordered a massive charge by his reserve divisions. This fresh assault broke the Royalist left flank. As the Spanish lines crumbled, they retreated to the Lo Espejo farmhouse, covered by the veteran Spanish Burgos Battalion, where a final, bloody resistance took place before they were completely overwhelmed.

The Patriot victory was absolute. Most of the Royalist army was killed or captured, including several high-ranking officers. The defeat destroyed the Spanish capacity to launch further large-scale invasions of central Chile, allowing San Martín to shift his focus toward the liberation of Peru. Maipo is a cornerstone of South American independence, marking the moment Chile’s status as a free republic became irreversible.

Mammoth For Lunch

One of the nice things about working from home is that if I feel the desire I can set up a quick game to play at lunchtime. And that's what I did the other day.

I chose Palaeo Diet, because it's quick to set up and satisfyingly relaxing.

Long-time readers will know the drill here. We start the adventure with some hapless wildlife - in this case a trio of mammoths.

And here are the hunters. There's actually four of them, but one with a bow went far out to the left. This trio had one man with an axe and two with spears.

As ever the job of the hunter with the bow was to detach one mammoth from the herd. This he did by howling at first and then by shooting at the hunt's chosen target.

An overview. The terrain (randomised) was very open. The other hunters were closing in on the mammoth now that it was no longer supported by its companions. 

The axeman skipped in behind the mammoth to goad it a little further past the thicket, but it turned and charged him. Surprised he ducked out of the way and dealt the beast a mighty blow with his axe. 

This attracted a nearby predator - a terror bird. But a single arrow loosed in its general direction caused it to flee, never to be seen again. 

The wounded mammoth roared angrily and the hunters backed off. 

But they closed in again. The first hunter to attack it with a spear simply made it very cross, and the hunter was unfortunately gored by the pachyderm's tusks. 

The second spearman was luckier, with his throw finding the mammoth's vitals, dropping it.

So a textbook separation from the herd was spoiled by the mammoth being particularly aggressive and the loss of a hunter. But some lucky attacks saw it brought down. The tribe would have their lunch. 

The Battle Of Southam for 'Dominion Of Cavaliers And Roundheads'

 

Way back when I was first dabbling with ECW games I played out a scenario for the action at Southam on 23rd August 1642. This is one of the earliest actions of the conflict, albeit a small one. With the orders of battle to hand, I have adapted it for 'Dominion of Cavaliers & Roundheads'.

Southam - 23rd August 1642

During the opening phase of the English Civil War, both factions scrambled to seize strategic territory. In Warwickshire, a local rivalry pitted the Parliamentarian commander, Lord Brooke, against his Royalist counterpart, the Earl of Northampton.

The conflict shifted from political tension to open combat on August 22nd, when King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham and formally declared war. Wasting no time, Northampton moved to intercept Brooke’s assembling militia. Just two days after the King’s declaration, the opposing forces clashed near the small market town of Southam, marking one of the earliest skirmishes of the war.

Brooke had three regiments of foot to Northampton's one, outnumbered the Royalists three to one in artillery but was outnumbered himself in horse. The Royalists formed up with their backs to the River Itchin with the Parliamentarian force on a hill opposite them. The Royalists had 300 foot and around 800 horse, whilst Parliament had 3000 foot and 400 horse.

Parliament: 2 x Cavalry, 1 x Musketeers, 1 x Reinforces Musketeers (Larger Unit), 1 x unreliable Musketeers (raw unit), 1 x Artillery

Royalists: 1 x Elite Cavaliers, 2 x Cavaliers, 1 x Pikemen, 1 x Dragoons, 1 x unreliable Artillery

Parliament (Attackers)

Musketeers (D), Musketeers (UR), Artillery
Cavalry	Musketeers	Cavalry
Cavaliers (E)	Artillery (UR)	Cavaliers
Pikemen, Dragoons, Cavaliers

Royalist (Defenders)

The action commenced at 8:00 AM with an ineffctive Royalist cannonade. The Parliamentarian artillery proved far more lethal in response; their return fire ploughed directly through the Royalist infantry, causing significant damage and claiming the lives of several riders and horses.

As the Parliamentarian horse advanced into the valley, the Royalist foot soldiers found themselves unable to withstand the relentless hail of shot and began a retreat. 

Cavalry engaged between the two forces. Lord Grey led the Parliamentarian assault with "very thick and hot charges," exerting a level of pressure the Royalists could not contain. Eventually, the Royalist cavalry broke formation and fled the field, conceding the day to the Parliamentarians. Due to his inferiority in cavalry Brooke did not order a pursuit.

Design Notes: Parliament has artillery to cover their centre, whilst the Royalist guns are pushed to the fore and cannot be relied upon. If the Royalist horse can be contained, Parliament should win this with the strength of its foot. One Parliamentarian regiment was larger than the others, hence the D rating. To grant this another regiment was downgraded to UR - unreliable troops wouldn't be out of the question at this early stage. However if you feel that this detracts from Parliament's performance, drop the D and UR rating and just make their reserve foot 2 x Musketeers. To reflect the Royalist's lack of foot you could drop the unreliable status from their artillery (since it's already pretty vulnerable) and give it to the dragoons instead who were really only a detachment of musketeers. 

Montmirail 1814

Last night we played Valour & Fortitude. Ralph set up a scenario based around part of the battle of  Montmirail in 1814. The French have driven off a Russian corps, but their pursuit in intercepted by some angry Prussians and a couple of brigades of Russian cavalry. The French are mostly guard - Old, Young and Something In Between. Here's the setup, with the French top-right Prussians bottom left and Russian cavalry bottom right.  The objectives were a simple old-fashioned 'Destroy Enemy Units'.

Prussians. 

The Russian cavalry. I got given command of these because that's what happens when there's a big cavalry command. To the left are dragoons. The smart massed lancers to the right are, in fact, Cossacks and not as good as they look. 

Still, the Cossacks do have a special 'hit and run' attack which allows them to ignore ordinary combat factors and simply fight on a single die roll but with limited damage on both sides. This meant I could pin down an enemy command and hope to whittle them down. So that's what I decided to do. 

French Young Guard. I think. Anyway, this is what I was up against. 

An overview as both sides fanned out from their deployment zones. To the bottom right you can see teh French in squares against the Cossack hordes. At the top French cavalry advance through the woods on the Prussian flank.

More Cossacks in action. 

The French cavalry in the woods fell on the Allied left flank and looked to be dangerous, so I diverted my dragoons, swinging them across the rear of the battle. Despite the lack of photos of it there was a fair sized battle raging in the centre between the infantry and artillery of both sides. Sadly for us the French quality was winning out over the Prussian quantity. 

Soon there was a gaping hole in the Prussian centre and more French cavalry appeared. In fact there seemed to be a lot of French cavalry. 

Thanks to command inertia and generally average rolls, the Cossacks and the Young Guard actually had a quiet battle, inflicting exactly one hit on each other during the course of it. There was even time for a chat. 

My Dragoons got into position just as the Prussians reached a point that can best be described as 'Total Collapse', thus ending the game. 

There's virtually no photos showing it, but the vulgar infantry fight led to a massive French win. But then they had the wargamers' dream Napoleonic army of Guard, Guard and more Guard.

The Russian cavalry quietly slipped away. 

Dominion Of Cavaliers And Roundheads

A couple of months ago I was very excited to see that there is a ECW-specific set of rules in the Dominion series - Dominion of Cavaliers and Roundheads. Regular readers will know that for the past year I've been using the Pike & Shot version, as that has ECW stats in it, and made a few minor adaptations to better reflect the conflict. So I was interested in seeing how a specific set of rules would approach things.

I was generally impressed. Obviously it follows the standard Dominion format; armies of 3-7 units, simple troop types and the standard Elite/Fortified/Unreliable modifiers. In this case we have Artillery, Dragoons, Cavaliers, Cavalry, Musketeers, Pikemen and Highlanders. Foot are assumed to be mixed pike and shot, but the division between Musketeers and Pikemen is based on their emphasis. The Royalists tend towards Pikemen, whilst the better equipped Parliamentarians emphasise Musketeers. Cavaliers are used for Royalist horse; they are more aggressive against other horse, but prone to uncontrolled pursuit. Dragoons get to shoot, but in certain circumstances they skirmish, for which there is a special rule. Artillery is best used from the reserve. 

