First off, this series is being done as a bit of a lark as wargaming has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas so if anyone is offended, please just stop reading now.

On the 11th day of Christmas War Gaming, my true love gave to me…

11 British Redoubts Daunting

The Battles of the American Revolution (BoaR) Series is a tactical level wargame series that portrays various battles of the American Revolutionary War. The series is a hex and counter wargame with Combat Results Tables, and uses tactics cards to determine the stance of both attackers and defenders to gain modifiers to combat rolls. The series has been long lived and just recently announced it’s 11th Volume The Battle of Green Spring: Prelude to Yorktown, July 6, 1781.

Recently, while attending the San Diego Historical Games Convention in beautiful San Diego , California, we had the pleasure to play Savannah with designer Mark Miklos. Savannah was published in 2005 and is volume IV in the series. It covers the events from September 10th to October 9th, 1779, as the Franco-American Allies mount their first significant cooperative effort against the British in North America during the Revolutionary War at Savannah, Georgia. The reason we chose this game in the series is that it is a 3-player game designed to create tension between the 2 Allies the French and Patriots as they must cooperate and draw from the same set of resources in the form of Event Cards and diversions as well as Momentum Tokens. The cooperation is important but each side will earn their own victory points and only 1 player will be crowned as victor.

Savannah was a bit of a change of direction in the series as there are several new mechanics including an abstract siege and bombardment table, and the already mentioned random events deck. Unlike previous games in the series, initial turns are strategic, reflecting troop movements over 1 and 2-day periods and allowing for the building of defenses by both sides in the form of trenches and redoubts. When the American/French player decides to assault the city, the game switches to the familiar tactical game turns reflecting a single hour of battle. This was a very interesting experience and was quite different from our experience with Brandywine which we have played in the past.

The imposing British defenses built up around Savannah in the form of redoubts, revetments and abatis make taking the city an extremely challenging proposition. The Savannah Defensive Perimeter is defined as the Savannah River to the north, the ring of abatis to the east and south, and
the Yamacraw Swamp to the west. In order to attack this Defensive Perimeter, the Franco-American Allies must move Allied combat units adjacent to any hexside constituting the Perimeter. But therein is part of the challenge as they must cross over open terrain and make themselves nice targets for the British cannon and grapeshot as they approach. Once at the Perimeter, the fortifications there will cause column shifts and offer only a few angles of attack for the Allies. This is truly a daunting ring of prepared fortifications and will take the spirit from the attacking forces pretty quickly if proper bombardment before hand has not opened any breaches along the Perimeter. In order to bombard though, the French must completed their entrenchments and bring in their heavy cannon and mortars.

We played for about 6 hours and made it to turn 21 of 25 when Alexander and I decided to concede as we just couldn’t muster the needed attack strengths to be effective with our assaults. Mark’s British artillery was very effective and he typically would hit us about 60-70% of the time causing disruptions and retreats which would undermine our combat prowess and made it so we just couldn’t get it done.

The French bombardments were pretty effective though as we did hit a few times and rolled well enough to blow 2 breaches in the outer defensive walls of the city of Savannah. This was where we would choose to assault as they would not gain the defensive bonuses from the fortifications there.

We had a great time with the game and we are really glad we had the opportunity to play with Mark. He is a great guy and we love his enthusiasm for this history and for the series. I look forward to playing more of the volumes in the future.

If you are interested, we posted a video review of the game on our channel and you can watch that at the following link: