The Battle of Irelands Farm.

A quick write up of the American War of Independence game that we played on new years eve. This was played using a version of Fire & Fury that Paul owned.

The forces were as follows:

The British ( Mr. Paul Ireland)

Four regiments of line Infantry including 23rd, 55th, 9th and de Lacey's ( I think) along with a two battalions of light infantry and a medium gun. Morale was determined randomly as units were activated. The 23rd were rated as elite all others green or trained.

The Continentals (me)

A regiment of Virginia militia, Webbs replacements (?), NewJersey, New Hampshire, Maryland & Pennsylvania line regiments and two medium guns. All were either elite or crack excepting the militia who were green.
This really was a case of beginners luck as all my dice rolls for quality of Brigadiers were equally as good as Paul's were correspondingly poor.

Above: The Continental forces deployed for defence.

Above: The Brtish right flank.

Right from the off things started to go awry for the British, in the Continental firing phase some solid shooting from the artillery landed hits on the British centre causing one regiment to retire off the board whilst another was disordered by this precipitate flight.

The British continued their general advance across the board, concentrating their efforts on the flanks, the Virginia Militia were ejected from their position on the far flank and retired to the rear. On the near flank two British battalions rapidly closed on a Continental regiment and its supporting guns.

Despite losing a battalion in the process the British pressed home this attack with cold steel pushing back the Continentals opposing them, though not the battalion which was about to enfilade their flank.

On the other flank the British 23rd were unable to press their advantage against the Virginians who were relieved by a Line battalion ( a combination of being disordered and bad manouvre dice) and found themselves facing a fresh Continental battalion to their flank ( a consequence of some very good manouvre dice).

The resulting crossing of bayonets caused them to retire through their light infantry supports who found themselves in a nasty situation.

The resulting fire fights resulted in the virtual annihilation of the British left wing.

With a similar situation on the other flank the British packed it leaving the Continentals in possession of the field.
All in all a highly enjoyable game. A lot of my success was attributable to some truly remarkable dice rolls early in the game also Paul's early loss of a line battalion was a hard blow to recover from though he came very close with his right flank attack. In the end though numbers and troop quality told.
Definitely a period we will return to mainly down to the rules which flow very well and contain some good mechanics, I particularly like the manouvre mechanism which rewards a good result with extra marching capacity.