Gonzales and Goliad

How do you celebrate Margarita day?  With a replay of the opening battles of the Texas Revolution, a fresh beverage and a platter of Tacitos.

The come and take it cannon in Gonzales proper would remain in Texian Rebel hands.  The Mexican army was held off using One Hour Wargames Rules by Neil Thomas.

We played the deluxe version of the Battle of Gonzales and doubled the amount of troops on the board.  In hindsight we needed to have the Texians arrive by die roll instead of being entrenched from the start.  It was too difficult to cross the swollen  Guadalupe River under fire and the Mexican army never had more than one unit as a foothold on the far side of the river at any time.

Skirmish units in the tree line defending Gonzales.

Give us back our cannon you rebel scum!

A good overview of the whole battlefield.

As I described we used the deluxe version wherein the Mexican army brought up a cannon to force the issue.

We could see the objective but never had a good path to take bake the cannon.

Jubilant Texian defenders cross the Guadalupe to force the Mexican army to retire.

The Battle of Goliad and Presidio Bahia

This battle was the second skirmish of the war and we recreated in a very abstract sense the walled presidio of the Goliad action.  The Mexican army had four units in the fort that were in barracks at the time of the Texian nighttime raid.  They needed a die roll of 4, 5, 6, to activate.

The Texians were required to break into the presidio and force the surrender of the garrison.

We gave the wooden gates 5 hit points of hand to hand damage before they could pass in to the interior.

I don't mind games that have some abstraction involved and here we were really pressing the OHW rules to solve a night time skirmish raid where the garrison surrendered pretty quickly.  The Texians forced entry and killed off 75% of the garrison troops, however they themselves suffered 83% casualties and in the wee hours of the morning only a handful of conscript volunteers were still hunting Mexican regulars in the halls of the presidio...(it is amazing what OHW rules can convey.)

Here we see the Alabama Red Rovers attacking through a fort gate into the interior of the presidio.

Surrender or we will massacre everyone of you!

The Mexican army awoken from the commotion of the attack try and man the walls of the fort.

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