The American War of Independence, Maurice, 28mm

This Thursday I was invited around to Bill Gilchrist’s house to try my hand at a game of Maurice. I say house, but his wargame room is actually his garage, and very cosy it was too.Maurice is really a set of Seven Years War rules, produced by Sam Mustafa, but we were using it for an American War of Independence game, using the figures from Bill’s collection. I’d only played Maurice Lite before – a sort of “training wheels” version of the main rules, so I was interested to try my hand at the real thing, using the rules’ own AWI modifications.A British force of nine battalions, three gun batteries, a cavalry regiment and some skirmishers was pitted against a slightly larger American army  – I believe it had 14 battalions in all. Each side had an army morale total, based on its starting strength. Each unit lost led to a die roll, and a loss of morale points. When the total dropped to zero your army ran away. Simple – or at least it would be if both sides were of a similar quality. That’s one of the things with Maurice – it seems to assume a certain degree of parity in troop types – and that isn’t always the case with the American War of Independence. As a result, British light infantry had to be classed as irregular skirmishers, and American militia have to be classed as “regular conscripts”. Everyone else is treated pretty much the same, except that the British get a “rally re-roll”. Quite how this system could work with “militia-heavy” battles like Camden, Guilford Courthouse has yet to be seen, but I suspect it’ll be found wanting.At the start of the game you’re given a poker hand of cards, and more cards are drawn at the start of each player’s turn. You can activate “a force”, which means anyone in a contiguous line with gaps less than 4″ between the units. Break that line and you’ll find yourself in trouble – as I discovered to my cost. Having played eight games using this system Bill is a master at Maurice, and so he decided to attack. My job was to protect a small hill just behind my lines – Bill’s job was to capture it. His Americans advanced, and – damn it – so did my British. I reached the line of a road and stopped, my front units resting their muskets on a split rail fence. I soon discovered that in Maurice even skimpy cover like this can give your side a huge bonus. Conversely even the lightest fence can protect the troops behind it from close-range artillery fire!The game in a nutshell was that for the next four hours of playing time the Americans got no further than the road, as my doughty British and Hessian regulars  held their ground. When your turn rolls around you begin with a volley phase – first you can fire, then the opponent – but you can miss this out if you want. Also, you can be forced into a volley phase if your opponent plays the right card, or can fire first if he plays a “first fire” card. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the card playing. it all seemed something of an imposition on the game, merely for the sake of providing very attractive cards in the game. After volleying came your main choice – with one force you could move, charge, bombard or rally. That meant that the whole force – that long contiguous line – had to do the same thing or nothing at all if only part of the force wanted to bombard, charge or move. It all made for a rather static game.We soon settled into a regular pattern of trading volleys at each other. Essentially this means a unit gets to roll 4 dice. It scores hits on a 4-6 (modified by cover or the firer being shaken), and then these are turned into kills on another roll of 4-6. All very Warhammer. We blazed away for several turns, until gradually units began to fall apart. We also discovered after a few turns that the “regular conscripts” (the militia) should have been suffering kills on a 3-6, which made them more vulnerable. Guns also went after taking just two hits. Guns, may I say, are rather useless in Maurice. Bombardment is a very ineffective option, and guns only become useful when the enemy get within canister range (8″ – the same as musket range). Even then my two British batteries (armed with what looked like brass 6-pounders) only managed four dice against the American regiment ranged opposite them – who fired back with the same number of dice. You need to be very unlucky to get your units eviscerated by artillery under these rules!It was the loss of my little grasshopper gun that sealed the fate of my left flank. When it suffered two hits it was taken off, leaving the two loyalist units beyond it out of command range of the rest of my force. I couldn’t send my cavalry reserve forward, as that counted as its own force, meaning nobody else could do anything if they advanced. That doesn’t really encourage those Banastre Tarleton charges then… The Queen’s Rangers smoked the rebel militia to their front, but some amazing die rolling saw the second American unit take out the British Legion. They and the Rangers then wiped each other out. Over in the centre the guns of both sides had gone, but Bill was losing units fast, while mine were being saved by my “rally re-rolls”.Gamey but effective. In the end the rebels simply ran out of pips on their Army Morale chart, and they broke and ran, having lost 9 units to my 4 (two on each side being gun batteries). While I enjoyed the game, I loved the spectacle of it, and Bill’s hospitality was flawless, I couldn’t help feeling the rules were rather flawed. While they might work better for the Seven Years War in Europe, they’ll need an awful lot of tinkering before they work properly for games set in the American colonies.

Tags: Maurice