When Maurice met Blucher (aka the battle for providence county 1778)

Providence county 1723

At the moment I am about two thirds of the way through my plan AWI project but to be honest my enthusiasm is waning after painting 700+ 18mm figures. To restore some vigor for the project I arranged a game. Not just any game but a big complicated one with lots or opportunity to screw things up using as many figures as I could justifiable field. The current title is the battle of Providence county.  The concept is to merge two rules sets into one multi player game.  The game comes in two parts the first part is a pre-game campaign using the Blucher rules with armies maneuvering for advantage and victory points. At some point in the campaign the two forces will clash then the action will move,hopefully seamlessly, into Maurice rules set. were both side fight ti out for the finale.

The not so thin red line

Above is a map of Providence county.  The map is old written some fifty years before the battle some of the terrain may have changed since but this is the best map available at the time (that is my excuse to change anything if required at a later point).

To the east, off map, is camped the British army estimate 25,000 strong consisting of fifteen regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry and four batteries of artillery.  To the west, off map,  is camped the American army estimate 25,500 strong consisting of sixteen regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry and four batteries of artillery.

For movement each army is divide into columns consisting of four to six units with at least one infantry unit and one commander in each column.  The British have enough commanders to support seven columns while the Americans have enough commanders to support eight columns. 

The boys in blue (and white)

For the campaign phase the main points on interest on the map are the settlements, roads and rivers. The settlements consist of towns (big building) and villages (small buildings), Roads (in brown) enable faster movement, Rivers are either small (thin blue line) or big (thick blue line). They penalize movement. Small river small penalty big river big penalty. 

The objective of the campaign phase is to move the columns to capture settlements and establish favorable conditions to give battle.  The campaign phase ends when columns from both armies become adjacent to each other and one sides declares a battle, The columns affected a locked in position and every other columns get one more move to try to get into the fight before starting the battle phase.

The American line out

In the battle phase each square of the map represent a 2'x2' section of a 6'x6' table.  The attacking army declares which 2x3 array squares will form the battle field.  The terrain in the square will form part of the battle field. 

The British line forming up

That is all for now thanks for stopping by