Last week was the second anniversary of my retirement/redundancy from work (which is not missed at all!), and what better way than to sit down to a tabletop battle with old friends? Having recently re-established contact with Tony and Reg, formerly (very formerly -1970s/1980s!) fellow members of Rainham Wargames Club, it turned out that Reg lives only 40 mins drive from me, and Tony was visiting for a couple of days - so I was honoured to be invited to join them for a game. The first time in several decades that we three had rolled dice and moved figures together - and indeed, given that my gaming since starting this blog has been essentially solo.or remote (using Zoom) this was probably my first 'face-to-face' game using figures in many years. I must give a very big 'thank you' to them both for a warm welcome and excellent gaming!
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| Union troops enter right - my zouaves in foreground |
The main event was a game using Reg's ACW 15mm collection (mostly Minifigs, I believe), played with Black Powder rules, with some tweaks from the ACW supplement. You can see the table above - I liked Reg's copious use of trees, scrub etc denoting the rough terrain beyond the river, these were purely for visual effect and could be shifted to accomodate units moving through, but made the table look really good.
The setup was that Tony and I would share the Union force, with Reg taking the Rebel side. He provided a briefing, the core of which was as follows:
Time and Date: The date is 22 July 1862. The location is in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester.
Forces: You are divisional generals in Major General Nathanial Banks V Corps. You each command a division, which together completes the corps. A division consists of two brigades with supporting artillery.
Scenario: The corps has camped overnight south of Crampton’s gap on the Valley Turnpike. Orders were received during the night to move through the gap to relieve General Shield’s division which has sent word for help after being attacked by T. Jackson.
Sadly Banks died during the night from a heart attack. The corps needs to go to Shield’s rescue. The only way is through Crampton’s gap.
You have no knowledge of size or where Jackson’s forces are. He could be lying in wait or come on from either flank. If Early’s division is with him you will be outnumbered.
Notes on Troops
You both have a command value of 8, your Brigadiers are 7.
You each have a division of two brigades.
Each Brigade has 5 regiments plus artillery. The composition of each brigade is
different and you will draw for them.
You each have a spare brigade but it will cost you victory points to bring it on.
Victory against me [i.e. against Rebels]:
Level 1 getting supply train across the creek.
Level 2 getting supply train across and into gap.
Level 3 getting supply train off of board.
Victory against each other :.
Points for routing my forces - per unit.
Points for Crossing stream - getting on hills and exiting board. Per unit.
Minus points for using spare Brigade. Cost reduces as time goes on.
Winner gets to replace Banks as corps commander.
All of which gave some nice twists to the game : Tony and I started with no idea of what opposition faced us, and had a 'co-operative but competitive' relationship in aiming to beat Johnny Reb ( or Johnny Reg? ) but also jockeying to become the Corps commander! See the picture above for the table layout - Union entering from the left (South), the river is crossable by infantry at all points but guns must use one of three fords ( two at the roads ), but the area North of the river is all deemed rough terrain, and Confederate troops may be concealed there. To the right hand side (North) of the table the land rises to ridges, with the central road going through at Crampton's Gap.
The four Union brigades were shared (two each) randomly between us, each brigade having its own distinct character - one containing mostly 'Green' but enthusiastic regiments stiffened by one veteran unit, another made up of colourful Zouave regiments with high morale plus a unit of sharpshooters, the other two comprising more straightfoward 'regular' regiments. I drew the Zouaves and one of the regular brigades, Tony took the 'Green' brigade and the other regular one. Not being an ACW expert and having never played Black Powder, I thought of myself as an inexperienced Division commander, in his first campaign. Maybe I was acting the son of a US Senator, with no military experience, who had joined up to do his bit for the Union and been gifted a Division to command after a bit of Senatorial/Parental string-pulling? I was happy to watch and learn from my more experienced colleague, and I figured he was probably going to get to be the Corps commander!
I knew nothing about Black Powder and was pleasantly surprised - the simplicity of the rules made them easy to pick up, and allowed the game to move along at a good pace, with quite large forces - the Union commanders had 20 regiments between them, but this didn't seem to be a particular burden. The 'command dice roll' mechanic is simple (each Brigade Commander rolls 2 dice for each order they issue, requiring to score less than or equal to their command rating for the order to be successful ) and seemed to work pretty well, ensuring that not all orders got through or got obeyed, but also that units could obey the orders with different levels of enthusiam - taking a normal move, or a double or even triple! You need to be careful how you describe the orders you are suggesting - 'advance as far as possible' can spring a surprise if you roll up a triple move, as I was to find out.
The 'dice gods' tended to take a hand with interesting results - my Zouave brigade was more keen than I expected in marching up the right-hand turnpike ( I did specify 'go as far as possible' ) with the result that the leading regiment was caught in column by a volley from Confederates concealed behind cover on the ridge - causing some damage and disorder, and hurried re-deployment into firing line! The brigade shook out into lines and began a slow advance towards the enemy lining the ridge, exchanging fire and giving and taking hits and 'disorder' results. The firing mechanism was simple but gave reasonable results, I thought - aside from casualites, a 6 on the 'to hit' dice caused disorder to the target for the next move, reducing their effectiveness, so with luck you could 'keep their heads down' while you advanced, unless you took a disorder yourself! .
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| Zouave brigade shooting its way forward.. |
On the other hand, my 'regular brigade' started off steadily advancing, crossed the river OK but then on hearing the firing as other brigades made contact, failed a string of command rolls and basically sat tight, going no further forward, even when my Divisional commander galloped over to give direct orders! I pictured my inexperienced commander perhaps trying and failing to persuade his brigadier that he really ought to finish lunch and get the men forward, and not get too involved with that looted whiskey bottle...
