Hammerhead 2019 - The Battle of Croix-des-Bouquets 1792

A fantastic day yesterday at Hammerhead, great to meet up with some old friends and fellow bloggers who stopped by for a chat. We managed to sneak in a couple of games between conversations and hopefully converted a few people to explore Haiti and Sharp Practice.

 

The games were pretty evenly balanced, to adapt to the participation theme of the day, players were tasked with lowering the enemies morale on the basis they would have to withdraw from the field.

Players could drop in at any time so people got a flavour of the period and the rules, my wife helped out by adding in the unit cards to help people identify who they were and to link the game back to the historical scenario.  

 

The set up. This side of the table sees the French Whites deployed with Colonial Cavalry, elements from the Artois and Normandy regiments, a Company of Africans and Spanish War dogs.

 

The Dragoons of the National Guard and Artillery bolsters the ranks of the French Forces.

Holding the high ground at the Church of Croix-des-Bouquets the forces of Beauvais, Rigaud and Yacinth.

 

Yacinth was only 21 and the vast majority of her troops were rebellious slaves armed only with
knives, spears, hoes, and iron poles.

Onlookers at the Church gather to watch the ensuing battle.

The view from across the battlefield, the terrain is some what undulated which gave for some valuable dead ground to shelter from the French Cannon fire. The plantation field gave partitial cover but did not slow movement.

The first battle was a confused affair with the Mulattoes and free coloured people advancing down the left flank whilst the bulk of the Slave forces faced off in the crop fields.

Rigaud a significant leader of the rebellion fired a volley into the war hounds reducing their number but not enough to stop the dogs tearing into them driving them from the field. However victory was short lived as the Witch doctor of the slave army urged his people forward catching the remaining dogs and handlers in the flank.

 

The French line infantry let loose a volley looking to drive the slaves back.

A highlight of game two as the Colonial Cavalry finally make their mark, having been subjected to skirmish fire for most of both games, they are determined to get revenge on someone, anyone, burning 4 flags they charge down the centre of the table, catching the skirmishers who are unable to run fast enough.

Not content with that, the next round they push on into the flank of the defending mullato militia driving them backwards, until they are finally brought to ground by a slave unit who pull the riders from their horses and reduce them to less than 3 figures.

The French line cheer on the cavalry as they charge forward.

In the final moments of game Two Yacinth is killed by a member of the Artois Regiment pulling the insurgent morale down by two valuable points. 

Game two draws to a close with another French White victory by a single point.

It was nice to get some of the new toys on the table, with a number of the club players holding commands in the campaign there is something to learn on forces and tactics, each force was around 70 points in Sharp Practice, everyone is now thinking cavalry.

I am considering making a minor tweak to forces available on the encounters to give people some local forces to bolster the games or we might have some very small encounters.

The dates for next year are already out.... Saturday 14th March.

We are already down for another game next year, espically given our Flash Gordon game from last year is on the flier :-)