Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Bennington Battlefield Visit

Last week, six of my fellow Northern Conspirators and I took a four day road trip to visit the nearby AWI battlefields of Bennington, Saratoga and Hubbardton as well as to attend the 2016 reenactments at Fort Ticonderoga. Since I took a ton of photos, and some video at the Fort Ti reenactment, I will be breaking the trip up into multiple posts. This first one will cover the first stop on our tour, the Bennington battlefield. The Bennington battlefield is preserved by the State of Vermont. It is the battlefield that we collectively knew the least about, despite having gamed it several times. The primary feature is the hilltop location of the German fortifications. The height of this and the slope of the surrounding terrain is impressive. It's not quite as rocky or difficult to climb as the front face of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, but the rise and run of the elevation are both greater when compared to the more well known feature. 

At the top of the hill there are a couple of plaques which give a general layout of the battle as well as a highly detailed cast (bronze?) relief map of the battlefield area showing the layout of the hills and valleys.  This was a quick stop at the end of our half-day drive from the seacoast of NH to Bennington, which is on the western border of Vermont.



2 comments:

CelticCurmudgeon said...

Did you learn anything that would be useful to running this as a game. The pictures you included, particularly of the Hessian fortifications on the hill top, look like they might give you some helpful ideas.
When you gamed these battles, what rule set did you use and in what scale were you playing?
Jerry

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

The biggest thing I learned is we need bigger hills on our tabletops!

We've used Volley & Bayonet, The British Are Coming and Black Powder.