British artillery (5)

This is my second batch of Saratoga campaign British artillery. This gives me 3 gun crews and the command stand shown here. The Royal Artllery crews engaged at Freemans Farm suffered at the hands of American riflemen. Lieutenant Hadden's detachment of 6-pounders was caught in open ground. Of the 22 men in the detachment only Hadden and 3 others remained unknotted by the time reinforcements under Captain Thomas Jones arrived. Jones and the 11 men who had arrived with him were soon casualties and the remnants of Hadden's battery had to retire, leaving the guns themselves to the Americans. Had den himself carried Jones to a log hut that was full of wounded, but Jones had been mortally wounded and died shortly thereafter. The officer and drummer are taken from the Perry standing Saratoga line command pack.

At the recent Freemans Farm game I played with Eclaireur we used a rule that prevented Hadden's battery from rallying off disruption points by virtue of remaining stationary in a game turn. The point behind this was to replicate the conditions in which the battery found itself on the day. Sure enough, the battery quickly took casualties from Morgan's riflemen without causing much damage itself. The deliberate targeting by the Americans of officers and specialists is something that rules should take account of. If British regulars receive plus modifiers on bayonet charges and firing etc, there seems no reason why they should not be disadvantaged by American targeting...

6 figures. Painted December 2010.