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| 'Regular' brigade having a long lunch.. |
What with all the excitement I didn't take many pictures, but I can give an ideas of the main features of the game : essentially while my chaps either got embroiled in a firefight or sat things out, Tony was much more dynamic and aggressive, and made good use of his 'green' brigade on our left - the 'green' units had lower 'stamina' (taking less hits before having to check morale), but were also more likely to get stuck in with a charge to contact, so Tony used them to lead the attack.
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| Tony's 'cannon fodder' lead the charge |
He expected them to be cannon-fodder, I think, hopefully weakening their opponents for the more experienced brigade to finish off - but one of the 'green' units charged in and just would not be repulsed, hanging in there for several turns of melee, which allowed their veteran regiment comrades to punch through the confederate line and take the ridge. Great work! Tony then had another whole brigade coming up right behind, ready to storm over the ridge - the Confederate position on our left now looked very fragile in comparison. That forced Reg to move reserves over there, with the ironic result that a great big gap opened up in the Rebel position in the middle, which my regular brigade could have just walked through, if only I had been able to get them to move!
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| The ridge taken (top left), Rebs look hard-pressed! |
That was pretty much how it ended; the Confederate right was hard pressed by Tony's aggressive advance, their left holding up well in a firefight with my Zouaves. It occurred later that neither of us thought to send any units straight up the central turnpike and through the gap, maybe we both assumed that would be storngly held and therefore avoided it - we assumed wrong! So the game was pretty much a draw between Confederate and Union, but in the competition between Union commanders, Tony won the prize and would assume command of V Corps. Well deserved! I was happy to have a learning experience with the rules and see how they worked, and what tactics might work best, and I thought it all went pretty well - except for those command rolls!
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| view from the Confederate left |
As already stated, I liked the simple mechanisms of the rules, which made it easy to get a fairly 'big battle' moving along, and with what seemed like a reasonable ACW period 'feel'. I'd say the biggest drawback with the rules is the size of the rulebook, which led to a few instances of play being held up while players leafed through the book for a rule clarification. I gather there is quite a lot of 'fluff' and 'eye candy' in the rulebook, which slows down any search. Also the 'basic rules plus supplements' approach tends to muliply this effect, since you need to check in the supplement too, in case it overrules the main rulebook!. But those issues would lessen with further experience - Reg summed things up when he said he has just played so many more games since finding these rules, just because they run so briskly and simply, giving a decent chance of a clear outcome to the game. ( Incidentally, for a contrasting view of the same rules, I enjoyed a post from Trebian at Wargaming for Grown-Ups - in particular the comments below that post, which include a pretty good, positive and constructive discussion between Trebian ( Graham) and Professor Phil Dutre : both making good points, I thought ).
I'm afraid I'm not going to rush out and spend £35(!) on the Black Powder rulebook (and another £20 for a 7YW supplement?) - sorry Tony! But I'd be only too pleased to join the gents for more games - in fact there were discussions about an ECW game, using the related Pike and Shotte set, which sounds right up my street - watch this space.
Just to round things off, Tony also took us through a try-out game of Blood Red Skies, the WW2 aerial combat game also from Warlord Games ( Tony is a big fan of Warlord, though rumours of him being on a commission from them are strongly denied..) . I was very interested to try this, as WW2 aerial games are a favourite that I rarely get to play.
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| opposing formations close.. |
Please excuse the lack of a nice gaming mat in the pictures, but it was only a trial run.. The scenario was cut-down version of a Luftwaffe surprise attack on Manston in 1940 - Tony took the Germans with a formation of He111s escorted by Me110s, while for the RAF Reg had Hurricanes (furthest from camera) and I had Spitfires and Boulton Paul Defiants - which were bound to be 'interesting' to use! As you can see from the close ranges, we very quickly got to 'mix it' with the raiders :
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| and getting stuck in! |
Reg and I soon learned to be wary of the battery of cannon in the nose of the Me110 - Spitfires and Hurricanes were a bit under-gunned by comparison, so don't go for a frontal attack on them! We lost a couple of Hurricanes and a Spitfire, I think, and were on the verge of having our whole formation broken and forced to retire, but just by the skin of out teeth we won by shooting down 2 of the 3 Heinkels and forcing the raiders to turn for home. A slightly pyrrhic victory! Good fun though, and interesting - admittedly there was quite a lot to take on board with absolutely no prior knowledge of the rules mechanisms, but I'd certainly give it another go. The game takes an interesting approach to the eternal problem of depicting altitude, and the advantages of being higher than your opponent, and how to portray that in an essentally two-dimensional setup. They have a concept of planes being 'advantaged', 'disadvantaged' ( denoted by the 'nose up' or 'nose down' attitudes of the models ) or 'neutral' . This seems to roll up factors like height, speed and pilot ability into one of those 3 settings for each aircraft at any given point, and the players can spend 'actions' in their move to get into a better level of advantage - I think you can't shoot at another fighter unless you have a better level than them. That seemed quite an ingenious concept. Also worth noting that the rules group aircraft into units, with morale effects, so if losses get too high the unit will be forced to retire rather than every 'plane for himself', which I thought seemed right. So, another game that I'd be interested to try again, and test my supposed expertise in the subject matter.
Overall that was a pretty good re-introduction to face-to-face gaming, and a very big thank-you is due to Tony and Reg inviting me, your enthusiasm is highly infectious. Thanks both of you, that was really enjoyable! Let's hope we can do it again before too long.
Now I am trying to get back into a painting routine, hopefully finding a shady spot in the garden in the current hot weather. I have some French 7YW infantry progressing nicely, and a possible diversion into a completely different period and scale (oh dear..) And still need to set up and play a WW2 Italian campaign game with Rapid Fire Reloaded - later this week, perhaps. Until then keep well, everyone.
