Setup for the Battle of Morristown

Introduction

I'm dusting off this antique blogspot to publish some wargame reports for Mr. Wargaming's collaborative solo wargame campaign experiment: The Sneedville War. You can learn more about it over at his blog, and more importantly on his youtube channel. In short, the forces of Kingsport are keen on taking the town of Sneedville from the forces of Knoxville. Full disclosure: my sympathies lie with Kingsport, but of course I will do my best to game each side fairly and intelligently.

The first two battles of the war are now ready to game. These are the Battle of Morristown, and the Siege of Big Stone Gap. After marching into Bean Station, Roger's Division (these forces are really too small to call "armies") has turned south to cross the bridge to Morristown. They are opposed by Knoxville's Division of the East, which is marching North to meet them. The forces are similar in power, but Roger's has the only artillery, and slightly more infantry -- including heavy and light troops. Meanwhile, Knoxville has countered by sending a small rapid response team to capture the mountain pass town of Big Stone Gap on Kingsport's strategic northern flank, which is guarded by a much smaller militia force.

Rules, Scale, & Troop Conventions

For at least these first few battles -- I may change it up later -- I'm using the system I'm most familiar with: Volley & Bayonet (2nd Edition) by Frank Chadwick and Greg Novak. It's geared primarily toward grand tactical Napoleonics, but is flexible enough to handle earlier and later periods (advertised as 1700 to 1890). I've used it for Seven Years War, which is why my armies are mostly painted blue and white. For this experiment, though, I'll be trying the massed infantry formations of the Napoleonic period, but not the rules for intrinsic skirmish screens. On the other hand, I'll be adopting the post-Napoleonic rule for dismountable Light Horse, which will give my light cavalry a bit more utility, letting them act like mobile skirmishers. Since the Sneedville armies are considerably smaller than what Frederick II or Napoleon were swinging around, I'll be trying out a common rules modification for playing at lower levels of army organization (for smaller battles). Since I use 2mm figures, I'll also be halving all tabletop measurements: instead of 3" frontages, my units have 1.5" frontages.

V&B's default organizational scale is described as "regimental scale". At this level each massed infantry stand has 3-7 strength points (SP) of 500 men each, for a minimum of 1,500 men per unit. Since the Sneedville regiments are only 750 strong, this would require pairing up every two regiments into a single 3 SP stand. Kingsport's 6 foot and 4 horse regiments would condense into a paltry 3 stands of foot and 2 of horse. Hence my decision to use the next lower organizational scale in the alternate rules.

At "battalion scale," each SP represents 200 men. With a bit of rounding, that means each regiment has 4 SP, which is perfect for a single stand of massed infantry. Since the same number of cavalry take up more space, cavalry stands can only have 2-3 SP's and I have to break up each cavalry regiment into two stands of 2 SP each. For a similar reason, I have to break up the two artillery batteries into two units each, where each unit has 2 SP's of 4 guns each.

The battalion scale rules also want each stand to belong to a "brigade" of at least three stands, one of which is deemed to contain a commander, and the rest of which must be in contact (directly or indirectly) in order to count as being "in command" (excepting detached skirmishers, or units within the division commander's command radius). As a result, I've organized both forces into four brigades: two of infantry, and two of cavalry, leaving artillery under the division commander. This strict in-contact rule is lacking at the higher-level default rules I'm used to playing, and will be new to me. Will I adapt?

Here I'm beginning to assemble the forces that will be required on a 3' x 3' table. Blue is Kingsport (they have the artillery) with the two red units being heavy infantry, while the opposing white forces are Knoxville. I've got the units grouped into brigades. My commanders are all unpainted, and my light horse is completely absent (I'll get some units partially-painted before I play!). Across the bottom is what Kingsport's forces would've looked like at Regimental scale.

The default morale level in V&B is 5. Veteran troops will have a morale of 6, while green troops will have a morale of 4 and will also be marked as "poorly trained," giving them penalties to movement. Heavy foot (converged grenadiers units) are marked as "shock," while regular line troops have "no elites", and light foot will have neither elites nor integrated "battalion guns", but will be marked as "sharpshooter", and have the ability to break down into skirmisher detachments. Light cavalry can also break into skirmishers, and as mentioned previously will be allowed to dismount to fire. Medium cavalry will be given the "lancer" trait, though this has very minimal effects in the rules. I'm doing nothing special with heavy cavalry, and artillery will just be average "field artillery".

Objectives and Battlefield Selection

Now that I know how many figures to use at what scale, and on what size table 3’x3’ to play, it's time to select a battlefield. In Google Earth, I imported a mostly transparent 3x3 grid image, and scaled it such that each edge was 2 miles long (~3600 yds). I can slide this around and rotate to test out what various battlefields would look like. I also overlayed a semi-transparent topographical map over the terrain so that I could more easily see where the high ground was. 

But exactly where are these armies going to meet, and why? Based on the pre-battle maps that Jon provided, I'm starting with a few assumptions. 

