by Bill Simoni, 29 October 2025
Guilford was originally published in 2002 and has been reprinted as part of the first Tri-Pack from 2017. This is the version being played (via VASSAL) and reviewed. This game also includes a second scenario, Eutaw Springs, which will be covered in the next article.
In looking for an opponent, I posted on the BoAR Discord and got a pretty quick response from an unknown-to-me username. I offered to let him pick his side, when he let me know that would be patently unfair, since he is the designer. Uh oh, nice to meet you, Mark!
Some designers tell you they aren’t very good at playing their own games, which I have seen validated in person a few times. I know of a couple of exceptions – Mark Herman (at least with Empire of the Sun, if not everything) and Mark Miklos. So, if there’s any doubt about who won this game, let me disabuse you of that notion before we go any further. However, if I played wargames solely to win, I would have left the hobby years ago. My goals are to learn more about history while having fun with good people. I succeeded on both counts.
The Battle of Guilford Courthouse has two scenarios – the Campaign Game and the Historical Scenario. The latter dispenses with all the preliminaries, starting with turn 7 and lasting for 6 turns. The British strategy was to push along the northern route towards the eponymous courthouse and through onto Speedwell’s Ironworks.
click images to enlarge
Mark and I played the Campaign Scenario, which covers the full 13 turns and starts with virtually every British unit off-map, except for the notorious Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton.
This allows some creativity from the British player on how to push the attack. I chose the Patriot side to see and learn from Mark how he would approach it. We did not spend much time on a post-mortem, so anything I attribute to Mark is from my recollection and analysis, not direct from him – all errors and general denseness in relating the British thought process are mine alone.
Campaign Scenario
Win conditions for this scenario are fairly standard. A decisive victory requires a distinct mismatch in player skill or incredible/abysmal dice rolling. The British are attempting to march 6 VPS of non-artillery off the map at the indicated hexes on the northeast edge of the map. The Patriots must eliminate Cornwallis and 16 SPs of units (with a few not counting towards this total). A substantial victory is the same as in all the titles – push your opponent’s army morale to 0. Finally, a marginal victory occurs for the British if they have 2+ VPs more than the Patriots; otherwise, the Patriots win.
The opening turns saw Mark bring on his forces, opting to split his forces along both routes towards the main objective. I chose to use The Marquis de Bretigny and Lee’s Legion, both foot and horse, as screening forces. By the end of turn 4 we can see the general outline of the initial plans.
By turn 6, I realized I was probably too aggressive with those screeners. Lee’s Legion have both been eliminated and the Marquis is disrupted and out of the action. Something must be done with the southern flank. Unfortunately for me, Mark understood that Greene’s forces are not allowed to sortie out until turn 6 unless the British advance too quickly and alert Greene. Mark took the time to organize and advance without me being able to get a head start in mounting a defense beyond blocking the northern route with a lot of low-quality militia units.
Greene’s sortie restrictions did get lifted, in time for me to redirect some forces to block Cornwallis’ southern advance with the best forces the Patriots had available. I also decided to advance the terrible North Carolina militia to slow him down at Little Horsepen Creek instead of holding the spot Greene assigned them historically and as placed at the start of the game.
How bad are the NC militia really? Worse than you can imagine! So bad that there is no morale benefit or penalty on combat results affecting them and they are only worth ½ VP for every two units eliminated. They are cannon fodder, but perhaps I should not have thrown them away so aggressively, trying to hold onto a VP hex (outlined in blue below).
Let’s start paying attention along the north edge of the map, where Campbell’s rifle unit is pursued by British units 3x its size with an effective combat leader. Campbell happens to be a two-step unit (unusual for only being 1 SP), which has already been reduced.
By the next turn, he’s been shattered, but still hangs on.
Meanwhile, the British are being held off fairly effectively on the southern flank, but the northern advance has pushed through the blocking force fairly easily. The question now is what kind of victory will the British achieve – decisive is completely off the table at this point, but a substantial victory is still possible. If it goes to VP calculation, the British easily win their marginal victory.
But, most importantly and with uproarious laughter from both of us, Campbell is still hanging on for dear life.
With one turn to go, the situation has somewhat stabilized, but the Patriots are needing to find a lot of VPs somewhere but don’t have the firepower to make it happen.
Campbell is shattered again, but may finally be on his ninth life.
The final turn plays out with the British no longer needing to push and tempt fate, while the Patriots need to just lick their wounds. They barely avoided a substantial loss, but the British has a VP margin of 10, well above their required amount to win. The Patriots never captured or eliminated a British unit.
Even Campbell finally succumbed to the inevitable.
Final Thoughts
Once again, this title hews closely to the series rules and is quite suitable for solitaire play. The game-specific rules complement the history – Greene only hoped for the NC militia to fire 2 or 3 times before retreating. That may only translate into one close combat in the game. Perhaps I should have kept that more in mind before advancing them to engage sooner.
Between this play and using this as a teaching scenario at the Fall Assembly, I see this as being quite a challenge to win as the Patriots. I’m sure skilled players can make a better show of it as the Patriots than I did, but once you fall behind in VPs at all, you have to make sketchy attacks to try to catch up. It almost begs to play the scenario twice, switching sides, and seeing who did better.
Next up: Eutaw Springs – beware the Swamp Fox!
You can chat about this game in the Age of Gunpowder section of our discussion forums
Battles of the American Revolution Series
Mentioned in Dispatches Episode ~ Series Intro ~ Saratoga ~ Brandywine ~ Guilford Courthouse ~ Eutaw Springs ~ Savannah ~ Monmouth ~ Pensacola ~ Germantown
Camden Event Podcast Episode
Saratoga Digital ~ First Impressions ~ Gaming vs The AI
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