In terms of rules there's a nice mechanism for making cavalry unpleasant on the flanks when opposing foot. And there's an interesting optional rule in rallying where you drop all extra traits and rally a unit as a base unit instead, which makes things a lot simpler. 

There was only one thing I didn't like. It uses what I think is the original combat resolution system, where each turn you make combat rolls in all three sectors, then fill in gaps from the reserve. There's no alternating player turns, or choice of where to fight. Stephen has rightly pointed out that this reflects the relative lack of control a commander had over the battle once the armies were deployed and stuck into each other. Unfortunately it also makes for a dull game. There's not a lot of decision in the Dominion games as it is, and this takes away a good proportion of it. However there's no reason why you can't use one of the activation systems from another set of rules instead. 

To finish off  this run-through of the game there are 28 scenarios covering key battles of the era. All the ones you'd expect are there, and some of them are very interesting indeed. 

So how does it play? I've played a few of the scenarios, and having now got the mechanisms sorted I thought I'd document one for you. Not in detail though.

I abandoned the activation system in the rules and used the one from Dominion of Napoleon Bonaparte instead. This uses alternate turns with fighting in one sector only. It has a random element as to which sector is selected, but also a chance of allowing the player to make a choice. It's a nice balance between uncontrolled battles and the player getting some agency. 

One of my standard test-beds for my ECW Portable Wargame was First Newbury, which is a nice head-to-head fight between relatively equal forces. So I set up the First Newbury scenario from the rules as a simple example. Here's the set-up, looking at it from behind the Parliamentarian right flank. We can see the horse of both sides facing off on Wash Common*, Parliament formed up around Round Hill in the centre and Royalist horse facing Parliamentarian foot in the enclosures near the River Kennet. I put on some houses to represent Newbury.

Black counters show elite units (the Royalist horse) and brown counters show steadfast units (some of the Parliamentarian foot - the Trained Bands)

Parliament won the cavalry fight on Wash Common. Orange counters show destroyed units. 

And to make matters worse, the Royalist foot was thrown back in the centre. 

On Wash Common Parliament's horse continued their rampage, turning the Royalist flank. The white counter shows an unreliable unit. Why is it unreliable? It's one of the period specific rules in play. 

And the horse kept going, rolling up the Royalist army in what was a rapid defeat for the King's army. 

I set it up again. At first the fighting on Wash Common was inconclusive. 

But the Royalists soon swept to victory and managed not to ride off in pursuit. 

In the centre and on Parliament's left the fighting settled into a stalemate. The Royalists pushed forward, but couldn't shift the steadfast Parliamentarians. But Parliament couldn't blunt the Royalist attack. 

In a reversal of the pervious game, the Royalist horse swept off Wash Common and into the Parliamentarian foot. 

Essex frantically rallied his panicking foot ...

... but it continued to waver and break. 

However eventually the position was stabilised. 

And then reversed as the Royalist horse broke, no doubt exhausted from its efforts. 

The stabilised Parliamentarian line faced a continued Royalist advance. 

The Royalist left fell back and the King failed to rally them. 

On the other flank the Royalist horse there had been trying to winkle the opposing foot out of their enclosures. At this key moment in the battle they succeeded, leaving Parliament's left exposed. 

But in the centre the Royalists were collapsing. The battle now hung on a knife-edge. 

But it was the agile Royalist cavaliers that swung into the centre to claim the win. 

To be fair this battle doesn't show all of the special rules in the game (no dragoons or artillery, for starters), but I hope this shows something of how a battle plays out. Controlling the flanks with your horse is important. The Royalists have more punch, but their lack of discipline can be a problem. 

I want to play through a few more scenarios, and then I will have a look at updating my random army generator to reflect this set. And then? maybe a campaign. But no promises. 

*Just on the south edge of Wash Common is the warren that was the original home of the rabbit protagonists of Watership Down. Watership Down itself lies a few miles to the south.