• First is that Roger’s Division will not be caught before they’ve had a chance to finish crossing the bridge. The Kingsport commander (who is competent and cautious) likely wouldn’t have attempted the crossing if that weren't the case. 
• Secondly, Kingsport can’t just march straight into Morristown. The Knoxville forces would be able to get there first, and supplement Morristown's own garrison with an active defense. In fact, this might be what the Knoxville general would prefer. 
• However, my third assumption forces him to be more proactive: Kingsport’s Greeneville Division is nearby, and no one knows whether they will march to the sound of guns, and show up on the following day to join in battle or siege (in the larger campaign, I don’t believe this is happening, but the generals don’t know that yet, and the possibility adds some impetus to act sooner rather than later). 

Therefore, Knoxville's hand is forced. They must drive Kingsport from the field today. This gives Kingsport a bit of latitude as to where they set up for battle. These assumptions make sense, but are mostly to justify avoiding odd scenarios that I don’t want to play out on my table (shoot ‘em off a a bridge, heavy urban warfare, or a drawn out siege respectively). Let's say the battle starts around 10:00 am or so (the morning being occupied with crossing the bridge, or marching up from the south). Then we can say the day should be limited to 10 hours (
or 20 turns). That should be more than enough to reach an outcome.

So where does Kingsport set up? What are their goals, strengths, and constraints?

• They want to protect the line of communication back north to Bean Station if possible, since all their baggage is coming from that way, 
• But it would also be good to establish a direct line back east to their home base in Rogersville, 
• If possible, prevent the East Division from running into Morristown to regroup after battle. Possibly easier said than done.
  
• Find somewhere with enough open level ground that they can put their artillery superiority to good use. While the terrain here is more open than the mountain mazes in the north, there are still enough hills and woods to make using artillery annoying, especially since Kingsport is marching up out of a river basin -- they do not have the high ground.
• On the other hand they have a few skirmishers, so some small wooded areas would be useful to provide them with shelter.
• Leave an open retreat route. One rejected strategy -- moving due west to attack Morristown from the north -- would leave Roger's Division with their backs to a mountain, behind which is a large lake. In case of a rout, you’d prefer not to fight with your backs against a wall.   

There's a crossroads east of Morristown and south of the Bean Station bridge, with enough relatively open terrain to meet these criteria. There are even a few minor creek beds in the area with steep enough banks that they might present a bit of a speed bump. With the rain that's been falling, they might even be a bit swollen. Here's what the area looks like in Google Earth.

It's not pretty, but here's a screenshot of the area in Google Earth, with the topographical overlay and the 3x3 grid overlay that I used to set up my table. I also scribbled a bit on top of the map to help me see the various contours better.

And here's how I've translated that to the tabletop. Note that much of my terrain was built for 6mm, before I decided to switch to 2mm, so if it seems over-sized (especially the forest blocks and buildings), that's why. Also, you'll notice that not all of it has finished being flocked. I'll get around to it eventually. North (to Bean Station) is to the left, Morristown is behind the camera, and Bull's Gap (where Greene's Division is waiting) is off the far side of the table. I had to take liberties with placement of towns & villages, since in modern maps, the whole area is considerably more built up.   

Deployment

In retrospect, there's a pretty big downfall with this deployment area, or at least with Kingsport's initial strategy. Remember how I mentioned I generally play these rules in Seven Years War, but was going to try the Napoleonic "massed infantry" formations for this game? Well, after selecting this battlefield and setting up the terrain, I checked the terrain table and realized that unlike the earlier "linear infantry" of the Ancien Regime, massed infantry is able to travel through wooded areas without getting Disordered (albeit at half speed). The Kingsport general was planning on anchoring his flank against those woods and forming line against the stream, but it soon became evident that this would simply present his flank to Knoxville, so his strategy had to be reconsidered. Chalk it up to an inexperienced general who spent too much time with book learning, and wasn't fully aware of his troops capability. Nevertheless, I'm not sure there's a much better option in this area.

Here's my initial deployment. Both forces led off with light and medium cavalry on the far flanks. The regiments of Kingsport Line and the Greenville Rifles take the center, opposed by the three regiments of Morristown Line. They will be vying for the central hill, it seems. The artillery is still being dragged into location. The grenadiers (and Hawkins line) are a bit confused about where they're supposed to be going, while the White Pine and Dandridge Line march up the crossroads. Finally, Knoxville is holding their heavy cavalry in reserve, until they know where to commit it.

You may notice that Kingsport is missing a brigade of cavalry. I rolled on a battle setup table from another set of rules (Piquet: Field of Battle 2nd Edition) for some random setup events and I got that one of Kingsport's command groups doesn't arrive until d4 turns into the battle. Presumably, they had some trouble getting across the bridge in an orderly fashion, but they'll arrive soon enough.

Well, I've rambled more than enough about rules and setup, and Mr. Wargaming always stresses being players of the rules, and not readers only (to paraphrase a Good Book), so next time should hopefully be the after action report.