So I rolled up another game using the Pick up Game chapter from the rules. This time only one Corps per side and I reduced the amount of artillery the dice rolls generated.
We decided to use the same size table, 3' x 4', but this time played across the narrow dimension. The features were added to give us some of the conditions we wished to test.
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| Woods and Swamp :- Rough Ground Open Woods and River :- Broken Ground Wheat Field :- Open Ground Main Road :- Good Road Farm Track :- Poor Road |
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| Suggested Deployments |
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| How that translated to the table. |
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| The Union wait. |
Knowing that we were wanting to get some melees in this time the Confederate players wasted no time with their advances. Several double quick moves soon saw the forward Union division in combat whilst both sides artillery got stuck in with either plunging fire on the advancing / defending brigades or counter battery fire.
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| Here they come boys! |
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| Brigade with attached battery receive the Rebel charge. |
The left hand Union brigade with attached battery didn't fair too well, both retreated behind the division on the hill. The right hand brigade did better, halting the charge with musket fire before counter charging and forcing the Confederate brigade to retreat broken.
The victorious rebels on the Union left flank then charged on towards the hill but halted short. This tempted to Union brigades to charge down the hill towards them. Unfortunately being over 4" away when they started and on a higher elevation than the target, they suffered passing fire from the Southern artillery on the opposite hill on their way in, added to the musketry of the defending brigades. This fight didn't go well for the boys in blue and red who were soon destroyed.
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| Not looking good for the zourves |
It was about here that we ran out of time, although we had achieved our main aims of getting to grips with the melee phase as well as confirming some of the passing fire and other artillery fire rules.
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| End positions. |
As a learning exercise it worked well. As a game it could benefit from a few changes, the biggest being some more ground behind the Union hill line so that units retreating didn't have to leave the table. The maps in my scenario download have been changed to reflect this.
The main things learnt were, standing in the open on a hill in range of opposing artillery is a lot more dangerous now than it was with the previous version of the rules and remember to include any passing fire you can when calculating defensive fire against a charge, it can make a big difference.
We are still debating whether to give defensive attributes to fence lines as historically troops did hunker down behind these for extra cover.
As mentioned the base labels and maps are available in my Scenario download section.
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