Cold Wars Report

Cold Wars is come and gone and I had a great time.  I was very impressed by the size of the convention, which was as big or bigger than anything we have on the West Coast.  As a dedicated historical convention it was certainly larger than the historical section at any con I've seen out here.  I was also impressed at the range of periods in the games and the imagination within the games.  It's really cool to see people willing to try different periods or a different take on a period.

I ran 2 seminars; one on Friday, the other on Saturday.  Both had about a dozen attendees.  I spent a lot of time developing my seminar and felt like I had a good overview of South American Independence delivered in a coherent fashion.  The audience seemed to enjoy both presentations, although I felt my Friday delivery was better than the Saturday delivery.  There were some really good questions from the audience, especially on Saturday.  It gave me some food for thought on how to present the "personalities" in The War to the North and also how to rate both leaders and troops in any potential future rules system.

I ran the Battle of Vilcapugio on Saturday night.  Mark Ryan graciously had Liberators! Miniatures armies painted up for the game and, as always, it was extremely gratifying to me to see how nicely the range presents itself on the tabletop.  Evil Bob's Painting Service did a bang up job and the uniformity of the painting...meaning how each figure looked the same in quality and detail between units...was very impressive. 

The scenario itself is from The War in the South.  I used Lasalle, based in large part on Francisco's enthusiastic posts over at the Yahoo Group.  I'm glad I did.  Lasalle is a good convention or pick up game set of rules that adopts itself well to South American Independence.  The scenario features 2 of the most evenly matched armies in all of the Independence period.  They are almost mirror images of each other.  The battle is fought on a flat, open field with no terrain, making it a good table for players who don't know the rules as it limited LOS questions and terrain issues for movement and combat.  The one big factor in this game was that I assigned both armies as using the Linear Tactics special rule.  This limited their ability to charge into melee and has a profound effect on attacking armies. 

The Patriots began the battle by massing their artillery in the middle and weighing their forces to their left flank.  They left one good battalion on their right to hold off and Royalist counterattack or the anticipated arrival of Royalist cavalry reinforcements.

The Royalists evenly distributed their forces across the line, keeping a good reserve including their only on board cavalry unit.  As soon as the battle began they shifted some forces to counter the obvious Patriot flanking move while advancing their left against the weaker Patriot right.

The early portion of the battle consisted on some inconsequential artillery fire by both sides, although the Patriot 8th Infantry Regiment, which was in the middle of the line, was soon brought to 2 disorders; an uncomfortable position for an attacking unit.  It is difficult for an attacking force to remove disorders as you cannot attempt to roll them off if you do a "maneuver": any kind of wheel or move other that directly forward.  Even the act of moving makes it twice as hard to roll off a disorder so attacking forces need to take great care in their approach.  Regardless, the Patriot line got into its desired position fairly easily, with a strong strike force positioned on their left, at a 45 degree angle to their main attack line.  


The Royalists, however, did not simply sit back and await the onslaught.  Just as the Patriots began their final close the Royalists used a clever combination of putting some battalions in square, leaving others in line and positioning their cavalry and artillery to deliver maximum damage to the Patriot line.  After a successful cavalry charge by the Patriots against a Royalist artillery battery the situation changed decisively in favor of the Royalists.  The Royalist cavalry unit charged one of the Patriot battalions, which failed to form square.  The unit was predictably routed off the board.  The next turn the Royalists continued the charge, charging the cavalry against the battalion the Patriots had in the 2nd line acting as their local reserve.  This bold move exposed the central weakness of the Patriot deployment: by working to get a flanking force they had very little depth and any breach of the line could easily split their line.  It was imperative for the Patriots to win this combat.  The Patriot battalion succeeded in forming square and all of the advantages rested with the more experienced infantry, securely in position to repulse the Royalist charge.  Instead, the Royalist dragoons decisively defeated the square (achieving a 2-1 advantage in hits despite rolling 4 dice versus the Patriot's 10!).  The square broke and routed off the table.  Compounding the disaster, the 8th Infantry, which had been brought to 3 disorders, failed to rally any of them off and also routed in the face of the Royalist firestorm.  


The Patriots restored some order by charging a battalion of the 1st Regiment into the center, which succeeded in eliminating a Royalist infantry battalion but that unit was swamped in its turn by the surging Royalist forces.  In desperation the Patriots charged both their cavalry units against a Royalist battalion in square that anchored their far right flank.  Accurate Royalist artillery fire ripped one of the units, bringing it to 3 disorders.  The gallant but foolhardy charge predictably failed to break the Royalist square and resulted in the 3 disorder cavalry unit being removed from the board.  The remaining Patriot cavalry fell back unable, due to falling out of command range, of doing much else but keeping the Royalist battalion in square, thus denying it the ability to join in the rout going on across the Patriot front.


The final insult came with the Patriot general, Belgrano, being overrun and wounded by the surging Royalist line.  At this point the Patriots were split into 2 wings, both losing, with the Royalists merely picking which unit they wanted to destroy this turn.  On turn 18 the Patriot army formally broke.  The final casualty count was the Patriots losing 4 battalions out of 8 and 1 of 2 cavalry units.  They lost none of their 3 artillery batteries.  The Royalists lost 2 infantry battalions out of 7 and 1 artillery battery out of 3.  It was a decisive Royalist victory.  I was very impressed by this as during my play tests I had seen a decisive Patriot victory and minor victories by both sides but never a decisive Royalist win.  It was a tribute to Francisco and Eric (and Chris, who closed out the game running Eric's troops when Eric had to leave), who expertly handled their army, showing a true grasp of the combined arms concepts of the rules, the need to keep depth in order to recover from losses and the ability to keep the initiative once they had obtained an advantage by splitting the Patriot line.


Outside of my seminars and game, I got a chance to see the beginning of Francisco's Maipo game and the end of Chris' Laguna Salada game.  Both were excellent games and the groups that played them had a great time.  On the dealer floor I bought very little: the Uniforms of the War of the Pacific book and a Spanish book on Cevallo's expeditions in the 1760s and 1770s.  I also bought some 1/144th scale Sherman tanks for a WW2 project my group is planning (yes, I game periods other than South American Independence!).

Most importantly, I finally got to meet some long time Liberators co-conspirators in person.  Mark, Francisco, Alvaro and many of the guys who go by the name of High Order of Owls.  I got to have a some nice but all too brief conversations with other people and introduce them to the period.  It was an awesome convention and I will definitely attend again if at all possible.  I said it to them at the con but say it again here: thank you to everyone who ran a game, attended a game or otherwise supported Liberators and our period.  We did a lot to raise the recognition of our period in the hobby and to show others the potential that resides in gaming South American topics.  Cheers!