Gaming Great Bridge

 “I set little value upon my health, when put in competition with my duty to my country, and the glorious cause we are engaged in.”

— Lt. Colonel Charles Scott

I am developing a game about the Battle of Great Bridge from the American War of Independence (AWI) and decided I’d keep a design journal, both for my own reference and for others interested in the process I follow in researching and creating a game with specific parameters in mind. I have volunteered to design and run a short participation game at an event this October commemorating the 250th anniversary of the mustering of the Culpeper Minutemen. I’m working under several parameters for this activity as well as bearing in mind a few key issues in the Patriots’ success in the engagement. Although I plan on running the event using a small, wargaming-style diorama map with paper miniatures, I expect I’ll playtest it as a board wargame...and later make it more easily available in that format as a PDF.

The History

In the autumn of 1775 the Culpeper Minutemen mustered near what today is Yowell Meadow Park (where a memorial to them stands). It drew men from Culpeper County and nearby Orange and Fauquier Counties, forming six companies of about 50 men each. Having no official uniforms and being from what was then the western Virginia frontier, they wore their everyday clothes and a protective, fringed hunting shirt; others often called them “shirtmen” for their distinctive appearance.

Philip Slaughter, son of one of the company captains and himself a private in Captain John Jameson’s company, left a detailed journal shedding light on these events:

“The whole regiment appeared according to orders in hunting shirts made of strong brown linen, dyed the color of the leaves of the trees, and on the breast was worked in large white letters the words, ‘Liberty or Death’! and all that could procure for love or money buck’s tails, wore them in their hats. Each man had a leather belt around his shoulders, with a tomahawk and scalping knife. The flag had in the center a rattlesnake coiled in the act to strike. Below it were the words, "Don't tread on me!" At the sides, ‘Liberty or Death’! and at the top, ‘The Culpeper Minute Men.’”

Earlier that year, in April, shortly after the fighting at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, Virginia’s governor Lord Dunmore ordered British marines to remove gunpowder from the magazine in the capital of Williamsburg, which ultimately led to his flight to a British warship in June and to Virginia’s open declaration of rebellion. In the autumn, working from a base in Norfolk, Dunmore raided the coast along the Chesapeake Bay and declared martial law, along with a proclamation offering freedom to enslaved men who joined the British army. With tensions escalating, the Virginia assembly ordered militias to assemble at Williamsburg and later to march to a point south of Norfolk along the road to North Carolina, where Dunmore had built a stockade fort guarding a bridge and causeways necessary to travel the road and approach Norfolk through the Great Dismal Swamp.

Billy Flora fires at advancing British troops,
alerting American militia of their approach.

After arriving in Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg (and causing a stir with their savage frontier appearance), the Culpeper Minutemen traveled to the point south of the British stockade fort where Patriot militia gathered behind defensive breastworks. After several sorties and raids, Dunmore feared the Patriots were bringing up cannon. Early on Dec. 9 a force of British grenadiers, under distant artillery cover and supported by Loyalist militia from Norfolk, marched over the bridge and along the narrow causeway toward the Patriot defenses. Despite a slow response, the American militia hammered the grenadiers with musket fire, brought reinforcements to the earthworks, and sent a detachment of Culpeper Minutemen — with their slower loading but longer-ranged and far-more-accurate hunting rifles — to a distant entrenchment to enfilade the British approach (well beyond the range of enemy musket fire). Attacking an entrenched enemy along a narrow approach with no cover, under flanking fire, against a larger force, doomed the British grenadiers and sent the Loyalists retreating. The Battle of Great Bridge was the first Patriot victory in Virginia and established the Culpeper Minutemen in the heroic mythology of the Old Dominion’s Revolutionary War history.*

Parameters & Historical Factors

In creating a game experience simulating the battle, I need to keep several issues in mind, both for presenting the game to a particular audience and in incorporating certain key historical elements in that simulation.

I do not have many details about the event. I’m led to believe visitors interested in the Culpeper Minutemen will wander around various exhibits, possibly including living history, and other locations where they can indulge their curiosity. Any game simulation should remain brief and accessible to people unfamiliar with wargames, or even analog games...especially children of various ages. (It should also have visually appealing elements to draw people’s attention, but that’s a post-game-design presentation issue for later....) So in contemplating game rules I must keep it simple and keep it short, ideally a game I can explain and run in 10 minutes or less.

Monument to the Culpeper Minutemen
in Yowell Meadow Park.

Yet I’m also beholden to core elements of wargames, no matter how much I abstract the battle into an accessible format. Obviously I’m defaulting to some basic game concepts, even when streamlined for complete newcomers: a map board with spaces; “pieces” representing military units; pieces moving spaces on the board; die rolls to resolve the chance of success in various combat actions; a system to determine when attacks eliminate a unit (not complete destruction, but the point where a force ceases to have any use on the battlefield due to dead, wounded, retreats, etc.).

But the battle emphasized several key issues I want to highlight in gameplay. Given the swampy nature of the terrain and the main road dependent on the bridge and earthen causeways, the British had a narrow path from their stockade fort to the Patriot defenses. They essentially had to proceed in column format, not arrayed in line as seen on most period battlefields. This limited their fighting front facing the Patriots and exposed their flanks to Culpeper Minutemen rifle fire.

Which is the second major factor I want to highlight...obviously since I’d run the game at an event commemorating the Culpeper Minutemen. This comes with several considerations. Certainly the ability to attack a target at long range helps (aside from enfilading fire), with only the British cannon able to attack them (to limited effect thanks to the defensive earthworks). But, while rifle fire was more accurate and had longer range, it took longer to reload, somewhat limiting its effectiveness.

To maintain focus as I develop the game I summarized my parameters in four key points:

* Accessible to newcomers and kids.

* Fit entire experience (explanation and play) into 10 minutes.

* Deployment limitations for British forces.

* Role of Culpeper Minutemen in long-range flanking attacks.

I’m already running ideas and processes through my head on addressing all these core issues. I need to focus on taking a closer look at abstracting the history — units, combat success chances, tactical considerations — into meaningful game elements while still keeping my four core parameters in mind.

Next: Battle into Game

 “I then saw the horrors of war in perfection, worse than can be imagin’d.”

— Captain Richard Kidder Meade

* Historical Footnotes

The Culpeper Minutemen and the Battle of Great Bridge include numerous historical footnotes that, while they don’t affect the engagement (from both a historical and game-design perspective), they offer a little more depth to our understanding of the event and the period.

Intelligence Problems: Dunmore ordered the attack when he did based in part on incorrect intelligence he received about Patriot artillery. The militias apparently did have small field pieces, but in reality they were inoperable without mountings and carriages. Reports to Dunmore also estimated a total of around 400 rebels instead of something approaching two or maybe even three times that number. (It is possible this number was suggested by an African-American double agent sent to infiltrate the Ethiopian Regiment and spread faulty intelligence.)

Ethiopian Regiment: Dunmore’s proclamation offering enslaved people freedom if they joined the British proved a real threat and motivated Patriot opposition. A unit of escaped enslaved men formed in Norfolk as the Ethiopian Regiment; it built the stockade fort by the bridge, called Fort Murray. For some reason the unit’s diversionary action planned for the morning of the battle did not occur. The regiment was slated to follow the grenadiers and loyalists down the causeway in the Battle of Great Bridge. Instead it helped cover the British retreat back to the fort.

Billy Flora: A free-born African American Patriot on sentry duty raised the alarm as British forces started replacing planks on the bridge and marched forward early on Dec. 9. Flora fired several shots, alerting his comrades at the militia defensive works. He continued to return fire as he ran back to the Patriot positions to join the gathering militia.