Joined DennisC’s game of 20mm American Civil War Wilderness Battle(s) on his special designed mat for the table; a very large dark green outdoor carpet with exact cutouts for the rare clearings in this heavily treed area of Virginia some 150 years ago, unfortunately laying between Washington and Richmond and thus, a battle zone.
The two yellow stars represent the two crossroads the Confederates must take to prevent Union reinforcements coming.
The figures are 20mm metals in Dennis’s collection (but a good portion painted by myself a few years ago) using the new brigade version of “Fire and Fury”. These employ the same, rather overly complicated, IMHO, firing charts that the regimental rules used. Some of the players had a tough time trying to figure out how to go thorough them and seemingly forgot each turn forcing me to have it at hand and calculate over and over. This task certainly took much of my attention away from my commanding my own forces (so much so that I think I failed to move some brigades for a turn or two!)
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| Some of the Union boys (painted by me for Dennis a few years ago) |
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Command control was important for a huge game like this, as Dennis does a very good job in setting up a historical affair but perhaps a bit to big for the limited time at available on the club’s Friday nights to have a satisfying conclusion.
In this case, the conclusion within the umber of turns, and real time, was a “cheesy” move by John to sidestep his lead brigade, so successful it was behind the Union front lines (!) onto the crossroads yellow star to claim ownership thus eking out a technical partial victory for the beleaguered Confederate side.
As you can see in the photos, “fog of war” were the blocks of wood which hid the potential forces of both sides placed in their historical positions. As “Commander” of the Rebs, I gave detailed instructions to all three of my co-players who nodded their agreement, then immediately proceeded to wander about doing their own thing! Sigh. ‘Friction’ indeed. Interestingly I had recently read a wargame magazine article in which the author was suggesting that special rules were not needed to create confusion or command control difficulties for armies on the tabletop; just use lots of players! Now I know how Lee or Grant felt when battles and their sub-commanders did not proceed as anticipated.
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| large Union out flanking move...or faint with few or none? The use of blanks. |
John on the right, was rewarded for what he admitted was lucky rolls for himself and poor by the Union player by gaining control of the reserve troops formerly commanded by myself. Isn’t the dictum “Reserves are to reinforce breakthroughs, not to stop them”?
My other reserves saw an opportunity to race up the other road in march column to take the undefended other crossroads but a single brigade, unengaged as Colin, in the Rebs centre, opted to do a two-on-one attack, leaving this lone brigade to move across the road to block the advance and pour fire on the column. That the fire-effect was poor (Jim L, the Union player having a rare bad die roll) did not prevent the “blitzkrieg” advance from being halted and the chance of the Rebs down that road was done.
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| big fight in the woods |
The many blocks of Union turned out to be many blocks of troops and thus the Confederate advances could not break through…. I really thought many would be ‘dummies’ but as Dennis, somewhat smugly suggested, “ some are ” (…like only one or two !….)
Great scenario with lots of potential for different outcomes with different dice rolls! However, like R.E. Lee knew some hundred and fifty years ago, the Union numbers are hard to beat.